What's happening in the garden.

Here's hoping your Christmas/Holiday was all you hoped it to be.  We are fast approaching the end of 2016 as hard as that seems to fathom.  And while this is traditionally the time I generally am disconnected from the garden, this is not the year for that.  I have been thinking a lot about the garden and how I can make it produce more benefits for the family and neighbors.  The one glaring area where I have seldom ventured in all my gardens is with respect to a winter garden.  I have thought about it from time to time but have never put forth a serious effort given our cold temperatures and the subsequent snows from January through early March.  As I have related, I have been busily attempting to grow a winter garden this year with some good results so far.  I took the picture below Saturday morning.

As can be seen, the lettuces are not faring too well at this point.  I think it is due to a combination of picking the wrong variety of lettuces and the lack of a strong enough sun getting through the layers. The other crops, however such as the spinach, carrots and onions seem to be faring quite well at this time.  So, overall, I'd say it is definitely a mix bag of results.  The true test will be when our winter weather is upon us and how frozen the ground in the structure actually gets.  

I went out today and made a path to this part of the garden as it was getting quite muddy given the rains we have had.  I raked the ground and laid foot stones to the plants as can be seen below.

As you can see, it will reduce the mud situation for me until it snows.  I'll cross that bridge when the soon approaching time comes.  My plan is to plant the area with grass this Spring so I don't have to deal with weeds next year.  You can also see that the winter rye is doing fairly well in the beds given it's late planting and the temperatures.  It will at least have laid down roots for the next summer crops which will add structure and nutrients.

I am also continuing to add plant material and kitchen scraps to my compost bin.  This isn't the usual time of the year to be doing this but our temps have been somewhat moderate.  The weather is supposed to be very mild through this week with a high of 60 tomorrow and mid-high 40's the rest of the week.  While the process of the breakdown has slowed at this point, I had a bunch of scraps yesterday from our Christmas family dinner so I decided since it was almost 50 yesterday and was going to remain that way for a few days, why not add them to the existing pile? You can see that in the photo below. 

The egg carton is biodegradable and so are the paper towels.  The egg shells will break down with a little effort on my part in the spring and the potato peels will disappear eventually.  After I added the various items, I covered them with a heavier layer of decomposing grass cuttings I saved just for this use.  

I will add some leaves in the early spring along with kitchen scraps to get the decay process reignited for the next season.  But for now, I have to keep an eye on the temps to insure that the edible scraps actually break down.  I don't want to invite any uninvited guest to my yard.  

Below is a picture of the units that I use to compost given our areas population of field mice.  They have worked out really well for my area,

I also began prepping for my first plants to start from seed.  According to my calculations, Broccoli and Cabbage need to be started around the 22nd of January and Cauliflower follows on the 29th .  I also plan on growing peas this year.  As I said early in this post, I plan on making this garden the best ever and that entails a wider array of plants - and a lot of planning.  So, I won't be having a bumper crop of tomatoes or peppers like I did in 2016.  

That's a wrap for all that is going on in the garden at this time.  Seems like it's a lot but it has been somewhat therapeutic to say the least.  This is probably my last post for 2016 so I will wish you and yours a very Happy and Safe New Years.  Until next time, Happy Gardening everyone!   

Whipsaw!!

The weather here is whipsawing quite dramatically due to an earlier polar vortex and many fast moving lows.  Just yesterday (Saturday the 17th) , we had what initially looked like a benign cold front coming through overnight with some frozen precipitation.  Well, it actually was a little more widespread than anticipated and which covered the area with ice on all surfaces.  In fact, we had a very tragic accident on I-95 in the downtown Baltimore region. There was a tanker truck that flipped over a barrier and exploded into flames and then there was a corresponding 67 vehicle pileup.  2 people were killed and over a dozen were injured.  I was just grateful I didn't need to drive yesterday. Our weather today started out much warmer as it was 55 at noon.  So, I took advantage of the weather and went out to check on my plants that I am attempting to grow through the winter.  After uncovering them, I was quite pleased with their progress.  As can be seen, most of the plants are healthy and seemed to have survived yesterdays low temps.

Long term though, I have my doubts about the lettuce but everything else looks healthy enough.  Of course, the goal is not to produce plants in the winter but rather, to produce early mature plants in the Spring.  Again, it's an experiment to see how well what I have set up will work.  We haven't hit the really cold winter weather yet so I am still not making any predictions.  

As I was watering these plants and taking pictures, the horizon suddenly turned an ominous dark grey.  So, I hurried up and covered the plants back up again as I began to feel a light rain hitting me along with a distinguishable drop in temperature with strong winds starting to whip the trees in the neighborhood.  To give you an idea of what happened, here's a picture of a lighted tree we have in our front yard.  I have 3-7 lb stones trying to hold this upright but our winds have been very tenacious to say the least.  

I will have to go out and realign the tree again.  I probably have put it back up 5 times this year. Crazy weather to say the least.  

We have a saying in Maryland that if you don'l like the weather, wait an hour.  We are prone to wide variations in the types of climate activities in this region due to the effects of the Appalacian Mountains just west of Baltimore.  There have been countless times when a system comes out of the west and dissipates completely or weakens considerably before moving into our region.  It can be a double edged sword as it sometimes results in periods of little rain and periods of little snow.  We need the snow to kill bacteria and harmful insects that otherwise will survive the winter.

That's about all the activity there is in the garden at this time.  The experiment is proceeding and the winter rye is still hanging in there at this time.  I hope everyone is having a great Christmas season

Until next time, Happy Gardening!

  

Winter's doldrums and the Spring garden

While winter hasn't hit quite yet in the Mid-Atlantic, the temperatures sure took a nose dive this past weekend.  Frigid air, much like most of the US, has taken hold.  And, that has resulted in a hold on activities in the garden.  The winter rye is hanging in there and has actually grown a bit since the cold air descended on the region.
At this time of the year, I like to begin the preps for the early spring crops.  I do that by looking in the various catalogs and determining which plants I want to grow in the upcoming year.  As I usually grow way too many tomatoes and peppers, I have begun to rethink that.  I had 16 tomato plants and 16 Pepper plants last year.  That was way too many for our family and I ended up giving away most of them to neighbors, friends and family.  While I was in the process of doing that, it occurred to me that while it was nice to give my crops away, there certainly could be more efficient use of the space I had taken up with excess crop plantings.
There are an abundance of crops that could replace them and give us more yield for our family.  After all, that's the central point of a backyard garden.  I know I could grow plants like broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage to name a few.  I grew spaghetti squash one year and it was very good as a replacement for actual spaghetti.
I have to really look at it this time as there are other crops I know I have grown that we ate as a family. Timing is everything and it is fast approaching the period to begin starting my plants from seed.  Yes, it seems like only last month we were shutting down the garden and now we begin the whole process over again.    
I checked the progress of my small winter garden and it seems to still be moving along albeit very slowly.  From my research, that is to be expected.  It is supposed to get very cold this weekend so that will give further insight into just how successful I may be.  I am contemplating putting another layer of the heavy duty plastic over the structure to give it more insulation.  But, I have to weigh the benefit of that over the reduction of light getting to the plants.  The winter sun is much less intense and therefore you have to balance the amount of reduction of sunlight the extra layer will result in with the amount of coverage you are implementing.  I am also thinking of laying down a layer of compost around the plants as an alternative to the extra plastic.  I will have to research that in the next couple of days.
Well, that's all that is happening at this moment.  Until next time, Happy gardening everyone.