Last year I planted my first Keto approved garden. I planted blueberry bushes, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, bok choy, Kale, cauliflower, spaghetti squash, collard greens, carrots, cucumbers (I feel like my entire summer I had cucumbers coming out my ears, they were so plentiful and delicious with taziki dressing), asparagus and tomatos and tomilitioes (thanks to a gift of three plants from my neighbor). I live in Illinois and we’ve had some recently harsh weather with wind chills down to negative 2. Before the harsh weather arrived I tipped over the tomato cages and placed plastic over top of the kale and the cabbages. To my utter surprise the kale, cabbages and the collard greens have survived and the cabbages have actually become cabbage during our winter despite the fact that it’s been cold. I didn’t know this at the time when I planted them but apparently they go into survival mode and push sugars into the leaves of the plant in order to survive the winter. This has made the kale and collard greens incredibly tasty. If you’re at all interested in planting keto gardens I can now highly recommend kale and collard greens as a main staple for a plant that may last year round as long as it’s protected in the winter. The collard greens have frozen and refrozen over and over again and still seem to be as green as ever despite not being covered by my makeshift ghetto greenhouses. Until a month ago I had no idea there were even plants that can survive the winter!
Keto Gardening Plant Recommendations
Collard Greens are winter vegetables and improve greatly being in very cold weather. Do you have kale and collard “trees”? They produce for a couple of years and get up to 10’ tall. And you’re likely to have tomatillos forever now. They keep coming back. Asparagus too if you mulch over the winter. I think you get better asparagus after the first year. They grow a lot in Washington state. And the berries other than strawberries will last some years. Blackberry will take over your garden if you don’t keep it tamed.
I also live in Illinois. I grow leaf lettuce all year round, under plastic, in my garden. It grows slowly, but I’m able to keep our family in lettuce.
Great thread! I grow blueberries, strawberries, rhubarb and just added black raspberries last year.
On the savory side, I’ve done salad greens (heads and mesclun for cutting), radishes, snow peas, yellow saladette tomatoes, cukes, zucchini, parsley, basil, cilantro and various woodier herbs. My husband and I are planning to put a chayote trellis on our south facing back fence this year.
I specifically put in the berries and asparagus because knew they would be evergreen, meaning produce year after year with little to no effort. The kale, collard greens and cabbage were a surprise. Had I of known what I know now about them being hardy I would have chosen a better place in the garden for them. It’s been fun learning how to grow food. This year I’m going to get myself some LED grow lights and plant indoors to give my plants a couple weeks headstart so I can buy less food at the grocery store this summer as well as get a second round of veggies from my garden by replanting a month or two into growing season if I can.
The strawberries have thrived and climbed around everywhere. That was a big surprise too. I put mulch over them before winter and there are still green leaves popping out despite the weather. Apparently I’m sitting on a old strawberry farm. I’ve got wild strawberry patches in my back yard that I accidentally kept mowing down not knowing they were there until my neighbor pointed them out to me this fall. I knew about the blackberry issue. Used to live in Seattle where they grow wild in every park.
A great video about vertical gardening on the cheap for those of you who dont have a lot of land. I thought I was going to have to expand my garden to be able to feed myself better this year than last year until I found out just training plants to go vertical might be the solution! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdI2YrNIf5g
Photo 1: Ghetto greenhouses - toppled over tomato cages with used painter plastic tarps covering plants.
Photo 2: today’s harvest, blue curly kale, purple kale, cabbage leaves
I would love to do this but have possums who steal every single edible plant I grow, including the lemon blossoms on my lemon trees, which never get to produce even a single lemon.
We have an extreme drought and the wild animals are doing it very tough this summer.
After reading the book Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman my wife and I set up a hoop house in our backyard in Chicago and have kept it planted year round for the past 15 years with significant winter harvests. We could do better if we were willing to clear more of our summer crops earlier to make more room for early fall plantings as we don’t get much growth in December and January, but what is well grown can remain in good condition throughout the winter with the combination of the hoop house plus row cover fabric. Low tunnels also work for very hardy plants.
That cabbage was almost as sweet as a sugar snap pea!!! It really surprised me.
I used all the greens to make a Caesar salad minus the croutons of course.
That amount of greens would have cost me at least $3.00 in the store having been grown organically.
It really is a special kind of simple pleasure to be able to walk out your front door and grocery shop in your front yard for free.
Matrika I’ve been very lucky with the critters staying away from my yard. It may have to do with the dogs constantly being in it. Lol.
Thank you for the advice about the book. I just added it to my amazon cart.
I forgot to include the 6 rutabagas I planted in the list. Never had one until today when I made rutabaga fries. 9 net carbs per 100 gram serving. Tastes a bit like potato french fries but has a bit of an unusual aftertaste that isn’t so unpleasant I wouldn’t eat them again. Girls, this would be a great low carb substitution for a high carb comfort food when it’s that time of the month and you cannot control your cravings and would go great with a bacon burger, no bun of course.
