The Winter Garden

The main-season CSA at DeepSeeded Farm still has 15 weeks to go, but for the last few weeks my mind has been on the winter garden.  I’m planning on offering an additional 8 weeks of CSA harvests beginning right before Thanksgiving, and most of the planting for this is now done.   We have a pretty mild winter climate here, so we can easily harvest veggies from the garden throughout the winter ...but unlike many other parts of California, most cool-season veggies will not continue to grow through the winter.  Our season of active growth ends at the end of October, so the crops that I’ll harvest through the winter generally have to reach maturity by this time.  Following this principle, veggies like cabbage, carrots, beets, leeks, Brussels sprouts, chard, kale, etc can be harvested all through the winter.  Other cool season crops like lettuce, spinach, and broccoli, will grow and mature into late fall or early winter but, with the exception of a few special varieties, they will stop growing and their quality will deteriorate as the winter progresses.

So while on the one and it’s easy to harvest something throughout the winter, it’s not no simple to have an diverse enough array of produce to keep the CSA boxes appealing.  In order to accomplish this, I’m pairing the produce that can be harvested right from the field in winter with storage crops held over from fall (like potatoes, winter squash, garlic, onions, and Jerusalem artichokes), as well as utilizing my greenhouses to keep up the harvest of more tender items like lettuce, spinach, radishes, salad turnips, and cilantro.

Right now I’m waiting just a little bit longer before signing people up for winter, so I can see the progress of the winter crops that I’ve now planted.  Here are some pictures of a few of these crops:

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