Adopt a Crop update: Frost...pfffft!

I am very mighty for a small leafy plant.

When I decided to go back in the water with the whole winter gardening thing and do an off-season version of Adopt a Crop, I thought I was signing myself up for a whole lot of Frost Duty.

Like, put the frames on the beds and be ready to rush out and cover the wee nude plants at night and uncover them in the morning so that they don't freeze to death and turn into a sad pile of goo every day for three months kind of Frost Duty.

And, to be honest, I'm not so good at this kind of duty (DOODY! DUTY! TOO MANY JOKES!) because I tend to be a really bad kind of forgetful, lazy and careless when it comes to mucking out to the garden in freezing and damp weather.

But the summer Adopt a Crop was so fun (and, hey, successful, I even ate some of my pickles the other day) and also I wanted arugula (thanks for voting for arugula) and more fava beans since I learned what the F to do with them, so I decided to face the dreaded Frost Duty in the hopes that I'd have some super resilient plants that could live under substandard care.

Well, here's to hoping, folks, because these poor plants have managed to live through two "hard" California frosts where I WHOOPSY! forgot to cover them and they still managed to live on with nary a blemish.

Blemishes are for girly-men.

Which is good because what I do not need with my Sunday morning hangover is a vegetable bed of goopy dead fava beans. And let it be known that the first thing I forget after an evening of "just one more G&T" with the girls is covering the beds before I pass out face down on my couch.

I mean, if I can't even get my own body under covers, what chance do fava beans living out in the muddy backwoods of our property have?

Mmm...none. Sorry.

For the record though, I have managed to notice the frost warning on the news AND then cover the plants AND then uncover the plants in the morning THREE whole times now, so I figure that puts me in the black when compared to the two times I left them shivering out there uncovered for all the frost to see.

I'm all about averages.

Anyway, the update so far is this - the chosen crop, Arugula/Rocket/Roquette is doing well and will get a little haircut this week as I prepare a salad to go with the homemade butternut squash ravioli I made and froze (I'll post on this soon) over the holidays. And this weekend I'll be seeding another few rows of it so that I can extend our harvest season.

Our other friends, the favas, are performing admirably given their recent treatment (I'm a mean mommy) and have set their third set of leaves. Bubba thinks they'll be ready to lose their frame soon, which means that there will be no "covering" of the plants after that because it would take too much planning and scheming and finding of old sheets by yours truly, The Laziest Woman Alive, so it's a damn good thing they've proven hardy already since they'll be in for more of the same.

I'm happy about this because then I don't have to worry about passively killing off a whole bed of seeds that had an amazing 100% germination rate. The guilt would be too much for me to bear.

100% - how do you like THEM averages.

And if you guys want to go waaaaaaaaaaay back with me to the summer Adopt a Crop (pickling cucumbers) for an update - the pickles, which have now been in their brine for six months, are quite good!

I know! It's amazing since they totally didn't taste that good after brining for only a few days! Yay for that!

Here they are hanging out with the other Football Lunch staples- the turkey and swiss melt and black pepper chips.

The 49ers won the day I ate this lunch. I do not think it was a coincidence.

I don't think I hid my surprise when I bit into this guy and yelled to Bubba, "Hey! It's not even gross! It even tastes just like a pickle might!"

And then he looked at me the way one might when one is exerting all one's effort not to roll one's eyes.