Four-Season Harvest

PRESENTING THE FOUR-SEASON HARVEST

     A heavy wet snow is falling today There
could be a foot or more, said the radio, before its voice was silenced
by a toppling tree that took out our power. It's a beautiful snow, clumping
thickly on the evergreen woods that encircle our little house and bringing
them in closer like a soft white duvet. This is the fourth snowfall so
far this month, and it's the 10th of April. Being vegetable gardeners
of great enthusiasm you would think we'd be dismayed, champing at the
bit, eager to grow fresh food for the table again. But that is all in
the past. We have managed to turn winter from deprivation to celebration.

     We throw on our coats and go out to the
cold frames to pick a salad for dinner. The cold frames are glass-covered,
bottomless wooden boxes, eight feet long and four feet wide, lined up
at the back of the garden along our gravel path, and a celebratory sight
they are as full of green bounty as the produce aisle at the local market.
Lifting up the glass lids and propping them with a notched stick, we are
treated to a good whiff of moist unfrozen soil. While the snow sifts about
us we get busy cutting tender leaves with small serrated knives, filling
a towel-lined basket. Dressed with a good olive oil and a squirt of lemon,
the salad will taste like renewal-a perfect accompaniment to the leek
and potato soup simmering on the back of the stove.

     This fresh daily harvest goes on all year,
both from our traditional outdoor summer garden and our unconventional
protected winter garden. The results are sumptuous. Dinner guests habitually
exclaim about the freshness and flavor of our salads and always ask,"What
all is in there?" In January, for example, our answer might be "a mix
of frisée endive, baby leaf spinach, Chioggia radicchio, wild arugula,
miner's lettuce, buckshorn plantain, and corn salad." We can almost anticipate
the next question.

     "From where?" they query; slightly conspiratorially,
expecting us to confess to expensive overnight air delivery from exotic
foreign suppliers. When we tell them we harvested the salad earlier that
day from our unheated winter garden, the suspicion changes to stunned
disbelief. "In winter? But it's too cold."


     "Not for these crops. They don't mind freezing
temperatures. These greens are the traditional winter peasant foods of
southern France and northern Italy. Granted our winters are colder, but
our simple protection makes up for the lower temperatures.

     They nod in understanding but then pause
again after a few more mouthfuls."But you don't have enough sun way up
here, do you? I mean, southern France is like Florida."

     We acknowledge it may seem like that is
so, but the truth is something different. "Based on daylength and sunshine,
Miami, on the 26th parallel of latitude in Florida, corresponds with the
city of Luxor, near the ruins of ancient Thebes, on the shore of the Nile
River in southern Egypt. In contrast, the resort town of Cannes on the
Mediterranean coast of France has the same winter sunshine and daylength
as the city of Portland on the Atlantic coast of Maine."

     "Maine? I can't believe it."

     "It's true. Most of Europe lies further
north on the globe than the U.S. does. Our farm on the 44th parallel in
Maine is on the same latitude as Avignon in southern France and Genoa
on the warm Ligurian coast of Italy That means we have the same daylength
and amount of sun they do."

     The visitors' surprise and their response
are not unexpected. We have received that same reaction from gardeners
everywhere. In the first place, many people assume all vegetables will
be killed by freezing temperatures in winter. Yet we habitually grow some
thirty different crops that survive freezing temperatures with no problem
when given a little protection from the wind, which is the real outdoor
plant killer in winter. Secondly, many people assume there will not be
enough sunshine during the winter months. Yet we get as much sunshine
as regions of the world where winter gardening is traditional. That latter
fact is probably the most surprising.

     It is logical to assume that warm temperatures
and sunshine go hand in hand. If France has a warmer winter climate, it
must be sunnier. In truth, since Avignon has more cloudy winter days than
we do, there is actually more winter sunshine in Maine. That raises an
obvious question. Then how come the Maine climate and the French climate
are so different? Just because we are on the same latitude doesn't necessarily
mean we have the same climate. The climate difference between southern
France and mid-coastal Maine is caused by forces independent of latitude.
Different climates are a result of different air and ocean currents.

     Whereas masses of cold arctic air moving
south across Canada give the northern parts of the North American continent
a mostly frozen winter, the situation in France is different. The Gulf
Stream, a massive flow of warm water moving northward across the Atlantic
Ocean from the Caribbean to Scandinavia, ensures that western Europe's
winter will be mostly cool and moist. Similarly, the warm Pacific currents
on the west coast of the U.S. mean that Juneau, Alaska at latitude 570
has a warmer average temperature in January than New York City at latitude
41º. If judged on temperature alone, a gardener in Juneau should
have a slightly easier time growing winter vegetables than a gardener
in New York. But for winter vegetable crops, temperature is not the principal
deciding factor. Daylength -- the amount of available sunlight -- is.

     And that brings us back to latitude. Latitude
determines daylength and the quantity of potential sunlight available
to a winter gardener. Places around the globe at the same latitude will
have the same daylength. Thus our Maine farm in the northeastern corner
of the U.S. shares a "sun line" with those parts of France, previously
mentioned, which lie on the same 44th parallel. Places to the north of
that line, such as the rest of northern Europe, have less winter gardening
potential than we do. And places to the south of that line, which includes
85 percent of the U.S., have better sun for winter vegetable gardening
than Mediterranean France. We should make better use of it.