Winter Garden

Here's my garden, sleeping beneath the snow. Time for snuggling into my warm little burrow and planning for next year. I am still growing things: sprouts! I got a nifty sprout-growing set for my birthday and it's fun (not to mention, delicious) to have fresh, green growing things around. Stay warm everybody! My next post will be when I'm readying to buy seeds for the spring.

End of the Growing Season

After the light frost at the beginning of October, the heartier plants kept producing into early November, when we were hit by several hard frosts. I'm not sure of the dates on these photos, but they're from early November, just before the hard frosts that happened around the 6th-8th. The tomatoes that were close to the soil and protected by foliage from the October frosts continued to ripen as the plants no longer were putting energy into the leaves. Some of the green tomatoes I picked also ripened on the counter and as of December 20th, I have one left!

One of my last acts in the garden was to cover the herb bed in a thick layer of straw and cardboard. I'm hoping that this will protect the iffy perennials from temperature extremes and root damage, so that I might find my oregano, thyme, sage, and marjoram greening in the spring. So far we've gotten a lot of snow, so there's a good chance they'll be insulated enough to survive.

Behold the carnage! After the october frosts, all the tender crops looked like this.


I simply can't imagine how many cucumbers I would have had if I'd started earlier in the year. As it was, I struggled to use them all!

The green beans weren't as thoroughly decimated as the squash or cucumbers. I was able to keep harvesting small amounts for a few weeks.

The obstinate wax beans surprised me with their cold tolerance and I wound up harvesting more in October than earlier in the year.


This is what harvesting tomatoes was like: searching for ripened survivors under the protective layers of dead foliage.


One of my final harvests of tomatoes and beans. The hearty onions were usable well into November, and I may even find some of them still alive in the spring.


These were harvested after the hard frosts of early November and were just fine, if a bit spicy. I'd like to find a milder variety for next year.


Of course my brassicas were going like gangbusters after the frosts, happy that the evil caterpillars were finally dead. This cabbage became delicious sauerkraut.

The hardiness champion was the Brussels sprouts, naturally. I harvested many right out of the snow!

These were the very last thing harvested from the garden, for the occasion of Kristine's visit. They were fantastic! (The visit was a great time too!)

First Frost! October 3rd

This blog has been desperately in need of an update! I think I got overwhelmed with processing photos and vegetables and kept putting it off. Basically, at the end of September I harvested a ton of veggies for a mini-CSA for mom and Joe, and then a week later (October 3rd) we had our first frost in Zumbrota.

In town it supposedly only got to 34, but I think it must have been colder here on the farmstead. All of the cucurbitaceae died, and most of the upper leaves of my beans wilted. My tomatoes got all wilted at the top, but I think the ground kept the lower branches warm and I'm finally harvesting some ripe tomatoes from them a week later. It warmed up immediately after the frost, and rained a couple of times, so the rest of the garden is doing great. The brassicaceae and cruciferae are just thrilled about the cool, wet weather, and are thriving. Another frost isn't expected for a while, so I can continue harvesting most of the vegetables. I'm still not sure if the beans are continuing to grow or not, since they just look so unhappy.

The amazing thing is that if it had just stayed a couple of degrees warmer I would still bee harvesting everything. As it is, though I got a week more growth than the median last frost-free date (9/28), so I'm not complaining.

Here are some photos from the end of September (I don't have exact dates):

This isn't even the final harvest of turnips. I got at least 30 large-sized turnips from a 3'x3' area! PS: this was the advanced guard of what was to be legions of Asian Beetles.

Not content to simply grow the vegetables, I have also been crocheting them.

The cauliflower I produced was amazingly tender and flavorful. I'm still shocked I was able to grow this finicky vegetable so well, and it was likely because of my late planting date.


I definitely need to plant more carrots next year. These were one of the tastiest and most useful of all my garden plants. They are also very fun to pull out of the ground.

Well I didn't make it to the Sierras this year, but I was able to pretend I was among the Sequoias when I was picking celery.

My cayenne didn't yield much this year but they were still tasty and cute.


These luscious greens don't know what's going to hit them in a few nights! Everything but the basil and zucchini kept producing for at least a month, though.

Carrots are Catching up, General Update

Carrots

My carrots are starting to emerge, so perhaps I didn't doom them to rot in the ground after all. The dill and cilantro seeds I sprinkled around at the last minute are coming up too, so perhaps Apiaceae simply take a little longer to get going.

Other Veggies

On the other hand, many of my collards and beans have not yet emerged, so I may have to re-plant. We're going out of town this weekend, so I'll give them until Monday to hustle up out of the soil.

One of my cabbages died (a Red Acre) out of the 15 or-so others. That's pretty good for a plant that's known to transplant poorly. I still have a few extra seedlings, so I'll put another one in. The red cabbage has looked the most unhappy, so I don't know if it's the variety or how they were treated before I got them. Hopefully the green varieties will keep doing well.

The peppers are back to wilting again, but now they're growing dark green leaves up top. I can only assume that's a good thing, as I have no idea what to think at this point.

Water Management

I think I was over-watering things, so I'm going to pull back a bit. I'll try to keep it more around the recommended 1" per week, with the exception of the seedlings, which I've been watering every 1-2 days to keep the soil moist.

Phenology

The corn in our 'neighborhood' is finally tasseling. It's so tall we can't see the road anymore, which is nice. Hopefully the harvest will be good after such a crazy spring.

Birds A-go-go

Hold still you naughty goldfinch!

Just wanted to make note that our bird diversity is even greater than I expected. Today I saw a pheasant in the far SE field and I'm watching a juvenile Northern Flicker play in the sandbox right now. This is in addition to the Rosebreasted Grossbeaks, Goldfinches, mysterious little greenish songbirds, Housefinches, Hummingbirds, Orioles, Cardinals, Turkey Vultures, Hawks, Kestrels, Bluejays, countless Robins, and more that we've already seen. If only my camera could capture them from a distance--I always scare them away before I can approach.

Starting Out in 2008

Our house, with a vibrant sunset tinted by Canadian forest fires.

Well, Dan and I have moved out to a lovely country house in Zumbrota! It came with a fenced paddock in the backyard, which the landlord was keeping sled dogs in. It seemed like just the perfect place for a garden as it will deter the more lethargic deer and rabbits. Although it was so late in the year, mom and I have had good luck starting late gardens. From a weed ecology perspective it's a good idea, because all of the early weeds have done their thing by the time you start. Also, you're past the danger of late frosts.

This year has been strange for weather. The spring was very long and wet--planting was delayed all across the Midwest and then we were hit by relentless rain leading to flooding. That, plus a few hailstorms, means that most gardens and all the crops have been delayed. I even picked and canned strawberries on July 4th! In most years they would be long over by then.

So far I've bought many started plants from the garden mart at the grocery store. Another benefit to late planting is that the starts are dirt cheap! Only $0.25 apiece for vegetables (but the herbs were more dear at $3 each). Getting the garden started was more costly than I'd hoped, but as I've learned in the past, you can't truly do it to save money unless you're comparing the costs to buying upscale organic produce. Also, there are more costs the first year. Here's the breakdown of the annual expenses:

$25 + 5 - having the neighbor till the garden + 2 straw bales
$30 - herbs and vegetable starts
$75 - seeds from Johnny Seeds (yikes!)
$25 - 6 40-lb. bags of composted manure

The garden, freshly tilled. It's in a handy, fenced paddock. The barrels in the background are the doghouses from the landlord's sled dogs.

I also got some wonderful gardening tools from Lehman's. My favorites so far are the ass-kicking Wilcox gardening tools. Each one is made from a solid piece of stainless steel, so there's nothing to break, and I've broken more trowels and dibbles than I can count. The craftsmanship is excellent and they're even marked to measure planting depth. The customer service lady I talked to just raved about them--she's been gardening for 40 years and she says the only tools she needs is a Wilcox trowel, a pair of snipers, and a new pair of gloves each year.

I also got the metal watering can I've always dreamed of, a large spade, a couple of pairs of gloves, and a heavy-duty rake.

The neighbor, a farmer himself, did a great job of tilling the garden. The soil seemed so compacted I was worried, but he fluffed it up really well and made it perfectly level. Then (after dodging a few nasty storms) I dug it into raised mounds. They're about 25' long and about 3' wide and about 1' above the walkways.

The mounds, mostly finished and planted with solanaceae.

I got enough manure for one 40-lb. bag per row (or maybe a little extra, depending on if I plant all the rows). I'm not sure if this is enough, so I might add synthetic fertilizers. Since it's the first year, I have no idea of the underlying fertility of the soil and this may be a good bet, especially for the tomatoes (those greedy bastards!).

So far the main limitation has been working around the shady areas. There are a lot of trees here, so I'll probably have to go with some irregularly shaped plantings to avoid the dark spots. I think that since I'm planting so late and the days are getting shorter, finding enough sunlight will be essential.

At this point I think the only other thing I need is an extension to the hose and one of those gentle shower head type attachments. I've been doing pretty well with the watering can, but once the whole garden is planted it will be really time consuming to water the whole thing. The landlord left a sprinkler here, as well.

I also want to get some garlic to plant in the fall, but it is outrageously expensive. Gardening books warn you off of using what you find at the grocery store, but when the option is spending $12-21 for only 3 bulbs from a fancy catalog, I may take my chances with the grocery garlic. Next: planting!