Current Status

There is so much to write about regarding my "winter" plantings. I will start with just an update of the greenhouse and garden area. I have several plants trying to grow despite the unseasonably warm weather. Yesterday, we hit a high of 75 which resulted in the greenhouse heating up even though I had the venting window and door pretty much wide open. The temps inside went into the 90's which is not good for the cool season crops I have growing. Here is the temp at 3 yesterday afternoon.

Despite that, the seedlings appear to be working hard to grow. Here are my spinach (round containers) and lettuce (rectangular) plants. The lettuce seedlings are quite small as they were delayed in sprouting. Not too bad as they struggled early due to our warm weather in the middle of October. I plan on working in some slow release fertilizer this week once the temps drop a bit. That should spur their growth as I water them.
 
I also have leaf lettuce growing well in the one of the grow boxes alog with carrots continuing to progress. I will need to cut the leaf lettuce soon. I will add them to the salad lettuce I recently bought. Then I plan on planting both of the grow boxes with lettuce as I now have a feel for how to manage them.

 
Additionally, I have Giant Ceasar and Swiss Chard growing along with a small planting of radishes. My wife mentioned she had a white onion with top growth that she was using in a roast. She cut off the top and gave it to me. After researching onions, it was apparent that you could plant that and there was a decent chance it would grow another onion. Always open to experimentation, I decided to give it a try as I had nothing to lose. Here are a couple snaps of the plantinng.
 
And heres how it looked this morning. Seems the plant has responded enough to give me hope. As I say, only time will tell.

Once the weather eventually turns, the plants should begin to grow in earnest and the greenhouse will become more productive. One thing I learned last year is that the plants grow at a much different rate than they normally do. But, grow they will.
Speaking of growth, the Winter Rye I planted in my garden beds is probably the best I have ever seen. It is not only taller for this time of year, but it is much thicker and more dense. I am truly excited as this will be a huge step for my garden soil health. Here are a couple pictures of the beds.
  
On another note, I have been collecting various compostable items to place in one or maybe two of my composters. Besides my neighbors contribution, I decided to strip the leaves off of a bunch of branches I was going to cut up. I piled them up on a tarp to begin drying them out. Then I collected my front lawns clippings when I cut the grass on Monday and piled them over the leaves. I did the same thing with the clippings from my back yard and added them to the pile. This is the result that followed all that work.

I also have been collecting cardboard from the various packages that we get. I cut them up and put them into my one cart. I'm letting them sit there to soak up the rain and my periodic watering from my rainbarrow I have to empty before it freezes. Here is the cardboard and a picture showing the current state of the cuttings as of this morning.
 
The weather here in the last few days has been wierd. Mornings have been misty/foggy then the sun breaks through in the afternoon and we have summer. Here are a few pictures to what we woke up to this morning.
 
It was warm with a light rain and pretty dense fog.
So, as can be seen, there has been alot going on in the greenhouse/gardens. I have also been trying to finish all the outside tasks that need to be completed before the cold weather sets in along with maintaining the growing. It's been a little hectic at times but progress is happening. From what I can tell, next week is going to be appreciably cooler than this week.
Well, that's all I have for now. I will write soon about my indoor gardening attempts that I am just setting up and all that entails. Until next time, Happy Gardening Everyone!

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!   

Leaves, leaves and more leaves.

One of the mainstays of my gardening routine is the annual fall collection of leaves.  It affords me time to get outside, get some exercise and collect one of the most important ingredients for my composting.  Last Saturday, our region was hit by some really heavy winds which meant a good portion of the leaves that were still on my tree were blown to other yards and even over my house. When I looked at my tree after the storms, it seemed mother nature threw me a huge curve ball by stripping away a larger percentage of the leaves from my tree than I even imagined.
Nonetheless, I went out yesterday to recover the leaves that were piling up in my back yard.  Much to my surprise, it seems that I was still left with a sizeable amount of leaves.  When all was said and done, as seen in the picture below, I was able to get 6 heavy duty bags of leaves collected.

  

Not a bad haul given the loss from the storms.  I will take these back behind my garage and let them sit in place during winter.  They should decompose a bit during this time.  If my neighbors do put their leaves on the curb for pickup, I may take a bag or two to augment my supply.  These are such a great additive to you compost that it seems such a waste to see them thrown away.

On another note, I checked in to my mini winter garden to see the progress.  As seen below, so far so good!

The lettuce and spinach are doing quite well while the carrots are slowly maturing.  All the plants seem to be on schedule.  We have had several freezes and temperatures in the 30's and the plants seem quite robust given these conditions.  Of course, the telling factor will be when we get into winter weather.  My hope is that the plants will grow to a point where I can cover them with compost thereby adding a little more protection to get them through the winter.  The lettuce probably will not make it through this.  It was a gamble that, to date, has paid off.  I am told that carrots and spinach that have been exposed to colder temps taste better.  We shall see.  And as I have said, this is an experiment that I undertook just to stay active in the garden.  I will have to water them today which should get them through the week.  Winter gardening requires much less work than summer ones.  

Well, that's all for now.  Hope you are enjoying whatever gardening you are doing.  Happy gardening everyone!