Spring equinox salad

Having so many greens growing in the yard has lulled me into a false sense of time. Yesterday’s thirty degree high and last night’s low in the teens reminded me that it is not yet the end of March. In the past, I would only be thinking about my spring garden at this point, with planting still at least six weeks away. Frosts are likely here through mid-May, with the possibility of frost extending through Memorial Day.

Mid-morning today, there was still ice on the water collecting in low spots in the yard.

So I was glad to curl up last night with some books Richard brought home from the Cornell libraries. I have been wanting to read Helen and Scott Nearings’ now classic Living the Good Life, describing their half century of homesteading in Vermont and Maine from the late 1920s though the 1970s. While looking for it, Richard also found another of their books, Building And Using Our Sun-Heated Greenhouse: Grow Vegetables All Year-Round (1977). In it, the Nearings describe how they achieved near self-sufficiency in growing vegetables, even in New England, where winters reach 40 degrees below zero. They cite other farmers, writing in the 1930s, who knew how to do the same thing. The “trick” is to select near-hardy greens (they focused on kale, chard, lettuce, escarole, parsley, celery, and leek) and then give them minimal protection.

Turnip greens. Protected by a low tunnel, they have been growing many tender new leaves.

The result is a spring equinox salad that rivals salads I used to be proud to harvest in June. With the spurt of new growth appearing in the overwintered plants in the low tunnels, I harvested a pound of greens this week. Mache and claytonia still make up the bulk of the salad. But there is now enough Tuscan kale, Asian savoy, fresh turnip leaves, spinach, red beet leaves, and mustard to add variety.

Baby tuscan ("dinosaur") kale leaves are great in salad.

Two viola plants (Johnny Jump-Ups) wound up near some straw this winter and have greeted the sporadic warm days with a profusion of purple blooms.

Semi-hardy violas (Johnny Jump-Ups) are one of the earliest of the edible flowers.

Nearby, I found some arugala that overwintered as well. Some greens are sufficiently hard -- think kale and arugula -- that they will overwinter without any protection beyond a blanket of snow, resuming growth as soon as temperatures climb above freezing.

Spicy arugula can survive winter with no more than a blanket of snow for protection from the cold.

Last weekend, we dug some wild onions Richard had planted near the stream. And today, the first edible primrose flowers opened.

Edible primrose flowers

I knew – before reading the Nearings’ work – that the knowledge of year-round vegetable production in temperate climates has been around even longer than the past half century. Maine farmer-researcher Elliot Coleman, whose experiments, example, and writings about four-season harvests builds upon the Nearings’ work – and have inspired our own efforts – has translated 18^th and 19^th century French texts that describe how Parisian market gardeners practiced intensive year-round gardening in greenhouses heated only by decomposing manure. They took their vegetables to market daily, filled their empty carts with horse manure from the city’s stables, and returned home. Farming 6% of the land area of Paris, they provided the city’s inhabitants with vegetables year-round in a latitude similar to our own.

Still, I found myself astounded and appalled at the extent to which direct evidence that vegetables could be grown year-round in the northeast U.S. had been marginalized, ignored, and even denied. For most people, it has long been common “knowledge” that the growing season here extends from Memorial Day to Labor Day. But perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, this kind of growing is suitable for home gardeners and small farmers, not agribusiness. There have not been large profits to be made in promoting it.

Low tunnel spinach

And yet, the salad greens I have been growing require minimal labor and few costs. I tossed some seeds in the ground in September. Richard cut some wire hoops. We threw some plastic on top and weighted it down with stones. There has been almost no weeding and, once the weather turned seriously cold, no watering. Also no pests. Cold fingers while picking greens has been a small trade-off for the absence of cabin fever. After all, when green plants are growing – and ready to harvest – in February and March, winter starts to feel like spring.