Extend Your Fresh Vegetable Harvest Season - VOA Learning English

As the cold season hits, some Americans put vegetables like corn, peppers, green beans, and okra away in freezers.

But American gardening expert Lee Reich says some vegetables can still be picked fresh from the garden through the cold season.

Lettuce, endive, spinach and parsley are among the cold-hardiest vegetables, he says.

Late summer plantings of these vegetables can start as tomatoes, peppers and other warm season crops end.

One of the hardiest, tastiest of fresh salad greens, Reich says, is mache, also known as corn salad.

The soft leaves hide the fact that this plant can do well in very cold weather.

Over the years, his own autumn salad vegetables have lived through cold weather under different protective structures.

In sheltered areas, leaves of any salad plants often remain a bright green and strong after plants in more open areas have turned watery green and weak.

For example, spinach and lettuce planted with their backs against a house or garage wall are not exposed to as much cold as plants growing farther away.

in late fall, soft, edible leaves are least likely to be found on plants given an eastern exposure.

The weather is too cold and there is too little light.

The roots of most spinach, leek, parsley and corn salad plants, and maybe a few of the lettuce plants, will survive outdoors.

But in the spring, these roots will fuel growth of healthy new leaves and become the first harvest next season.

Reich says that those first spring harvests and these last harvests in autumn “taste better than any salad greens you can buy.”.

a mixture of raw green vegetables usually combined with other vegetables