Fall can be a very productive time for the garden. All the cool weather crops we’ve planted for winter are reaching maturity now, and it hasn’t yet become cold enough to kill the warm weather crops (which right now is mostly just tomatoes, since we weren’t able to plant much for summer due to the flooding this spring). Most of the cool weather crops we planted should continue to be harvestable into winter, and although options are fairly limited now, there are still seeds that can be planted. For the most part, though, plants grow very slowly during the dead of winter, so it is important to have most of what you want to be eating in the winter pretty much full size by late fall.
Endive and escarole, but which is which is confusing with these varieties since they both look more typical of the other type… but it doesn’t matter too much, as they taste similarly. They are both the same species and are actually a type of chicory.The frilly edge of a mustard leaf.This is Tokyo bekana, a plant in the mustard family that is mild enough to use like lettuce.The purple veins of a variety of flowering broccoliMore purple flowering broccoli veinsMizuna, another mustard/cabbage family crop. Sometimes we may rely on this plant family a little too much… it has a huge amount of variety, but many of the ‘different crops’ are actually the same species. This is the same species as the flowering broccoli and the Tokyo bekana, as well as other crops we’ve planted that I haven’t included here.Endive and escarole are not in the mustard family, at least…Most of the tomatoes around just came up on their own, and this one came up pretty close to winter, but nobody wants to just pull it out…
Social wasps like paper wasps apply the large workforce of an insect colony to a different task than that of the honey bees (although wasps are still pollinators): pest control. Adult wasps feed on nectar while their larvae eat other insects. The larvae aren’t able to catch insects to eat on their own, so they rely on the adults in the colony to hunt for them. Paper wasps seem to be pretty non-aggressive from what I’ve experienced, so these are the ones I hope will establish nests around my garden.
Paper wasp on goldenrod looking a little startled to see mePaper wasp grooming on goldenrodPaper wasp grooming on goldenrod
Bald-Faced Hornets
Like paper wasps, bald-faced hornets hunt insects for their larvae, but they also have a reputation for being ferocious, and having very painful stings. I suspect though, that the temperament of individual colonies varies. For one season there was a colony of bald-faced hornets on the from of my house. No one got stung in the time it was there, even though I got pretty close to it a few times. Either way, the foragers (not by the nest) are fairly calm, most of the time. I’ve always thought they were really cool looking, but this is the first year I’ve been able to get pictures of them I’m satisfied with.
Bald-faced hornet on goldenrodBald-faced hornet on goldenrod
Over the last month, we’ve been working on planting crops for the fall and winter. Now we’re starting to be able to harvest our first greens from our efforts, but they aren’t the ones we planted! Those ones are still coming along, but aren’t ready yet. The plants we’ve been harvesting are weeds. Many of the weeds that commonly pop up in gardens are actually edible and nutritious, and if you know which ones they are, they can add variety to the harvest (and make it come sooner as most of them are very quick growing and are best harvested young). Here’s a look at what we’re harvesting.
Amaranth
Young amaranth plant growing in our garden.
Amaranth is not just a weed, it is a plant that is often grown as a crop, but it also grows wild and is often treated as a weed when it does. We have a wild variety, and we also have a variety that is a cultivar that has probably crossed with the wild variety, and just pops up in the chicken yard now (and wherever the soil from the chicken yard goes, like our garden).
This red amaranth is the descendant of a cultivar.
Wild mustard
Wild mustard flowering in front of the chicken coop. This gives some indication of its abundance.
This is one of our most prevalent weeds and as a stronger green, much more comes up than we can eat. Fortunately, the chickens love it, and we like to share it with them. Especially in the winter when greens are scarce, wild mustard growing in our hoophouse (along with bittercress and some greens from our crops) helps satisfy their constant appetite for greens.
Honey bee flying over wild mustard. Bees like to forage on the flowers of wild mustard, and it often blooms fairly late into the fall.
Wild Spinach (chinopodium album)
This plant has a lot of common names, many of which are also used for other unrelated plants. In other words, the common names of chinopodium album are a bit of a disorganized mess. I like wild spinach since it is fairly descriptive (it is related to spinach, although technically it is more closely related to quinoa), and I’ve never heard anything else being called that. Other names I’ve heard this plant called are goosefoot, lamb’s quarters, fat hen, and pigweed (this name is also applied to amaranth).
Young wild spinach leaf with mineral salt secretion. Young leaves look powdery, but with an extreme close up like this, it looks almost like water drops or little marbles.
I didn’t get to planting greens for winter in the hoophouse this year. Exactly when they need to be planted depends on the specific crop, but even the quickest growing greens (like spinach) shouldn’t be planted later than September in this area. (At least, they shouldn’t be planted later if you want them for harvesting over the winter. They’ll still grow, but they won’t be ready until spring.)
Radish growing on a path in the hoophouse.
Last year, I planted quite a variety of things in the hoophouse to see what would do well over winter. It was our first year having it and was one huge experiment, but it went pretty well for the most part. Some favorites were identified, as were some that seemed more trouble than they were worth. And then there were some that seemed worth a little extra trouble. This year, though, I had to give my bees top priority. For that and various other reasons I didn’t end up planting much in the hoophouse for this winter. But as I was looking around inside it recently, I noticed that there were a few different greens and other vegetables growing amongst the weeds. There were radishes, mizuna, lettuce, Tokyo bekana, chard, maché, mustard greens, leeks, and what appeared to be a Tokyo bekana/mizuna cross. I had left some of the plants we had been eating over the winter go to seed to collect seeds from in the spring. I’m sure some of them ripened and fell early, or late, or just got missed, and wound up on the ground.
Sorrel, a perennial plant, growing in the hoophouse
That accounts for most of what is growing out there. A small amount of it I did plant, and some of it is perennial plants that were planted last year. Eventually, the hoophouse will probably be full of mostly perennials, but some of the very best cold tolerant winter crops are annuals, so there will always be a place for them too.
