You will have no more excuses for not gardening and grow vegetables. The busiest people can now grow their own food with self-seeding vegetables. There's a lot of them and you can find out what they are by reading my article "Self-seeding vegetables". You will be amazed by how simple this is. Just plant them once and let some go to seed—that's it!

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Eighteen years ago, when I held my first winter vegetable sale, people asked me what winter vegetables were; now they come in droves to buy them and I always sell out!

Yes, you can grow vegetables in your garden during the cold season, you just have to pick the right plants. Read my article "Eating from your winter vegetable garden" from the Winter 2008 issue of GardenWise magazine here to learn about the more than 50 varieties of food plants you can harvest throughout the season.

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How to get an abundant food garden? If you ask yourself that question when looking at your garden where one out of two salads didn't grow as much as expected, I do have some answers for you.

Check out my 10 golden rules for growing a phenomenal food garden and impress your neighbors in an article I called "Planning for plenty". I explain that soil fertility is key and gives you my recipe for a "Super Duper Compost". Also always keep pests and weeds away!

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In November I enjoyed a diversity of fresh-picked greens from the winter garden.

Rows of cilantro, parcel, kale, corn salad, endives, radicchio, escarole, mixed mustard greens and arugula give plenty of choice for salads. Young pickings are juicy and full of flavour. These all grow throughout winter and actually benefit from being harvested on a regular basis.

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It’s a wonderful feeling to be harvesting plump juicy raspberries in September and October. These "Heritage" ever-bearing raspberries produce a great crop of sweet summer fruit, but the fall crop is even better! So you can imagine how full the freezer is with raspberries for winter enjoyment.

Recipe: Raspberry Meringue Custard Pie

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By October most of the seeds have been harvested from the garden and dried to prevent them from going mouldy. The artichoke and leek heads come into the greenhouse to dry before cleaning. Once dried, the artichoke heads will be smashed lightly with a hammer to release the hard brown seeds at the base of the bracts.

Leeks contain two hard black seeds in each inflorescence, which when dry, can be freed by rubbing them between two rubber-gloved hands. This ‘oniony’ activity can bring tears to your eyes! I then use a hairdryer, on a cold setting, to blow the chaff and debris away, leaving only clean leek seeds behind.

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There’s a lot of clipping and snipping to be done in late October, doing what I refer to as ‘Putting the garden to bed for the winter’. Apart from grasses with interesting seed heads, plants that are still flowering or that have berries for birds, we go to town cutting back the borders. This opens them up for easier weeding and for feeding the soil. TIP: It’s much easier to do this before heavy rain turns vegetation into a wet slimy mess!

Feeding the soil at The Garden Path consists of mulching beds with layers of aged horse manure, compost, leaves and seaweed. There’s no shortage of leaves in late October! I promote flowering and fruiting with a mulch of seaweed, collected from local beaches after winter storms, but you can use granular kelp as a substitute for this if there is no ocean in sight. A dusting of dolomite lime over garden beds keeps the soil pH neutral in this region which experiences heavy winter rains. These same heavy rains mean you do not have to wash traces of salt off the seaweed before applying.

In the vegetable garden we mulched with a layer of spoiled hay first (from a local horse owner); on top of this we added a heavy mulch of horse manure, which will be followed by a mulch of leaves, and finally by sowing a green manure crop (stay tuned!)


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The seeds and placenta of peppers contain varying degrees of capsaicinoids, that can give hot peppers mouth-searing pungency. Use hot peppers with extreme caution and, if your head is about to ‘blow off’, eat dairy products or starchy foods such as bread or rice. Don’t drink cold water, which actually increases the effect of heat. Handle hot peppers and their seeds with respect, and don’t rub your eyes or inhale too deeply around them, or you may regret it.

Peppers range in heat scale from mild (1) to ‘blow your head off’ hot (10).
This year I grew habanero (10) Scotch bonnet (10) and cayenne (8) peppers in 2-gallon pots. Seedlings of hot peppers take longer to germinate and mature and produce best in good summers.

Basic Hot Sauce
(Using rubber gloves)
Cut the stems off a few hot peppers and blanch them in boiling white wine vinegar for three minutes. Put the peppers with half a cup of hot vinegar and a teaspoon of salt into a food processor and puree. Put into a sauce bottle for three days before consuming. The longer the sauce stands the hotter it will get. Optional: Add sliced ginger, sugar, lime juice, or minced garlic to the sauce before processing.

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Potatoes
Apparently potatoes relish cold spring weather, as this was one crop that thrived this year. Russet potatoes are good storage potatoes, so they are now boxed in the pantry in dark storage; these fingerling potatoes ‘Sieglinde’ comes in various shapes and sizes, and will make lots of tasty potato dishes for early winter. I have separated the smaller ones to plant as seed potatoes next spring.

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Apples

Due to a late and cold spring there were less apples to be harvested in 2008. Nevertheless I was able to fill the freezer with containers of apple pie filling and apple sauce, dry enough apples to fill two 1-gallon jars, and fill an apple box full of storage apples for fresh eating through the winter. My favourite gadget at this time of year is my handy apple peeler, which clamps onto the counter and peels, cores and slices apples in three turns of the handle!

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