Big beautiful leeks, leafy chard, sweet baby carrots are still in the garden.
Pot of Gold chard, is a garden show off now that the weather has cooled. The big leafy plants are not bitter. Photo PBH
There are also some young kale, broccoli and, cauliflower plants still in the garden. The plants are slow-growing and may not have time to make before the cold weather settles in. I’ll harvest the young kale leaves.
Read more: Cool season crops organic Swiss Chard
Build a bed this fall. Get a jump or the spring garden season. Try simple wood framed easy raised bed. Build the basic garden this fall. Get a jump on next spring’s garden.
Baby kale is sweet and crisp.
Read more: Cool season crops organic Swiss Chard
Kale
The baby kale will be part of Zuppa Toscana, an Italian potato soup with sausage and kale. It’s one of the many soups collected on the Bread and Soup board on my Pinterest .
Add kale in the last minutes of simmering so it will stay bright and green.
Sweet baby carrots
Carrots
Little carrots still have time to grow bigger and sweeter.
Daucus carota. There are lots of carrots out there in the garden. They are sweet, orange and about three inches long. I’m curious, they have been thinned and are growing faster than anything else.
I’ll just watch and see how long they keep growing. Carrots as a fall crop are new in my garden. I’ll sow more carrots in the spring.
A packet of carrot seed has about a gazillion seed. Buy it and you will have enough for two crops a year. There are dozens of varieties. You can get a generous packet of carrot seed for two bucks at Nichols Garden Nursery
I pulled up some short fat carrots, Chantenay Red Core Carrot, I think. It’s an old heirloom and it is growing well in my Southeast Missouri garden. They take up so little space in the garden. Try to grow carrots if haven’t.
There’s lots of parsley in the garden this fall.
Parsley
Parsley is loaded with vitamin C. It’s a real asset in chicken soup. I’ll add a heaping helping in the last minutes of simmering.
Some parsley will stay in the garden because it is a biannual and will appear early in the spring. It will flower and go to seed in the second year.
Calendula
Calendula
And finally, perky little blooms are hard to come by in November. Calendula, “Flashback” is a volunteer. They frequently self seed. Anywhere this colorful plant appears, it’s welcomed to stay. This bright orange bloom brings pollinators to the garden.
Yaya
Scarlet Nantes
Baltimore
More information:
Grow 2 crops of carrots this season
How to grow long straight carrots
Nichols Garden Nursery – Fine Seeds & Herbs. Has some good carrot growing tips. Plus, they have 11 varieties of carrots. several good varieties that are under $2 a packet. I may have slightly exaggerated in saying there are a gazillion seeds in a packet.
There are approximately 18,500 carrot seeds per ounce or 650 seeds per gram.
In the soup pot today: Washed and coarsely chopped chunks of these Leeks, kale, carrots, onions, oregano, garlic, parsley and rosemary are simmering in a big pot destined to be a vegetable broth by tomorrow. Beef, chicken, or vegetable both will make any soup brighter, adding another levels of taste.
When cooking a chicken for chicken soup, cook it in your homemade broth instead of water. The resulting golden chicken broth is the best. Really. I mean it. Double broth may have originally come from heaven.
