This gardening thing…I can’t say I’ve quite got it all figured out just yet. Check back in about twenty years and I’ll probably have things pretty well worked out by then. See, when I sowed the seeds for the fall and winter garden back in mid July, I was confident that I had planned for a bounty of vegetables to carry us through the cold months. This would be the year when I didn’t have to buy a single vegetable.

Yeah. Bonus points for optimism, right? Or would that be hubris? Because we’ve been buying vegetables to supplement our meager harvests since December. (Possibly earlier. It’s all blurry now. I think I’ve blocked it out.) Last year was our first attempt at four-season gardening, and even with a severe freeze that killed off all the spinach and chard and mustards and all but one variety of kale, we came through the winter with more food in the garden than we could eat. The kale actually matured enough to go to seed. (And the flower buds were pretty tasty. Kind of like broccoli, which isn’t all that surprising since they’re cousins.)

When I planned for this winter, I added some variety that we missed last year in the form of collards, cabbage, and lettuces, and gave a hybrid broccoli a try, but I based the amounts on last year, because we’d had more than enough food. What did I forget? That I was pregnant last winter and the mere thought of strong-flavored vegetables (um…as in ALL winter greens) made me ill. On top of that, I didn’t have a lot of energy for cooking. We had a ton of kale left over at the end of the season because we barely ate from the garden.

It might have been helpful to remember this when I was planning for this year. As it is, we ate everything down to stubby little nubs by December. December and January are the dead months in the garden in our part of the world. Growth slows way down. So there’s been no regrowth on what we ate. It’s been cabbage and lettuce from the garden–though we’ve now eaten all the lettuce–and the rest has come from the store. (But oh man, what cabbage! It’s amazing! Sweet and spicy… Nothing at all like store-bought cabbage–even organic store-bought.)

Now that we’re in February the plants will start to grow again and hopefully the garden will be feeding us more and more until we get properly back on track in spring with the overwintered broccoli raabs, the asparagus, and the early peas and radishes.

I sorted through the seed packets tonight to see what I had held over from past seasons and what I needed to order. Cherry Belle radishes, Sorrento broccoli raab, Tyee spinach… Maybe this spring I’ll finally get it exactly right.