by TwoJunes
December’s thick blanket of snow was beautiful to behold, but that storm did a real number on our cabbage! 
Yes, we should have built a cold frame, we know. All you native Oregonians can gloat at our naïveté, but our first seven winters here in Portland have been mild. Some years passed without a hard frost, and our gardens have shrugged off smaller storms. Our collards and most of the herbs were unperturbed by the big ice storm a few years ago.
Not so this year, as the sad portrait of our westernmost raised bed demonstrates. Only the red cabbages seem to be truly alive. The Napas most definitely bit the big one and although the arugula may come back, it is pitiful to behold. The rest are, well, decaying. The other greens look perfectly squashed, their leaves radiating outward. Nicole’s beloved parsley is no more.
So filled with humility, we set off to the Hillsdale Farmer’s Market to restock. This comeuppance was overdue. The truth is that we were unwittingly turning into “seasonal-only, grow-your-own” snobs. We were drawn to Portland by its 291-day growing season. Eating seasonally in Oregon is different and substantially more fun than eating seasonally in Kansas or New York, where winter ground is unyielding. We had become spoiled by the nearly year-round bounty of the west, and forgot that what comes so easily, can just as easily and quickly be taken away.
As defeated as we felt walking up to the Gathering Together Farm stand, we are grateful someone’s vegetables have weathered the storm.
Next year, we build a cold frame.
Lisa Bell is a freelance producer, writer and editor. She spent the first fifteen years of her working life as a pastry chef, recipe developer, test kitchen director, food stylist and print editor. She has also taught cooking classes, run a small cooking school, and worked as a food scientist. Nicole Rees currently works as a baking scientist. She is also a food writer and cookbook author specializing in baking science. Her most recent book Baking Unplugged, is filled with simple, scratch recipes that require no electric gadgets beyond an oven.
2 Comments
The cold frame will likely be built later this spring. We will document w/video and post. I am thinking something lightweight, like hoops as the beds are pretty big. We don’t have a problem w/deer here, but I am going to be watching the raccoons, my mortal enemies, even if they are cute. Also, the aphids that love broccoli rabe and the slugs that have a taste for tatsoi of all things. This will be the first spring/summer season for the raised beds…they were completed at the end of last summer. I hope to have a fine crop of greens, peas, tomatoes, being a southerner, some okra and eggplant if lucky. We also put in blueberries and an apple for espalier last fall…This year, plan on adding blackberries, logan berries, strawberries, raspberries, maybe a fig tree if we can squeeze it in somewhere…oh, and, of course, the bioswale to deal the marshy, squishy portion of the back yard..big plans as always! Hope your transplants survived–I brought a some things from our old house here too…a favorite rose.
Will you be building a cold frame soon? I’d love to see a video demo on how to build one as I’m thinking seriously about it for next year. The snow caught us off guard, but I just moved into a new house and I’m trying to figure out how to set up and arrange my new kitchen garden. So I didn’t have much to lose.
Deer and finding a clear sun spot are the two biggest problems, as well as moles, so I hadn’t taken snow into consideration. I had just moved some strawberries, fennel and other garden goodies from our old place to the new a month before the snow. I hope they survive, too.