Through the winter, we’ve managed to eat more greens than we usually get at this time of year.
About a month ago, Michelle rescued a few dandelion plants she’d pulled out by the roots and laid aside in the garden last autumn. She potted them and put them in one of the cabin windows. Soon, the hardy plants revived and started producing leaves (see Dandelions).
Next, she brought in a small kale plant from the garden, along with a second dandelion.
A winter window garden (l-r): sprouts, kale, dandelion (Photo: Michelle L. Zeiger).
As in past years, we grow sprouts to augment the small amount of kale that endures, and other greens that have managed to weather our relatively mild winter (see Ever Greens). When she soaks and rinses the sprouts, she pours the water from them into the potted plants in the window. Everyone benefits!
We’ve thought and talked about potting dandelions for several years. Ironically, we’ve only recently done it because we’ve managed the dandelions in our garden extremely well, to the point where, almost miraculously in the American gardener point of view, we really haven’t had any plants to spare! As it happens, these that Michelle pulled had been intended for windowsill pots, but she’d gotten distracted, and forgot to do anything with them until January. But, of course, they’re dandelions—they survived just fine laying uprooted and exposed to the winter weather until we got around to doing something with them.
All our garden produce should be so resilient.