We had some rain and above freezing temperatures, so I opened the cold frame to see if anything had survived the verrrrry deep freeze earlier this week. Um, wow. Many of my plants are still alive! I didn’t harvest much, but you can see some kale, tat soi and radish greens here:

David snapped this Suessian photo of our Winterbor kale earlier in the week:

That and the other two Winterbor varieties are still alive. The dwarf Siberian, lacinato and outside Red Russian kale all look pretty frostbitten, but the Siberian and Red Russian might make a comeback. I also lifted the shower curtain I have covering one of the InstaBeds with the tree collards, intending to overwinter that favorite perennial. It had about 8 inches of snow on top, but the tree collards, Lucullus chard, cilantro and leeks were all still alive with no frost burn, either. In the cold frame, the Lucullus chard looked less happy, but it remains alive, along with thyme, collard greens, beets, carrots and more. Pretty amazing.

We might be one of the very few local people to have greens growing after the insanely cold (minus forty with the windchill) early part of this week. We noticed our co-op had zero local greens and even minimum fresh offerings from elsewhere. I remember that from last year, which is one reason I felt so adamant about having a winter garden this year. No sign of my mache yet, but supposedly those seeds are super slow to germinate. We shall see…

Time to eat a stirfry with some of those fresh greens thrown in. Yay!

Source: http://laurabruno.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/winter-garden-update-plants-alive-after-minus-15-degrees/