Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Fall/Winter Vegetable Garden


Get ready to cook up a "mess o collard greens". You've got to plant 'em and grow 'em first! It's time! This cabbage-family vegetable was brought to the United States by African slaves and is considered to mostly southern cuisine. Collards grow as large oval leaves on long stalks.
The stalk is tough so strip off the leaves and boil for hour or two in salted water. Add a teaspoon of sugar just to rid them of bitterness and throw in some salt pork or bacon for seasoning. Serve 'em with black-eyed peas and cornbread, especially on New Year's Day! It's another southern tradition. 

There's more!!!! 

Plant onions, carrots, turnips, radishes and Irish potatoes in your fall garden. Since these vegetables grow underground, cold won't bother them, so you can plant them relatively late. You can also plant greens such as lettuce, spinach, collards and kale (yuk...don't plant kale unless you know you like it). Your greens will not grow as fast or as thick in the winter as they will in the spring, but if you harvest them lightly and keep them covered during frost, they should survive to form part of your spring crop as well.

You should plant most of these vegetables sometime between July and October, although you can plant some, such as onions, as late as December. 
Make some easy peanut butter cookies for dessert. Get the recipe HERE


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