Baby Brussels and Other Winter Fare

I planted my Brussels sprouts at least a month too late (around Labor Day), but there is still hope. We aren't due for a hard freeze any time soon (fingers crossed), and I'll be installing a plastic greenhouse over this bed before then. With temps back up to the balmy 60s for a few days, maybe these tiny sprouts will have time to form before winter sets in. Or, maybe if I keep them alive under cover all winter, then we'll have early spring sprouts! Either way, it's proof I can grow sprouts ... if I get the timing right.  

Elsewhere in the garden, I have plentiful arugula, though it should have been thinned--hard to do when it seeds itself everywhere!:

 

Fava beans ready to be overwintered, though a little floppy after Sandy and being under row cover to keep marauding rabbits away. They should produce in early spring, just when they will be appreciated most:

 Some gorgeous kale that I probably could leave uncovered all winter:

 

Lettuce (with radish and carrot in between)--this will need protection:

The bed of much smaller kale and lettuce:

Some sad-looking turnips (trying to sow them under the okra did not work out so well):

I finally got around to thinning the Asian greens, and I think they will do okay with protection--meaning I'll get some baby greens at the least and maybe an early spring flush of growth. 

 

Since rabbits and/or slugs ate my spinach seedlings (I had filled this bed with both seeds and seedlings--both were a bust, sigh), I moved the Asian green thinnings over here. I just can't bear to waste any seedlings.

Despite the usual fall problems--namely, not getting things started early enough--it's a pretty good supply of winter greens. I also would have liked to sow more roots. There's always next year!