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A week of sun and temperatures fit for shorts gave our turnips and carrots and lettuces a much-needed boost. Even the kale we thought we’d lost to frost came back nicely and though it isn’t putting up much new growth it’s still withstanding our greedy harvests once or twice a week. We planted two varieties of garlic this week—it’ll lie dormant most of the winter and shoot up as soon as the ground warms in spring, giving us scapes to start with and bulbs by summer.

Low tunnels peeled back for sun.

Turnips

Parris Island romaine

A lot of what’s growing now is going to end up on the plates of people who come to the benefit dinner we’re hosting for the Automotive High School on November 2nd. Come if you can!

It’s freezing! We spent a frantic weekend in early October fighting with a stiff north wind for control over giant sheets of greenhouse plastic. We’d built low hooped tunnels over some of our newest greens and stretched plastic over them to protect them from the cold and keep those greens growing for fall. After hours of work that involved bringing all the rocks we’d dug out of the garden during the summer back into the garden to weigh down the sides of the plastic, we got the tunnels pretty secure and drove back to Brooklyn hopeful that we’d have something to show for our trouble after a week of freakishly cold fall weather.

So far the plants look great: freed from the stresses of wind and insects, they’re looking hearty and happy and should make their way onto plates here in a couple of weeks. We left some of our mature plants uncovered–standbys like kale, for instance–and they didn’t make it through the ice. But there’s more growing under those tunnels, and with any luck they’ll reach eating size before we need snowshoes to make our way around the beds.