This winter has been bitterly cruel. Not bitterly cold, just bitterly cruel. It’s tempted us into believing that spring was almost here, then the ground hog predicted 6 more weeks of winter..and we laughed. The weather was warm and what do groundhogs really know about the weather? Do they have live Doppler radar in buried in their dens? I don’t think so, but hey, I’ve been wrong before! Seriously though I’m ready for warmer days.
The trees are too. One of our plum trees is only a few days of sunshine away from bursting out in blooms. It’s too early for it to flower. It would be so easy for a damaging frost between now and April 15th to completely decimate any 2012 plum harvest. Fortunately they are small trees and if I keep an eye on the plums and the weather I should be able to protect them. The weather forecast today actually has 60 degree temperatures, but it also calls for rain which means very little outside time for this gardener. The normal February cool weather returns soon but the warm days coming closer!
An Update From the Vegetable Garden:
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| Sugar snap pea seedling |
There are two updates from the vegetable garden – both of which are positive developments! At the end of January I planted seeds for sugar snap peas and spinach and this morning I have discovered that indeed we do have those two vegetables in our garden’s future. To give you an idea of what kind of temperatures these two plants can take, the lows over the last week have dipped multiple times into the 20’s and even lower. Day time highs were in the 30’s and the occasional 40’s. If your reading this outside of the U.S. please note those are Fahrenheit temps. These are two very cold tolerant plants, even as seedlings.
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| Spinach seedling |
The soil in this bed needs some amending. Notice the clumpy lumps of clay? Clay is full of nutrients but is tightly compacted and isn’t friendly to root growth. I’ll continue top dressing the soil with compost and grass clippings. Eventually the soil will be the nice dark loamy garden soil that is in every gardener’s dream garden.
The rest of the vegetable garden is in desperate need of preparation. The weeds have grown all over and we’re covered in self-sowing cilantro! I love cilantro put we don’t need it in the quantities we have. Maybe soon the garden will dry out enough to work the soil!
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My swiss chard (planted last spring) has still not stopped!
I have enjoyed reading your blog so far (found it a couple weeks ago).
All my fall plantings that were supposed to have died out over this winter never did since it was so mild – I've still got peas, broccoli, onions, garlic, chard and carrots that have come back to life these last couple weeks. So glad to have found you – a gardener that is not all they way up in Seattle or something. We're going on Year 2 of gardening, so looking forward to some tips!
I haven't got anything growing yet but I did notice a little red pepper peeking out from under the dead parsley.
Eileen
Your peas look good. I planted my seeds on the 9th of January and so far no joy. They are AWOL. I'm hoping they'll soon pop up as they take so long to sprout it seems. I checked my records and the daffodils are one month early this year. That is very early but it has been kind of nice. Have a great weekend!