Hard Freeze Coming to the Garden

Box of lettuce of Cimmaron, Grand Rapids and mixed parentage.

Icicle radish.

More gorgeous Icicle radishes.

Looks like Cherry Belle and Icicle have created a mutant radish, there's just a hint of blush on its shoulders.

There is a hard freeze predicted in the next few days so I went ahead and picked a giant box of the self-sowed lettuces and pulled up the rest of the radishes from the garden. The Icicle radishes had gotten huge with the longest at 12 inches and being that they were volunteer plants I was deeply pleased with their success. The green shoulders of the radishes were the parts growing above the soil. I remember reading a wonderful little gardening book of a man who had gardened in many regions of the United States. He had a photograph of radishes 3 foot long hanging off his fence in Alaska where daylight never ends in their long cool summers. He said the radishes would just grow and grow always sweetly tender and mild. I got the impression that the gardener turned writer was a straightforward military fellow who had a deep love for the earth and enjoyed experimenting with growing methods. I imagined that it was a nomadic military life that kept him moving while he continually tried to put down roots by planting things. A bit of fanciful thinking I am sure since he gave no reason in his book for the different places he gardened in.

I spent a couple of hours washing each lettuce leaf and drying them in the salad spinner before putting them up in a couple of lidded plastic tubs destined for the refrigerator. I keep the lid of the lettuce container cracked open. All this lettuce in the fridge begs to be paired with banh xeo a crispy Vietnamese crepe filled with meat and shrimp. Hot crispy fried food wrapped in lettuce with herbs and dipped in spicy sweet salty lime sauce also known as nuoc mam cham is a little bit of hot heaven. When I mentioned cooking banh xeo to my husband, his eyes got big and he said in a quiet voice how I should cook a large batch so we could freeze some for later. Heh heh. Good thinking.

Radish on Buttered Oat Bread

Cherry Belle, French Breakfast, and Icicle radishes.

Cherry Belle radish with a dash of salt on buttered oat bread.

Remember those beautiful giant radishes picked from the garden in early November. Well I've been eating the delectable beasts with the kind of enthusiasm that borders on avarice. Never before had I enjoyed such a radish.

Prior to this I might have glanced at them in the grocer with mild interest those little red balls offered up in the springtime when the weather too quickly turns warm. Perhaps I even purchased a small bunch, quickly regretting the impulse purchase with the first bite from this weird little vegetable whose flavor was an odd mixture of heat and bitterness harking to consuming raw horseradish. Uck, who would eat such a thing. But now. Now. I am a convert, it is as though a moment of clarity has come over me. Grown in the fall with long cool nights and the mildest of days the radish is soft and tender with a crispness reminiscent of the delicate nature of young cucumber which has a drier more fleeting quality then their over-watered and overgrown compatriots. Served on buttered oat bread with the lightest sprinkling of salt, makes this vegetable. A revelation.

I am a bit sad and remorseful that all I have are a few self-sown radishes still in the garden. I will be mourning their absence when they are gone. Wishing I had taken the initiative to plant a giant bed of these lovely plants.

Fall Radishes Self-Sowed

White Icicle, French Breakfast, and Cherry Belle radishes in a tender bed of grass.

The garden was tilled in October and in just four weeks the self-sowed radishes have sized up to gargantuan size with the cooling weather. The white radish is of the White Icicle type which has grown amazingly huge to nine inches in just a few weeks, the light green shoulders were growing above soil level. The French Breakfast radish is five inches long and the larger Cherry Belle radish is two inches in diameter. With the colder weather the normally red radishes have turned to a deep rich dark red that is close to the color of a Red Delicious apple. We haven't had a frost yet in western Kentucky, although the killing frost is forecasted for November 20th. Radishes must love the cool 60 degree Fahrenheit temperatures with nightly temps in the upper 30's.

Broad Windsor Fava beans and Free Range Radishes

Broad Windsor fava bean sprout.

Two rows of fava beans.

Free range radishes of the Icicle and maybe Cherry Belle types.

Sprouting Sugar Snap peas.

The Windsor fava beans were planted out just a week ago and it looks like we had 100% germination of the two rows. Hopefully the 30 plants will over winter well and produce enough beans for two people in early spring. The leaves and tips of the plants are edible and are said to a spinach slight peppery flavor. The fava bean bed has free range radishes and lettuces that have reseeded themselves and are quickly sizing up in the cool weather of fall.

I am excited since this will be my first time growing fava beans and planting out crops for the fall.

The peas that were planted out 2 weeks ago have sparsely sprouted so I'm pre-sprouting the next batch of Sugar Snap peas before planting them.

Planting Fall Vegetables

Delicate pea sprout with its diminutive leaves.

Sugar Snap pea unfurling.

The silent Sugar Snap pea.

Optimistic cantaloup sprout.

Red Noodle yard long bean quickly filling out.

The struggling Cowhorn okra.

Vivacious Celebrity tomato.

The two rows of Sugar Snap Peas have been planted out for 2 weeks now but only a dozen have sprouted. I'm worried that either the birds have gotten to them or the seeds are old and not viable. The garden patch had gone a bit wild with weeds so I went ahead and did a little weeding around the pea netting, maybe the pea sprouts were accidently pulled with the weeds.

A number of free range vegetables have sprouted after rototilling including lettuces, radishes, yard long pole beans, melons, okra, and tomatoes. The soft tender plants such as the beans, melons, okra, and tomatoes should meet their demise soon since the killing frost is forecasted four weeks from now on November 20th.