Wintry mix has a completely different meaning to us in January (think snow, sleet, freezing rain and drizzle) than it does in September (vegetable medley of broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and carrots that we store in the deep freezer for winter dinners). Reviewing our options in a dozen seed catalogs and planning the garden beds recalls the 2013 growing season.
The last gardening season, similar to others chronicled in this blog, gave us bumper yields of some vegetables and fruits, as well as others that failed to thrive and produce. Last year's garden started as a swampy mess of weeds. But late in the summer, our bok choy, lettuce, tomatoes, beans, squash, cucumbers, raspberries, pears, cherries, and currants were among our most prolific. Corn and Jerusalem artichokes were plentiful and tasty, but the ratio of inedible plant matter to the parts we eat made them inefficient choices for our backyard garden. Same for the pole beans and squash vines.
We learn from every gardening season, and the lesson in 2013 was to choose vegetables that result in less waste and more edible produce. Therefore, in 2014, we seek to plant those vegetables that are entirely (or mostly) edible, such as lettuce and other greens, root vegetables (especially those that you can also eat the greens, such as beets and turnips), and vegetables that have small leaves and stems compared to edible parts (such as bush beans).
Final choices from our catalogs are pending another review, and we will need to make those selections shortly so that we can get some of them started early in the little hothouse by February.
