With a little patience and effort, dedicated gardeners keep can keep those veggies coming through winter. Lots of winter vegetables can be nurtured through the cold season in the Mid-Atlantic. At this time of year, our community garden plot contains loads of Swiss chard, cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts and radicchio ready for picking. Frost tolerant herbs, like Italian flatleaf parsley, sage, thyme  and rosemary are looking and tasting great too.

Jean's radicchio and spitzkohl ready for picking!

November is also garlic planting time. This year I chose the Chilean hardneck variety, 'Morado Gigante', which is revered for its large cloves and delicious, smooth flavor. Hardneck varieties are recommended for the Mid-Atlantic because they are more cold hardy, but softnecks will grow here too. There are pluses and minuses to growing both types: softnecks have a longer shelf-life, are easier to braid, and have more cloves, but on the downside they are harder to peel, more cold sensitive, and have smaller cloves. Hardnecks have thinner wrappings, larger cloves and are more cold hardy, but they have a shorter shelf-life, are harder to braid, and have fewer cloves.

Planting garlic is easy. Work the soil up until it is friable and light and amend with compost as needed. The cloves should be planted individually in holes with the shoot pointing up. Recommended planting depth is between four to six inches deep in climates with colder winters like ours, and spacing is between six to eight inches. We covered our garlic cloves in pure compost and a thin layer of topsoil to ensure excellent growth.

My three year old helped with the garlic planting.

Some cold season crops can be planted in November too. India mustard (Brassica juncea), mache (Valerianella locusta, also  called corn salad, lamb's lettuce or feldsalat) lettuce, and Chinese cabbage (Brassica rapa (Chinensis Group)) were among the crops we planted in mid-fall (11-12-09). Our daytime temperatures have hovering around the 50's and 60s--ideal germination temperatures for these crops. Keep them a little moist and the frost tolerant seedlings are sure to pop up. As with the garlic, we topped the seeds with a generous helping of rich compost.

My daughter helping to water in the seeds. Remnants of the summer garden are still fruitful, like the Italian flatleaf parsley and Swiss chards, 'Lipstick' and the French heirloom 'Verte A Carde Blanche.'

One of the most ardent organic gardeners I know is my friend Jean. She and her husband John have shared garden plots with our family for going on six years. With the help of cold frames, she keeps her greens and tender herbs going throughout winter. She's the only person I know who has fresh in-ground cilantro in February. Her diligence is driven by a passion for fresh food, and it's addictive. We're finally going to try our own cold frame gardening this year.


Huge savoy cabbage!

What a great start to the early winter garden. I can't wait to get the cold frame going and forge into December, January and February.