Spring greens

If you ask me what my weakest area in the garden is, where I show the least amount of skill, I'd have to say that's the veggie garden. I'm just not too good with edibles for whatever reason. Perhaps some of it is out of my hands as the trees limit the amount of sunlight in my small veggie patch. A good part of it is down to me though, in the form of soil prep, watering, and general diligence.

I'm also bad at timing. Getting the cold-tolerant (and cold-loving) plants into the garden early enough has always been a problem for me. Not this year though. This year I've got a great head start.

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The reason I'm ahead of the game this year? One of the plans I made in the fall has failed, but not completely. Remember when I planted the Swiss chard late in the year and then covered it with a horrible makeshift "greenhouse"?

My goal was to see if I could produce fresh chard all winter long. That was an unrealistic goal it seems as this bed doesn't get enough winter sun to warm up enough for continuous growth. Those plants overwintered very nicely though, and they're beginning to produce new growth now.

Instead of a weak winter crop I'll have a fantastic spring crop of chard!

It's beautiful too.

The chard out in the veggie beds just had frost cloth over it for most of the winter, and is looking sort of terrible:

Upon closer examination though, the plants are fine and are starting to produce new growth as well:

I expect great things from these plants this spring too!

Also overwintering with ease was the kale:

These were under a light row cover for the early parts of winter, then I added a sheet of plastic over the hoops for extra protection when it got colder. Every plant under here is doing great, and is there anything prettier than a kale leaf in cold weather?

There were 4 or 5 cilantro (corriander) plants under here too, and I believe two of them actually survived:

That means I'll have extra-early cilantro this year! This plant bolts when the soil temperature reaches 75ºF I've read, and that can happen pretty early here some years, so getting these plants started early is essential. (I'll have plenty of volunteer cilantro in different parts of the yard, but those always stay small and go straight to flower here.)

I put straw over the rest of the veggie beds, covering my garlic:

but also covering a few fall-planted beets:

and some spinach:

Unfortunately, the tatsoi doesn't look like it survived:

Too bad, as I was looking forward to those delicious greens, but I have to look on the positive side...

...at least I have a couple of rows in which to plant something else now. The rest of the veggie beds are already full!

So my fall/winter experiment failed -- yet didn't. Plenty of early-spring greens means less worry for me about getting edible seeds started early.

I like turning weaknesses into strengths!

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