An Unexpected Benefit of Container Gardening

A little over a year ago, we switched from a stable existence in a house with a large back yard to one in transition, with no appreciable back yard. It'll still be a year or so before I can move back to a real house and start gardening in earnest again. The problem is, I just can't go that long without gardening. Last summer I set myself up with a container garden on the back of the apartment I am renting. Despite getting a really late start, it was a wonderfully productive garden that provided much produce. As is usually my habit, I grew a fall garden. I typically plant a little lettuce and a bunch of spinach. Combined with the swiss chard I usually grow all summer, I get fresh greens until things get really cold and shut everything down for the season.

One benefit of growing spinach as a late season crop is that it survives the winter. Even in my Zone 5 garden up in Colorado, it survived all winter one year, perhaps because it had a nice bed of snow almost the whole time. But here in my Zone 7 garden in Arizona, it consistently survives the winter. (FYI, I have also had cilantro and snapdragons survive all winter, perking up in the spring). The spinach just turns a little pathetic looking after Thanksgiving or so and shuts down for the season. After that, you don't really get any more produce. However, once things warm up in the spring, it is ready to explode into life. It already has a root system in place and will grow rapidly and produce huge amounts at the first hint of spring. In my garden in Colorado, I found myself trying to find a way to eat spinach at every single meal.

Since my garden is in a container this year, I found a new benefit. The soil is up out of the ground and sitting in full sun with a lovely southern exposure. It is next to the house so the heat from the house helps as well. This year my spinach never shut down. It isn't as if it hasn't been a cold winter. Morning temps have been mostly in the 20s for a month and a half or so. We have gotten a total of about 2 feet of snow. Of course, this being the high desert, daytime temps do get over freezing nearly every day. I am sure that helps. I have just been surprised that not only is it still big and healthy looking, but it is still growing. I still harvest a little spinach when I have tacos or a burger. What I take grows back in a week or so.

And it isn't just the spinach. Swiss chard is a biennial. It shuts down even more than the spinach. When it comes back the next year, it is putting energy towards the production of seeds, so the greens are of low quality, usually small and tough. So, typically, swiss chard isn't worth having after winter really sets in. Today (January 31) I decided to clean up my containers and get them ready for spring planting. That involved pulling out the rest of the swiss chard. Once I sorted it and washed what was still worth eating, I filled a gallon bag with beautiful, healthy swiss chard.

I think next year I'll have to plan my winter garden a little better.

Mmm...Antifreeze

The first freeze has hit with a vengence here in my area and it is finally time to harvest some of the fall veggies. There are certain vegetables, like kale (especially red russian), collards and jerusalem artichokes that really shouldn't be harvested before the first freeze. Freezing temperatures actually sweeten the vegetables, making them much tastier after the frost than before.

But why is this? Well, it usually happens with veggies that are capable of keeping green leaves going well past the first several light frosts. In the case of jerusalem artichokes, they are adapted to northern climates and keep their tubers above the frost depth, which can be several feet in parts of their habitat. In both cases, the plants need a natural antifreeze in their flesh that keeps the ice crystals from forming as long as possible.

Now, the antifreeze in your car is seriously dangerous stuff. It is loaded with different kinds of sugars that keep the water from freezing, but it also has pump lubricants that help all the machinery running. The sugars make it taste yummy to animals and children while the lubricants kill them.

Plants basically use the same system to keep themselves from freezing, without the toxic side effects. By upping the concentration of sugar in their flesh, they keep the damaging ice crystals at bay. In the process, they make themselves sweeter and thus tastier.