Thanksgiving Dinner and the Garden

It's been such a nice holiday so far. Having a few days off from work really does wonders! The house is almost as clean as when I used to be home! Sunday I will finish it up and it's ready for winter. At least it won't feel so stuffy and stale.

In the rush before Thanksgiving we failed to get a few things from the grocery store such as celery! How can you have stuffing with no celery? So as we were about to get ready to go to the store I remembered my pot of cutting celery out on the porch. I kept a few things handy on the porch because my garden is not near the kitchen as I would like it to be. The rosemary, sage, basil, parsley root and cutting celery were out there.

The cutting celery and parsley root have been hard for me to get started from seed so they actually spent time indoors. By the time they were ready for the garden, I had it nearly all planted up anyway. A little garden on the porch was convenient.

The cutting celery replaced the celery stalks in our stuffing. It has such a more pronounced flavor that it didn't matter we only had a small amount to use. It was well worth using. Parsley root and carrots go together as well as carrots and parsnips. We actually enjoyed the parsley root more than we would have the parsnips. We've decided to plant more parsley root (perhaps 1/2 of a bed) next year. The leaf of the parsley root has a flavor similar, we thought, to that of cilantro. Stronger than regular flat leaf parsley.

I've been working on my list for next year as well. In fact I've already ordered the leek seed and the order is being processed. I've found a company having the purple sprouting broccoli that so many rave about. It has a longer growing season than I would like, in fact it will take about my whole growing season to mature. This is another veggie that will take up residents in my house until planting out time! I will likely plant a quicker growing variety also. There is a hybrid broccoli which only requires 46 days to maturity. The purple variety, http://www.humeseeds.com/broc_ps.htm
takes 120 days to mature!!! This might be worth growing in a couple of large pots and save the garden space for the early variety. I'll have to think about that when I'm drawing up my plot map.

I also found a curious little tomato called, "Principe Borghese". A small plum tomato that is also excellent for drying. With a determinate vine I won't have to be pruning and staking all season and it sounds like they would make a nice sauce. Most of my tomato planting will probably be these plums and I'll have a couple plants of a good slicing variety.

I was considering planting Nantes and Chantenay carrots, but what I experienced this year with the Chantenays, I think they will be my only carrot next year.

I regret that I didn't plant garlic in the Fall. I was hoping to try for early spring, but none of the companies I've found will ship in the spring. It's all for Fall shipment.

So, this is where I'm at with 2009 garden plans and we still have nearly a month until Christmas. What will I occupy myself with in January? Oh yes, planting leeks and purple broccoli in the house!