Winter in the Garden Warming Stock in the Kitchen

Mulching is an essential fall/winter garden task that makes life easier in the spring and helps build good soil.

Fortunately winter has been mostly mild in my area so far. Fortunately — because I am soooo late in getting my garden beds mulched for winter. Usually a late fall task, weeding and then mulching with either pine straw or shredded leaves turned into a January/February event.

This year it was warm so late into the season https://creeksidekitchenandgarden.com/the-cadence-of-the-changing-seasons/ with the first frost not coming until mid-November, I got really behind. First late frost, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas and New Years — and of course my day job, lol. Now in late January, I am finally getting the beds put to bed for the winter.

I have plenty of pine straw from the pine trees all over our creekside property. The bigger challenge has been pulling up all the weeds that have spread throughout the beds with no edibles growing and no mulch down.

One of the beds is already well prepped as I did get a good layer of pine straw over my garlic when it went into the ground in October. And another is safely under cover growing some cold tolerant Swiss chard.

No Till Gardening

One of the new(er) concepts in gardening is that, even as rain forests are carbon sinks and help mitigate ozone depletion, so are our garden beds. The less we disturb the soil, the more carbon it is able to store and the less released into the atmosphere. No-till gardening is partially an outgrowth of this. However, much of no till gardening uses glyphosate (Roundup) to accomplish this.

Organic Alternatives

As a (mostly) organic gardener, I’m not going that route. But I’m also not doing what was recommended in my organic gardening books of 30 years ago and tilling my beds to a depth of 8 inches, waiting several days to let the birds eat the bugs plowed up then tilling again to a depth of four inches before mulching. My compromise is hand pulling weeds and then laying down an organic mulch from my yard.

Some organic gardeners have been using cardboard to kill weeds over the winter and laying mulch over top of the cardboard. All of it decomposes and helps the soil. A lot of work but I may try that next year. I certainly get enough cardboard from my UPS and Fed Ex deliveries!

Puppies Love to Help!

My dog, Rascal says he would help with digging up weeds, really! But, although he loves digging he digs in the most inappropriate places! Lol!!

Rascal’s hole was mostly ok, until he strayed into the strawberry bed and they started to fly…

Spring is on the Way

While doing late winter bed mulching, I am exercising patience for spring to come. Trying not to start my seedlings too early and reminding myself that it is still the middle of winter. However…..the earliest of daffodils have made an appearance.

And a neighbor’s pussy willow has budded out.

My marker of spring is a forsythia sending out its sprays of yellow flowers. I have a small one I planted a year ago and although the buds are beginning to swell, no flowers yet. Patience!

While I wait, I wanted to share with you my “recipe” for a frugal and delicious vegetable stock that is my base for so many winter recipes.

Roasted Vegetable Stock

I have a plastic bag in my freezer where many of my vegetable trimmings end up. The ends of onions, carrot and celery scraps, tomato left overs, squash seeds and herb trimmings. During the summer I toss corn cobs into bags and freeze them as they are a great addition to stock. If I don’t have enough scraps when it’s time to make soup, I’ll cut a couple of onions in half, add a couple of carrots and a couple stalks of celery. An almost full gallon freezer bag is enough for about 14 cups of stock.

Of course, you could start with fresh vegetables and there are lots of recipes out there for wonderful vegetable stock. But I like mine and the fact that it helps cut down on food waste.

While lots of odds and ends can go it, there some are things that should not go into stock; cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage, bell peppers and, surprisingly, potatoes. It seems potatoes (according to the chefs on The Kitchen) will make the stock cloudy while cruciferous vegetables can make it bitter.

So come stock making day, I pull out my bag of odds and ends and add a few more if my bag is not 3/4 full. Lay them out on parchment paper on a rimmed sheet tray and roast them at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes. When I can smell the vegetables and they look a little browned around the edges, out they come.

I used to put them in my stock pan, cover with water, bring to a boil and reduce to simmer for 30 minutes or so. Now I use my Instant Pot. I put all the veggies in a colander like basket that fits into the Instant Pot, fill the pot with water and set it to “Soup” setting. Using the Instant Pot means I don’t have to watch to see when to turn down the stove. Talk about spoiled! But it does make life easier.

If you don’t use all the stock in a few days, it freezes well. I try to remember to make a few stock “ice cubes” so that when I need just a little stock, I can pop them out and use them.

I make my stock with no salt added. I usually generously season/salt my dishes and so the unsalted stock cuts down on sodium overload.

Enjoy!