Design

In the Southeastern U.S, we have ample sunshine (over 10 hours a day, except for about a week and half around the winter solstice) for growing vegetables year-round.  In 'normal' winters, we can grow kale and collards that sail through normal freezes, as well as garlic and onions. In exceptionally cold winters (like the last couple of years), unprotected hardy greens have suffered significant frost damage.  But even this year, mustards have re-emerged looking pretty leafy in protected walled gardens like the kitchen garden next to the visitor center at the Garden where I work. I've been delighted with my winter greens experiment in the unheated hoophouse at the Garden --totally amazing.  I'm planning to sow a short season sequence of greens in the pots and bags of soil mix, as well as chard and beets, just to see what happens.

A comment on a post made in December about winter vegetables and an after-school program this afternoon have me thinking about change-outs in vegetable garden beds. I had harvested some Tuscan and redbor kale, spinach, and purple mustard from the kitchen garden next to the visitor center to show a group of 2nd graders from a nearby school learning about eating and growing vegetables as part of a Clemson University Healthy Campus Initative outreach program. It was a fun program; three Clemson students in a nutrition class had talked to the kids at their school last week about eating a rainbow of colors and will do a follow-up next week. We sniffed herbs, sampled flowers from the bolting collards, looked at lettuces, saw strawberries in flower, and tasted garlic chives. Another three Clemson students (student athletes) helped with the kids, too, and were great (they're part of a group called Tigers who Care -- we're the Clemson Tigers in our athletic programs. I showed them my...

I harvested several green scalloped squashes, a small yellow squash, some Siberian kale, and some redbor kale this evening. With fresh onions and garlic, stir-fried in a bit of olive oil and braised in homemade chicken broth, with some mushrooms and peppers, it was very tasty after a long day in the field. My gardening companion and I are teaching a field course for teachers about Natural History of Wildflowers -- great fun!

The recent rain, (slightly) cooler weather, and the greening up of the garden overall have me thinking about sowing greens for fall. It certainly seemed way too hot in August to contemplate sowing broccoli for transplant and I certainly wasn't able to get chard or beet seedlings to survive, although maybe the squirrels nibbled them. But I've had tremendous success in previous years (photo above) with a variety of greens in fall -- Tuscan kale (also known as dinosaur kale), different sorts of red kales, radicchio, and perpetual spinach (a sort of beet). Mizuna, red mustard, chard, and argula are all great, too, if there aren't too many late cabbage butterflies. Lettuces are beautiful in fall, and the really hardy winter varieties can make it through heavy frosts in mid-winter, if conditions are right. I also need to start sowing the small Violas that are so much nicer than pansies, and less demanding and take cuttings of Spanish lavender, to increase my supply.