Month: February 2011

Turnips and Spinach

~ McArtor ~ 8 Comments

We visited our community garden plot at Howard County Conservancy yesterday. We found some treasures in the soft thawed soil.

our winter spinach

one of our many winter turnips
Turnips and spinach are growing under our row covers. Our first experiment of over-wintering our late fall crops worked!  Last fall, I planted lettuce, turnips and spinach seeds a bit late.  We did not have a good fall harvest of these crops.  In November, I covered the growing crops with row covers.   What a thrill to peel back the row covers yesterday to find green turnip tops and purple and white turnip roots, tender dark green spinach leaves and curly bright green lettuce sprouts.  I even pulled weeds out of the spinach bed.  Row covers are good winter blankets for the garden!

Frozen Peppers and Cherry Tomatoes

~ McArtor ~ 1 Comment
green peppers and cherry tomatoes from 2010 garden

Only in winter can we enjoy last year’s harvest while starting this year’s garden.  We still have about 2 bags each of frozen peppers and cherry tomatoes from our garden plot harvest 2010.  We use the frozen cherry tomatoes and peppers on homemade pizza and in soups, chili and tomato sauce.

Last summer, we had an abundance of tomatoes and peppers in our garden plot.  Along with canning, we tried freezing these veggies for the first time.  The frozen veggies still taste sweet and fresh.  I will use the same freezing method for this year’s harvest.  To freeze the peppers… chop, blanch in boiling water for one minute, soak in ice cold water, drain, dry, freeze individual pieces on a cookie sheet then toss all the  frozen pieces into a freezer bag.  To freeze the cherry tomatoes…. cut in half, roast on cookie sheet for several hours in a 150 degree fahrenheit oven, cool, freeze on a cookie sheet then place in freezer bag.

While enjoying last year’s harvest,  we started planting seeds for this year’s garden.  This week we planted King Richard Leek, Genovese Basil, Italian Parsley, and Hybrid Shallot seeds in starter containers.  In a few weeks we will plant our tomato, pepper, eggplant, swiss chard, escarole and lettuce seeds.