Garden Fresh for the Holidays – Southern Style

Reader Contribution by Ira Wallace
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Thanksgiving has passed and the season of celebrations has just begun. We are so excited to be celebrating the holidays with so much food from our own gardens and farm. We have enough spinach, kale, arugula, lettuce, Chinese greens, cabbage, carrots, beets and winter radishes for the holidays and to take us nicely through what Elliot Coleman in The Winter Harvest Handbook calls the “Persephone Days” (the period from Nov 21- Jan 21 when the light is so low that plants don’t grow much). We also have plants nestled under spun polyester row cover, tucked into cold frames, and cozy in our greenhouses to keep our table well supplied if fickle weather gets the best of our outdoor crops. Let’s take a walk with Irena around the gardens and pantry to see what’s looking good for the Holiday table.

Grower Frank Morton’s Wild Gardens lettuce mix is one or our favorites and will be the star of our mixed salads.

Frank also introduced ‘Lacinato Rainbow Kale’ mix, a colorful, hardy kale that stays tender, sweet and delicious all winter if you keep the larger leaves harvested. We find that an easy task on our farm. Kale with garlic will replace the steamed Brussels sprouts we enjoyed in 2010. We grow Brussels sprouts every year but only have a good harvest every third year or so, when the weather is just right. We can always count on tender, frost-sweetened kale and fresh garlic.

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