The Slowcook at Spydog Farm The Slowcook at Spydog Farm

Snow Harvest

December 7th, 2009 · No Comments · Posted in garden

A little snow and ice doesn't slow down broccoli

A little snow and ice doesn't slow down broccoli

We had our first snow this week here in the District of Columbia, a couple of inches of heavy wet stuff. A quick inventory of the garden shows that while some of our greens got knocked back a bit, most of our cruciferous vegetables were hardly fazed. Yesterday, in fact, with the temperature hovering around freezing, we harvested mustard greens and mizuna and arugula for a salad.  The kohlrabi have sagged, but the cabbage seems to love this weather, as does the broccoli.

Winter brings alternating freezes and thaws to this part of the country, which is just fine for raising winter greens. Plant your cold-hardy kale, collards, mustards, arugula early in October to give it a running start. In hard freezes, the greens will drop to the ground. But when the temperature warms again, they will spring back. We learned this from our farmer friend Brett Grohsgal, who is one of the few farmers in our area to run a winter CSA. He harvests greens all winter long–hard on the extremities, maybe, but good for us greens lovers.

Leave a Comment

Please note: Your comment may have to wait for approval to be published to ensure that we don't accidentally publish "spam". We thank you for understanding.

*

There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.