Mediterranean herbs enjoying a little frost in the vegetable garden.
This morning I raised my blinds to find the year’s first hard frost shining silver on the grass and fallen leaves of the back yard. It’s an event that marks a transition point for the year: many of the pollinators that are busy in the garden starting in early spring have been wiped out or forced into hibernation and the growth cycle of almost all annual and perennial plants has ended. Both at home and in CCA’s veggie garden and orchard, most of the tasks now are associated with compost, cleaning, and planning for the growing season to come.
However, even here in icy New England, a few vegetables and herbs will stay productive well into December and, over the years, I’ve found that one of the most satisfying aspects of vegetable gardening is learning how to extend the growing season in small but delicious ways. This process has mostly to do with planting a few things during the spring and summer which are both useful and frost-hardy.
In July or even August, when the heat is sultry and winter feels like a far-away dream, the careful gardener would do well to make space among the veggies and sew some hardy, leafy plants that will provide salad greens almost to Christmas. Among the best of these are arugula, mustard greens, and spinach, all of which prefer the cool weather of the shoulder seasons to the heat and humidity of summer, which will cause them to bolt and go bitter before you’ve had much time to enjoy the harvest. Sewing two or three rows of each in succession over a few weeks in mid-summer will ensure that the autumn is full of tasty salad greens, which are both shockingly expensive in the grocery store and frequently laced with a preposterous number of chemical pesticides, not all of which are properly washed off before distribution.
Kale is, of course, another notable green that loves cold weather but needs longer to mature before the cold weather sets in: plant two or three in April along with your other early veggies and you’ll enjoy plenty of leaves from summer through late autumn, especially if you harvest them often.
Kale loves a little frost and will last well into the colder months. Image credit: Brian McGowan
I’m especially fond of Lacinato kale, whose spear-shaped silvery leaves taste delicate, look beautiful, and hold salad dressing admirably. We grow tons of it from seed, both at home and in the CCA garden, and are never disappointed.
Herbs are the perfect place to start for the new gardener, partly because they’re so easy to grow and partly because they give you the most bang for your buck: a little plastic packet of parsley costs six dollars at the grocery store; an amount you could spend on a whole parsley plant which, growing in your own garden, would yield harvest after harvest for months on end. And many of the best and most useful herbs will continue to provide flavor for your home cooking well into the colder months. The most notable of these, in my own experience, are parsley, sage, lovage, and thyme.
Parsley should be sewn in spring and again in summer to ensure a constant harvest since the midsummer heat will often cause your first batch to bolt. I allow my bolted parsley to go to seed in July, scattering potential volunteers for next spring. It’s a handy trick that allows me to buy almost no seeds or plants from year to year: I just wait for the volunteer plants to appear in spring and move them into clean little rows as they do. Italian flat-leafed parsley is far superior to the curly variety both in flavor and texture, so I never bother with the curly stuff, which only seems at home as a garnish on airplane dinners.
Even summer herbs like lavender can provide decoration and lovely scents in winter if their flowers are dried for storage.
Sage and thyme are, of course, classic garden herbs and perennial, meaning that they will come back each spring if properly maintained and protected. I choose hardy varieties of thyme (often labeled “German Winter Thyme” at the big-box garden stories) sew them in rocky soil, and never water them at all. Sage is shockingly amenable to a wide variety of soil types but being Mediterranean will thrive best in dry, nutrient-starved soil and full sun. For all their sunny heritage, though, both these herbs will endure well into the cold months, flavoring all sorts of dishes and, perhaps best of all, giving you an excuse to dart out from your steamy kitchen to crunch across the frosted grass and snip a few springs of thyme in the winter air.
The last and least-known of my list is lovage, a perennial herb that's been grown in England and New England for time out of mind, and for good reason: its abundant leaves, growing on stalks that can reach six feet high, taste like a combination of parsley and celery. They’re perfect as a salad green, a garnish, or as an ingredient in stock, where they add an unmistakable, peppery depth to soups and sauces. Lovage loves rich soil and part-sun: plant it in a corner of your garden and you’ll never regret it.
Much more could be said on the subject of late-season gardening, especially about winter squash and cabbages, both of which probably merit articles of their own. But, for now, as you’re making plans for next year’s plantings, this should be enough to go on. As is so often the case with green and growing things, starting small often yields the biggest and most delicious results.
