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Jessica’s Garden: Homegrown Veggies Still Going Strong

fresh-picked-for-dinner

While admittedly our Fall garden is not nearly as tremendous and fantastic as I had envisioned, it is serving us well.  The best part of gardening is, there is always next year. You can never peak at growing your own food and flowers. There is always room to improve, grow and learn. Fall gardening is definitely my weaker season; as the years go, I hope to get better and better at it.

I have a raised bed filled with a few Fall vegetable varieties. Despite the awfully chilly evenings we have been getting, the plants look amazing. The foliage is lush and colorful, unlike the insect eaten foliage of my Summer garden.  When I need a little extra something to go along with supper, a quick trip to the back garden hasn’t let me down yet. It’s satisfying to be picking homegrown veggies as we quickly near the beginning of December. This afternoon, I picked enough carrots, radishes and beets to do a small roast with some of the potatoes we harvested from the Summer garden.

veggies-in-rasied-garden

I am amazed by certain herbs as well. While rosemary, thyme and sage are definitely heartier and woodier herbs, I am always surprised by the longevity of parsley. And depending on the winter conditions, sometimes parsley will even return the following year. While parsley is not my favorite herb, by this time of year it’s still nice to have flecks of something bright green garnishing a winter dish.  I made a trip out to the herb garden this afternoon and there was plenty of life left in these more cold-tolerant herbs.

While I will not be cooking Thanksgiving supper this year, I have offered to contribute a couple of pumpkin pies made from our homegrown pumpkins. I assure you, the homegrown pumpkin or squash truly makes a textural and flavor difference. And my favorite part is that my little four year old sous chef will be up for helping me bake.

Posted By: Jessica J. Crawford Behnkes Garden Blogger

Stephanie Fleming was raised at Behnke’s Nurseries in Beltsville. Her Mom, Sonja, was one of Albert & Rose Behnke’s four children. She was weeding from the moment she could walk and hiding as soon as she was old enough to run, so many weeds, so little time. Although she quickly learned how to pull out a perennial and get taken off of weed pulling duty.

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