List of Frost loving vegetables to grow (& extending the garden season VIDEO)

persimmons picked in late October 2014

Although it may be too late to grow these vegetables outdoors, you can always grow them in containers and take them indoors at night. And although you may not be able to sow these seeds now, this list is a reminder of those cold weather vegetables that you can grow throughout the cold Spring months, and what to plant before Fall of next year. This list of vegetables will prepare you for next year, so that you can grow where you are, and grow year round.

Regardless of where you live, there's a few crops that withstand cooler temps, frost, and even sometimes snow. You may have heard before, persimmons are best picked to eat after a frost, and  likewise, some of these vegetables listed will become sweeter if they grow through a frost too. Below I have listed the root and leafy vegetables that grow during the cooler months in February, March, and April, and October through November. In the pictures below, are the root vegetables and leafy greens I harvested in these colder months.

Most of these vegetables listed can withstand temperatures as low as 15 degrees Fahrenheit. The most common crops which you can grow through the cool winter months are root vegetables including,

Turnips





Turnip harvested in late October 2014

Radishes

Radish harvested in early October 2015

Parsnips

Beets

Green onions

Rutabaga

Carrots





Carrots harvested from garden in late October 2015



The most common green leafy vegetables you can grow throughout the winter months are,

Brussels sprouts

Cabbage

Collards

Mustard greens
Broccoli

Leafy vegetable growing in early March





Leafy vegetable growing in early March



Cauliflower

Celery

Kale

Leeks

Spinach

Swiss Chard

Lettuces

Late Fall and Early winter lettuce garden 2013

Remember when growing through these colder months, to use garden cloths, transparent plastic sheeting, and garden cloches. Polytunnels are elongated plastic coverings that are good for covering long rows of plants. Cloches are any type of covering that protects plants from snow, cold temperatures, and "pests". Cloches can be made with any recycled plastics, glass, and other materials. This method ensures plant protection in  early Spring months, or when extending the growing season into Fall and Winter. Cloches that are bell or tent shaped allow room for individual plants.

View my post  in the link for more ideas at Cloches plant protection (early planting & extend growing season).

A couple weeks ago I showed you how I was protecting my greens and root crops in this post: Keeping greens warm at night & protected from rabbits. And below I show you in the video how I am protecting my pepper plants from the frost:

Carrot, pepper, bean harvest

Yesterday, we harvested carrots, peppers, beans, and some tomatoes. These vegetables may be the last to harvest this year, as it is going to frost tomorrow. But I have taken some precautions in saving the pepper plants, fig trees, and the greens. In a previous post, I showed you how I am protecting the potted greens with glass panes: Keeping greens warm at night & protected from rabbits.
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I am using a garden cloth to cover the fig trees and also the lettuce garden; and I am using a transparent plastic sheet to cover the entire row of peppers, which you can see in the video here: How to protect pepper plants from frost or cold nights. I really want to save these plants for another week or two at least.

The avocados growing around the yard and also the eggplants were transplanted into a pot. I have the avocado plants inside the house, and the other tropical plants are inside or in the greenhouse. I covered the potted eggplants with a plastic cone. The cone was actually my dog's cone that she had to use after her surgery, so I figured I would re-purpose it. 

The pictures below are what we harvested yesterday.

A 16 year old photo that foreshadowed my future

Who knew that I would still be here in 16 years-- still admiring fruit trees on the same property. It's almost as if this 16 year old photo foreshadowed my future.
If I recall correctly, this is a picture of me at the age of nine. I am standing beside a white blossoming Plum tree. It must have been a warm spring day. Here I am enjoying the scent of the plum blossoms, and admiring all the blooming fruit trees in our yard.
At one point, my family had several plum trees, pears, cherry trees, peaches, grape vines, and maybe other fruiting plants growing in the yard. These old fruit trees are gone now because my family cut them all down (several years after this photo was taken), in an effort to level the ground and put a house in the backyard. This never happened, and instead all of the fruit trees were cut down in vain. The ones that remain are a Peach tree and an Apple tree that are probably 30+ years old. They still fruit, of course, but I am not sure they have much life left.

And looking forward into the future, 16 years later, I am growing fruit trees on the same property. Where the ground was leveled and intended for a house, I am growing a big garden. On the property, I have 2 plums, 2 pears, 3 figs, 2 peaches, 2 nectarines, 1 cherry, and 20 pawpaw trees with additional berry bushes, grape vines, walnuts, and a hundred hickory trees. I continue to add fruit trees and fruiting bushes every spring and summer. My intention is to grow a beautiful food forest that feeds me, my family, friends, the animals, and others in need.

Today's Fig harvest

The fig trees know a frost is upon us, and the ones that are left have started to ripen quickly.
Here is a picture of today's fig harvest.

October 13th 2015 fig harvest

Harvesting Figs in October (Zone 6)

If you have been keeping up with my posts, you have seen the many figs I have been harvesting from the trees. For the last month I have been picking a couple of figs per week. It wasn't until July and August that the figs started to form on the trees. But I noticed that the figs would be little greens nubs one day, and then they would be big, plump, luscious purple fruits the next day! Of course the Figs taste excellent, what I would describe as a mix between Peaches, Plums, and Apricot jam.
If I recall correctly, it was near November when caged, mulched, and covered the fig trees. Now that we are approaching mid-October, and the nights are getting down in the 40s, I am sure the figs will stop producing and ripening at all. I may attempt to keep them warm by wrapping them in garden canvas at night. But in the following weeks, I will need to prepare to overwinter the fig trees.

Here are some of the figs I harvested today.

Pickled peppers from the garden

About a month ago I showed you a picture of the jelly, tomatoes, salsa, and pickles I canned, which you can see in the link here: Canned tomatoes, salsa, pickles, & jelly from the garden. For other ways of preserving garden vegetables, read my post at the link: 7 ways to preserve excess garden veggies. 

In the last couple of weeks, I have been harvesting jalapeno, banana, and Cubanelle peppers from the garden. Since I had been storing some of them for a while, and considering I harvested peppers yesterday, I wanted to preserve them quickly. I pickled all of the peppers remaining using the following recipe. 4 cups water, 4 cups apple cider vinegar, 1 cup sugar, 1/4 cup salt, and any seasonings such as mustard seeds, red pepper flakes, etc boiled in a saucepan for 2-3 minutes, or until salt and sugar is dissolved. This recipe made enough for 5 half pint + 3 pint jars. I probably sliced close to 4 pounds of peppers, or to be exact, approximately 10+ jalapeno peppers, 20+ banana peppers, 5+ green peppers, and 10+ Cubanelle peppers.

De-stem peppers, and slice. Then add peppers to sterilized jars (boiling jars in water for 10 minutes). Add vinegar mixture to each jar. Make sure your rings are sterilized too by boiling them in water for 5 minutes separately from the jars. Do not reuse lids--you'll have to buy more from the store. But this is only if you're going to sell your preserves, or want to store them for over 6 months.

Once you have your lids on the jars, pressure can them for 15 minutes. My method is by filling an inch of water into a large pot. Let the water come to a rolling boil, then add jars, and cover the pot with a lid.
After 15 minutes, using a towel, transfer the jars to another towel so that they can cool. After cooling, store in the refrigerator. The peppers will be ready to eat the next day. Keep the jar of peppers in the fridge if necessary, but I would store the jars in a cool dry place, and they will store for over 6 months.
Here is a picture of the peppers I pickled today, and additional pictures are of the pepper harvests from the last couple of weeks which I used today in the canning process.

October 8th 2015 pepper harvest

October 5th harvest

September 26th 2015 harvest

September 18th 2015 harvest

What low maintenance tropical houseplants to grow (VIDEO)

Months back I made a post on indoor houseplants, which you can see here: Transform your home into  a Rainforest Jungle (& list of tropical plants to grow indoors). I highly recommend viewing that post because there are some pictures of homes that have been transformed into a rain forest-like atmosphere, just by adding a couple houseplants. In that post I mentioned the three main household toxins of concern are benzene, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene. These toxins can be removed by adding an abundance of house plants. 
The video below are low maintenance, low light, and beautiful plants that I grow indoors during the winter months. During the summer, I suggest keeping them outside. Oxygenate your house with these plants that also pull toxins to create a clean environment.

You see that I am growing Earth Peace Lily, Bromeliad, dracaena, Croton, Aloe Vera, Mother-in-law's tongue (Snake plant), and Christmas Cactus. Most of these plants can be watered as little as once per month. Other tropical plants I am growing are fruit trees such as avocado, pineapple, papaya, and tangerine seedlings.

Do not celebrate "Columbus Day"

Columbus Day is celebrated every year by Americans on October 12th when in 1492, Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Colombo) explored the Americas. We refer to him as the "Father of the New World." Between 1492 and 1503, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages, which mark the beginning of the European exploration and colonization of the American continents. All of this sounds very humble. It's a common misconception that he was trying to prove the world was round, which everyone already knew in the 6th century. And it's a common misconception that he was the first European to explore the Americas, which he was NOT, and in fact was preceded by the Norse expedition led by Leif Ericson 500 years earlier. And actually he never set foot on the mainland of North America.
Christopher Columbus' sole intentions were to enslave people to find gold for him, which led to the genocide of the Hispaniola natives.

Before 1492, the island inhabited above 3 million Taino Indians (native population of Haiti); and within 20 years the population was reduced to 60,000 peoples, which were completely extinct within 50 years. Millions of people were killed. This prompted Columbus to begin shipping African slaves to the island, which inadvertently makes Columbus "The Father of the Transatlantic Slave trade".

Columbus sought out to expand Christian religious influence to the indigenous people. To him, the indigenous people needed Christianity because they were mere heathens, but mostly because they were not white or rich. The reason Columbus was funded for his expedition in the first place was to convert "heathens" into Christians in an effort for European governments to control them.
Columbus had to find gold so he could pay back the investors. Because he needed gold, he also needed slaves to find this gold. Because he needed slaves, he would need swords, hunting dogs, cannons, and all sorts of weaponry to force the people to work for him. This resulted in war, rape, and horrific accounts that are shared in Columbus' personal journal.
Columbus still had not enough gold to pay back the Queen, so he used tactics described in the quote below from Howard Zinn--which really portrays the narrative of Christopher Columbus:


"Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were 'naked as the day they were born,' they showed 'no more embarrassment than animals.' Columbus later wrote: 'Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.'
But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. American Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death."

Bartolome De Las Casas, one of Columbus' men, was an eye witness to the atrocities. For example in one single day, he says the Spanish soldiers dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 native people. Other stories included cutting off the legs of children; men would test if they could cut a person in half; poured people full of boiling soap; and the list goes on.

In relation to the Syrian crisis, I remember watching a recent video of a Hungarian camerawoman continually tripping Syrian refugees as they ran with their children. And I think "there is still white vs brown mentality" all over the world, and it stems from this glorification of the "white hero".
And I want to share a quote that it puts it better than I do, from Bill Bigelow of the Huffington Post, "If Black people's lives mattered in our society, it would be inconceivable that we would honor the father of the slave trade with a national holiday. The fact that we have this holiday legitimates a curriculum that is contemptuous of the lives of peoples of color".

Masked by positive Columbus myths and celebrations, the United States government and citizens avoid taking responsibility for their own mindfulness (or actions). One action they could possibly take now is STOP CELEBRATING COLUMBUS DAY, and encourage all schools to stop the justification of celebrating this day because of tradition. 

Keeping greens warm at night & protected from rabbits

I'm not sure what critter--possibly a rabbit or chipmunk--is eating the tops of the radish plants, but I am protecting them with a recycled cage. Other recycled materials I am using are glass panes to protect the greens from rabbits but also to protect them from cold nights. 

 I have only been protecting the container of greens. The other greens growing in the main gardens, as I have said before, are not growing due to rabbits digging up the seeds, and also squirrels burying their nuts in the garden. But if any greens begin to sprout in the main gardens, I will be using transparent plastic to cover the garden (to keep them warm at night), or a garden cloth. 

October garden harvests (more FIGS and peppers)

I picked a Fig off one of the trees today. Yesterday actually I picked two Figs from our trees. In addition, I harvested 2 pints of cherry tomatoes, which I gave to my niece. She is 3 years old, and loves fruits and vegetables. Some of these short moments have an intense impact in a young kid's life. So she ate about 20 cherry tomatoes yesterday from the garden, and took the rest home with her for her Mom and Grandma to put in salads.
Intuitively, my niece asked for carrots from the garden. I don't know how she knew I was growing carrots, but luckily I told her to go into the garden and find a big orange carrot that is sticking out of the ground. The photo below is of my niece eating a carrot from the garden, and the tomatoes and peppers which we also harvested from the garden yesterday. The picture of the fig is from today.

Radish, lettuce, carrot sprouting (& other fall stuff)

A beautifully shaped Cherry Belle radish was pulled up today. This particular radish was grown in a big pot with a mix of other radish plants. As you can see in the photo below, I am growing a patch of radishes off to the right of the containers.

In the containers I am growing radishes, carrots, endive, lettuce, and arugula. Because it has been cold, I cover the potted plants with the glass panes--which were recycled shelving from an old refrigerator. The temperatures at night have dropped to 40 degrees; and the days have been in the 50s because it hasn't been sunny and it has been rainy because of Hurricane Joaquin. 

radish, carrot, and lettuce sprouting

arugula, endive, and lettuce

 In a previous post I mentioned that animals are eating the seeds and digging holes in the other garden. I planted vegetables seeds a month ago in the hugelkultur garden. Of course hugelkultur mounds are perfect for the squirrels to store their nuts, and the mounds are the perfect habitat for rabbits and moles to live. So we are struggling to grow anything in ALL four hugelkultur mounds-- after planting thousands of carrot, lettuce, endive, spinach, radish seeds, and peas.
The picture below shows you the only lettuce plant that has survived. Well I think there may be a couple carrot and lettuce plants but this lettuce plant is the only mature plant.

mushrooms in the hugelkultur mounds

 Mushrooms remind me of fall too. They grow when it's cool and damp. And different types of mushrooms have taken over the hugelkultur mounds.
But the other "fall stuff" I wanted to show you were the additions to my fall setting. James laughs at me for being so proud of the scarecrow I made and the squash arrangement. Soon I'm going to carve on some of those pumpkins. I'm really not into celebrating anything (i.e. corporate holidays)--however, this time of year takes me back to childhood because of Halloween, I am reminded of enchantment, witches, wizards, and Harry Potter--which is why I made a sign attached to the pole of the porch "9 3/4".

pumpkin, butternut squash, yellow squash, cushaw, mums & aster plants

 

In the next couple of days I will harvesting additional radishes, and some small amounts of arugula and other greens. The lettuce and endive are sprouting in the small garden, and I assume they will be ready to begin harvesting in the next three weeks. I'm not sure the carrots will mature before the fall frost, but if they continue to grow--they will be ready to harvest in the next couple of months. 

My first Jackfruit & How to ripen if you prematurely cut open

To my surprise, the grocery store I frequent started selling Jackfruit. Apparently because I had not been to the grocery store in weeks, I didn't realize the store had been selling them for weeks now.
Of course once I saw the sign for the jackfruit, I was disappointed to see there were no jackfruits on display. James asked if they had any in storage, and luckily they did. We spent $19 for a jackfruit which I accidently opened too soon, so that I could say I tried my first jackfruit.
Two days after taking it home, I started noticing the signs of ripeness/maturity--the yellowing and bruising of the skin, pleasant aroma, and soft to touch. As soon as I cut the jackfruit in half, I realized the fruit pods were hard--not as soft as you want to properly eat them. However, I could tell that the jackfruit was close to ripe because of the orange color of the fruit.
As an experiment to ripen the fruits, I took out every pod from the shell (including the seeds). Then stored all the pods into a container in the refrigerator. With the amount of jackfruit you want to eat, place the bunch into a glass pan with aluminum foil over top. Then, without turning on the oven, placing the pan of jackfruit on the bottom wrack of the oven. This will warm the jackfruit, encouraging the fruit to ripen quickly (turning into sugar content), and become soft (easy to digest).
I kept the jackfruit in the oven for up to 5 hours before I started eating a couple pieces; but mostly I kept a small batch in the oven all day (up to 8 hours) to ripen. This really worked for the most part--the taste it better and the fruit is softer. Refrigerate any leftovers.
Another tip: Lather your hands with coconut oil and also rub coconut oil (or any oil) on the knife you will be using. This prevents the latex of the jackfruit not to stick to your skin and the knife.

Maybe because it was eaten slightly immature, I didn't favor the taste at first. As I am eating it now,  it tastes slightly better. Some people say it tastes like juicy fruit gum, but I didn't get that flavor. Really it doesn't taste like anything I can compare it to.

 

I can see why the jackfruit was nearly $20, because I have been eating on this for days. It's a massive fruit with lots of big pods. It is claimed to be the largest fruit in the world because the jackfruit commonly weighs over 20 pounds.
 

Then today, I spent another $20 on mulberries, dragon fruit, and goji berries--also so that I can say that I have tried them and to experience the taste of each fruit.

It's a privilege to eat imported foods; then to think you're taking away food from people of that country (most likely impoverished).

 

 

 

BIG FIG HARVEST (September through October)

In the photos are the Chicago hardy fig variety, which produces purple skinned fruits with a red jam-like texture inside. The taste is similar to Apricots, Plums, and Peaches. They will grow from little, green nubs then be triple their size overnight. 

Refer to my previous posts of fig harvests so far this year, here:  Late September garden harvest (& Harvesting more figs) , Pepper harvest in the Fall (+ FIGS) , and Harvesting FIGS in cold climate.

Below are photos of the figs we have harvested in the last couple of days.

October 2nd harvest

October 2nd, fig harvest