Truly I'm a novice to gardening, winter or summer. I have been successfully gardening outdoors in the summers now for four years. There are good years and there are bad years, but every year I cannot get it together to plant for a winter garden. I really should have already planted, but we are seemingly having a longish warm season this year and fall has not completely arrived. I consider this a grace period. Today I readied one bed for winter planting. I only plan on using two beds so as to conserve water in our arid environment. I planted Swiss chard, spinach, and two types of kale (a dwarf blue curly variety and willy's). All of these greens dig cool air and can handle freezing temperatures. Some say the flavors even improve with a freeze. Last year I attempted a winter bed. The chickens ate it all. I was devastated, they were still hungry, go figure.
While cleaning the beds I was pulling out all the lettuce that I had let go to seed (see picture below). I always let the lettuce go to seed. A part of me likes to watch as they bolt, begin to flower in all directions, and then form tufts of white fuzz like dandelions so the wind can scatter their seeds in all directions. In fact, there are already some volunteer lettuce plants coming up. To encourage more (because they can also stomach the cold) I facilitated their spread by shaking, rubbing and scattering them throughout the newly turned beds.
I saved an envelope of seeds for next years planting. Mostly black seeded simpson but also some red and green curly leaf varieties that I cannot name. In the other bed I will plant other winter hardy plants like radish, carrot and beet. Looking forward to digging up my sweet potatoes! Until then...
