November 12

The temperatures have gotten really cold, in fact last week we have even had a night under 25˚.  Most of my plants don’t survive. Thank goodness for remay (synthetic fleece which covers the plants and protects them from low temperatures) which keeps all of the plants snug down in the garden. I still have a lot of produce out there and I would like to keep harvesting until Christmas so everything is under cover except for spinach. Spinach can handle really low temperatures without burning or dying, although if the temperatures are low it isn't really growing either. We made it through hurricane Sandy relatively unscathed. I lost the last of the peppers, however with major frosts coming within 2 days of the storm, it wasn’t really that much earlier.

The last few weeks have been mostly cleanup, seeding micro greens and harvesting, with just a little planting. The only plants going in right now are pac choi and spinach, and the last planting is next week.  The pac choi gets planted in the boxes behind the greenhouse so that they can be covered with both remay and plastic, but the spinach is going out in the field. It may not be harvested until the spring, but we will be happy to have it when things begin to warm up again.

Drying verbena

The other fun project I have been working on is drying some of our harvest. I’m currently drying lemon verbena in the greenhouse so that we can make our own tea. Next week the lemon verbena should be done drying, but I still haven’t decided how I am going to separate the leaves and stems. 

The flageolet beans that I laid out a few weeks ago were dry yesterday, and so I spent the morning cleaning them.  I used an old world method for cleaning rice that I learned in India.  

I put the dry pods into a sack and stomped on it until all the pods were broken, and then cut a small hole for the loose beans on the bottom of the bag. 

What’s left is a mix of beans and a few broken pods. 

In India we would wait for a windy day to clean them but I just hooked up a fan in front of the greenhouse.  

I then pour the beans from one bucket to another in front of the fan.  The beans fall through and the chaff blows out leaving beautiful clean beans in much less time than it would take to break apart and clean by hand.

Cleaned beans ready for the kitchen

Next week is more clean up and organizing for the winter months so that everything is easily accessible in the spring. I also need to plant and mulch the garlic for next year, but I’m waiting for the soil to dry out a little.

On the harvest list we have radishes, turnips, carrots, beets, spinach, pac choi, kohlrabi, radicchio, cauliflower, micro greens and herbs.