Winter is here suddenly. Temperatures haven’t gone above 30’s during the day in a few days, and the ground has a frozen top crust. I had left the hardy vegetables in the ground to keep cool, but the sudden threat of temperatures in the teens in the next few days (and a day when nothing thawed during the day) sent me running to spend my day off work pulling everything remaining that is not under cover.

Several patches of carrots were first. The carrots taste amazing after frosts, and they are so crisp you have to dig carefully, if you bend them slightly, they crack and snap. The harvest was about 6 or 8 pounds of nice carrots. (Edit: P. says I estimate low and it’s 12 pounds or more)

A row of rutabegas had to be pulled, big leaves cut off, dirt dusted off, and packed away. Probably nearly 20 pounds of rutabegas. They are an underrated vegetable. Grown under the right conditions they taste great, and better than a turnip, to me. They are phenomenal cut into french-fry shape and roasted in cast iron in the oven, sprinked with coarse salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lime. And indispensable to pasties and stews. The rutabegas in the stores are waxed - crazy things - not something we’ll be doing here. They will store in cool damp conditions without such treatment, and taste much better for it. I might try sprouting the tops in damp sand indoors for some fresh green chicken food during the winter.

Leeks were fast to harvest. I never seem to have enough of those, and I’ll continue the ongoing quest next year by starting seeds in January. Got about 8 or 10 good leeks. 6 brussels sprouts plants were pulled up by the roots to plant in a bucket of sand to keep better, and 2 more stems were harvested for eating soon.

Parsnips…stay in the ground for now! They are okay with that, and many people believe, taste better for it. I did pull a couple to see what they look like and have as a treat now. If I get to it, I’ll mulch them over a bit to protect them some.

The remaining potatoes took the longest. We grew a lot of potatoes this year. (P. thinks 100 lbs+!) I already had saved a lot of seed, and bought some more of new varieties I wanted to try, and then was gifted with a big pile of sprouting overflow seed potatoes from my sister. Most of them have already been dug, but about 3 5-gallon pails full of potatoes were lined up by the time I finished wrestling with the potato fork and the lost rows. This will be about the third year in a row that I have had no need to buy a potato for anything but planting in the ground as seed. It’s even hard to imagine eating supermarket potatoes, when I see the ridiculous green-tinged things lying around in the light there. The picture shows the newly dug potatoes, and behind those are a few brussels sprouts stems standing up. And behind those are the hoophouse row covers housing the greens and celery that are still in the garden. I pulled back the covers long enough to pick this fabulous salad…