The Garden After A Deep Frost

There’s a handful of vegetables that I never worry about, until my ground is about to freeze. These are really the jewels of a fall and winter garden. If you live somewhere warmer than me, say a zone 5b or 6, these are foods that could plausibly winter in your garden. In this case, you’d use your garden as your root cellar. But for me, with deep frost arriving before the end of the year, I can enjoy their sturdiness for some time yet, though they are the next phase of harvesting for our root cellar.

Carrots are an incredible vegetable to grow anytime. They do well in every season, and this is why I categorized them as one of my “generalist” vegetable successions in my book. They will overwinter in your garden, though harvesting them in winter takes quite a bit of covering and effort to try to prevent the deep freeze from settling. This is why we lift ours and store in our root cellar, a close second to leaving in the ground.

It would be leagues more comfortable doing this before the soil is approaching 32F, but you know, I like to make things difficult.

Leeks are another amazing food that I never, ever worry about. I often don’t harvest mine until late November. I wait until frost has started to accumulate in the top inch or so, perhaps a bad habit but again, I work from most sensitive to least sensitive. We store these as well in our root cellar, burying the roots into damp sawdust. We are not that creative with leeks, but have a few soups we like to use them in, so I’ve now back way off on our leeks and only grow a few rows each year — just enough for a few good meals.

Kale is another mighty fine, stress-free late fall garden companion. It is the only vegetable that will sometimes overwinter in my garden because I leave it out so late and then the snow suddenly comes and I close the gate for a few months on the garden. It can be harvested down as low as 10F for me here. So it’s in the ground for a good while longer. We will enjoy garden-fresh kale into December here.

Parsnips (edited when I realized I forgot I was growing them!) are new for me this year. I sowed them in early June and they will also need to come out of the ground before it freezes solid but likely not a day sooner. I can’t wait to harvest and roast them and hope to grow more next summer.

Spinach and cilantro are two more I don’t worry about as well, as I’ve noted earlier in the season I think. Spinach will overwinter for me without any special efforts. It’s really amazing and more people in cold climates need to give this a try! A harvest basket of fresh greens in late March here from a September sowing is one of the coolest things I do in fall.

Regretting These

There’s also a group of vegetables that I regret not plucking a few out earlier this week before I left. While experience has taught me that they can handle air that cold, you just never know. Gardening on that edge of our climate means you have to get really comfortable with a lot of unknowns, and be prepared to lose vegetables every spring (when I push it with late frosts) and fall (when I push it with late harvests).

This was so fascinating — a few years ago I let these sweet baby daikon remain in the ground in late fall with plummeting temperatures. These experienced multiple nights below 18F under row cover and you can SEE where the frost hit them, a line indicating what part of the root froze (where the root turned translucent) and the deeper portion that remained safe. It was all edible, but storage quality is not great when this happens.

I am most concerned about our beets, kohlrabi, and napa cabbage. These are pretty cold hardy. Napa cabbage is more cold hardy than my tatsoi and bok choy, and it’s why I love growing it in fall. It also stores like a champ in the root cellar, something I learned by experimenting a few years ago.

Most were covered up, though the kohlrabi was not. It didn’t size up well anyway, and I know that’s why I kept ignoring them. If they were softball-sized, I guarantee I’d have harvested them and put them in the fridge with our turnips, daikon, and watermelon radish. I expect some frost damage to them and I’ll show you when I harvest and slice them open.

I’m most curious while also regretful about the beets. Beets store really well in the root cellar, but I don’t really know how cold hardy they are. So it will be fascinating to peel and slice them open and see how they fared.