It’s been a mild winter this year, so far.  We have had several freezes, including a light snow, though, and in spite of this, we’re still eating from the garden, here on the last day of January.

Savoy Cabbage

A second crop of broccoli sprouts

Mache

Red Leaf Lettuce

Beet greens

Turnips

Kale

Tatsoi

Leeks

And chervil

Among a few other things.

There are few things in one’s culinary/gustatory life more satisfying than sitting down to a big salad from your garden in the dead of winter.

I’m continually amazed how cold-hardy these things are.  They freeze, of course, but when they thaw, they are virtually unscathed.

I’m reading Eliot Coleman’s Winter Harvest Handbook now and hope to improve my winter gardens in the years to come, making them more productive and reliable.  The first hurdle was realizing the possibilities–trying in the first place to have winter vegetables.  Now my second hurdle is learning more about techniques and doing this more deliberately, because, to be sure, much of my success this season has been accidental.  I just read a list of cold hardy veg and tossed some seeds out there late last summer, early fall.

Tomorrow we’ll be giving away a couple of copies of The Winter Harvest Handbook, and I’ll have some of the most inspirational quotes from the book to share.