The greens under cover are holding on — this week’s harvest includes puntarelle, fun jen, pan di zucchero chicory, and salad greens.
A few of the puntarelle were left in the ground to see how long they’ll survive the cold. We’re also joining Amber in her experiments with forcing them. A couple of the puntarelle with their roots attached were plunked into a bucket of water, and are now residing in the garage. We hope to have some pods form after a couple of weeks.
One of our winter garden chores is tending to the compost bins, the contents of which gets turned twice a year. Kitchen and garden scraps go into the working bin, and then transferred progressively into the next of two bins.
Above, the compost in the working bin is being moved to the next bin, and is full of earthworm activity breaking plant matter down.
After a year, the composting process is complete. The rich results are ready for the next planting season.
Diary of a Tomato 
Your greens look delicious and your compost is beautiful.
We’re still working on getting the compost to process hotter, but thank-you for your kind words!
Good luck with your puntarelle experiment! Your greens look great, I wish my lettuce looked half as good.
Thanks, Michelle — though I hardly believe that about your greens ; )
Is puntarelle the same as red dandelion which is also a form of chicory?
Great question, Norma! From what I gather, puntarelle and red dandelion (red-ribbed catalogna) belong to the same group of catalogna-type chicories. Elizabeth Schneider, in her book “Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini”, writes that puntarelle are “a type of catalogna chicory, but it is prepared in ways that are so different from the others that it is treated separately.” Amber and I are growing them specifically them for their central pointlets, which she is finding needs forcing in order to form.
I will need to do some reading about puntarelle and their central pointlets. Hope you and Amber will write about your results and how you use these pointlets.
Good luck! I may try to keep some in the light to see what that does too. I really want to try the fun jen next year. Looks good! Thanks for the shout out :)
I’m thinking the same thing about splitting these up, and bringing some into the light but only after letting them sit in the dark garage for a couple of weeks. Yours look terrific! Did you see the special “taglia puntarelle” tool in Elizabeth Minchilli’s post on puntarelle?
Yes I did….thinking I will just cut as I saw in some you tube videos or maybe my hubby can make one!
Your greens are beautiful, what an interesting experiment, good luck with the puntarelle.
Thanks! We’ll see what we have in another two weeks…
Lovely harvest of greens, and great info on the puntarelle ………………
Like most of gardening, there’s still much to learn!
You’re salad leaves looks so healthy (and tasty). I’d love to have a compost bin, not sure it’s possible though as we live in a uni.
Am not sure what a “uni” is, but there are compact, apartment sized ones available…