Goal for 2022: 500 pounds of veggies from my little garden!
It weighed more than three pounds and took over two hours to cook. You don’t often see sweet potatoes like this in the store. With good reason. If “you eat with your eyes first” this one’s an appetite annihilator.
It was good though. Very sweet.
22o (Fahrenheit) Monday, the 28th. 23o Tuesday, the 29th. 25o Wednesday, the 30th. And the wind! Terrible! I thought I was going to lose everything.
If I’m going to grow 500 pounds of vegetables this year I have to start early. I had three and a half beds and five 25-gallon containers planted already and I could have cried when I saw the forecast.
The good news is that almost everything made it. The radishes, kale and chard survived under a thick layer of burlap. The broad beans pulled through under plastic sheeting. The kohlrabi, cabbage, broccoli, beets and sugar snap peas weathered the cold under a double layer of row cover and bed sheet. The carrot seedlings (in the same bed as the beets and snap peas) didn’t make it. The poor little things had really just sprouted when the cold spell hit. I’ll replant after a respectable period of mourning.
This Winter Density lettuce survived without any protection at all. Incredible.
I’ve never grown these before. Never seen them in the grocery store. Never (knowingly!) eaten them. But I was reading articles about crops that can be planted in late winter/early spring and these figured quite prominently. Apparently, in some parts of the world they’re a diet staple. And with good reason. A protein source that can be grown in the cooler months is rare. Most beans need the warmth of summer to grow and mature. A bean that thrives in cooler temps frees up garden space in the summer when everything else is growing.
One of the articles I read encouraged gardeners to plant these “extra early.” I planted them in containers in my zone 7A garden on February 17 (after soaking them the night before). The weather was still quite wintry so I threw some plastic sheeting over them for warmth. They didn’t sprout until March 10. I don’t know if this is because I planted them too early or if they always take that long to sprout. At any rate, they’re all up now.
Apparently they can be harvested at several different points in the growth cycle but I don’t know what those points are yet or which one I’ll choose. Or if I’ll be able to identify those growth cycle points when its time to choose. That won’t be an issue for at least 2 months. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Growing something new is fun!