Garden produce all winter? You Can Grow That!

It’s been a warm start to winter but next week the temperatures are predicted to go into the teens at night and stay below freezing all the next day. That prolonged period of cold is likely to kill the remains of our winter crops, the kale, lettuce and carrots, so yesterday we harvested them. The lettuce we’ll eat over the next few days, but there is far too much kale and carrots to consume quickly, so much of those crops need to be preserved.

My favorite means of keeping Tuscan kale is to slice it into ribbons, steam it for about five to eight minutes, drain it and dry for a few minutes on clean towels and then pile it all into zip lock bags and put it in the freezer. That way I can remove a handful or two whenever I want to add kale to a dish.

My favorite way of preserving carrots is to roast them before freezing them. Again, when piled loosely into bags I can remove only what I need for the soup/pasta/casserole that I’m cooking.

After we harvest the garlic in July we use that space to plant kale, carrots and salad greens. These can be harvested beginning in September and we normally continue to eat this mid-summer planting until New Year’s Day.

The carrot crop was especially successful this fall! They were short and fat (I don’t remember which ones they were) and very sweet. Garden-fresh carrots don’t need to be peeled…we just scrub them well with a vegetable brush.

We slice the carrots into various sizes and place them on parchment paper in a 375 oven. Roast until they are starting to brown and are soft – roasting brings out the sweetness. Cook these before piling them into zip-lock freezer bags.