Winter is Coming

I'm not going to lie, winter is my favourite time of year - but I'm a little sad that the intense growing of spring and summer are behind me now. Time to dig in some of the slow burners: I'm trying my hand next at potatoes and onions since, unlike some of my more whimsical choices (so much spinach! How often do I even eat spinach? And what am I going to do if any artichokes grow?!), these are staples in my kitchen. It's also the season for broccoli, carrots and snow peas. I love all of these! Goodbye corn and tomatoes, hello staples and brassicas...

Ok, but first we have to get through autumn: the weather certainly hasn't gotten cold yet, and things are still looking quite cheerful out back.

If you're anything like me, winter doesn't immediately spring to mind as a time to grow, well, anything. It's cold and damp and the sun is unpredictable at best. Winter is the time to hibernate - to curl up inside under a blanket, eat warm foods and wait for the sun to come back with the spring. So I have to admit that it was a pleasant surprise to discover just how many things prefer a winter growing time and, more importantly, just how good and useful a lot of those crops are.

Potatoes are the biggest winter treat to my eyes. They're a meal staple, after all: potatoes, rice and pasta accompany almost every meal we eat and while I don't expect to be growing any grain crops any time soon (okay, or probably ever?) I would say that potatoes should be well within my means. I even have a spare bed that, until now, has been left to the weeds. It's not much to look at but it's a corner all to itself and what better place for a little experiment, right? The directions for potato growing feel a little intense compared to my previous efforts of "dig trench, toss in seeds, cover seeds, wait impatiently"-style gardening. You need to encourage them to sprout, first, and as they grow they need "hilling up" for the first month or so (you cover the appearing sprouts with some new dirt to help them grow).

In the main bed (y'know, the one whose bottom corner is taken up by my monstrous artichoke) are the carrots and onions. I've already had the pleasure of a batch of roasted baby carrots and am looking forward to growing some of a more useful size this time (what can I say - I was impatient!).

Beside them are my transplanted cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower seedlings (my first attempt was cruelly dug up by the neighbour cat that still believes my garden should be its toilet) and, taking up the bulk of the space, the onions. We use potatoes frequently but onions, now, are something we use almost every time we cook (the only thing we use as much is probably garlic, but I'll get to that) and the prospect of growing my own is particularly exciting. It's one thing to have a treat from the garden (spinach meatballs, say, or a handful of roasted carrots) and entirely another to provide base items.

So far that has meant flavouring things from the herbs thriving on the windowsill but now, if I'm lucky, it's going to mean onions. Both red and brown are in the ground, and every time I crouch down and have a peek I'm convinced that they're already showing their little faces.

It will be a while yet before I know which of those little sprouts to celebrate and which to toss, though!

Garlic is one I'm not sure about for this year. I haven't seen it on my much-too-frequent trips to forage the nursery and hardware store, and a little internet search tells me that most available in supermarkets will have been pest treated in a way that will stop it growing if planted. Still, I'm going to keep an eye out, and there's bound to be an out-of-the-way spot I can find to toss them in. The rule of thumb for garlic, it seems, is "plant on the shortest day and harvest on the longest" which means that, while I still have a little time to get my hands on some bulbs, they're going to be in the ground for quite a while.

As far as immediate plans go: I'm off to the hardware store for a soil testing kit (all I can tell on my own is that it's pretty sandy) and some compost for the potato bed - oh, and the seed potatoes themselves.

The savory is much too excited to be alive to worry about the approaching cold weather - new shoots bound.