written by Tom
TYs 2011 garden has begun. We started by pulling back the frost cloth on one bed, as well as the leaf covering I put on the other beds. What I learned is that if you want to garden and eat out of it during winter, use frost cloth. The leaf cover wasn't as successful as I'd hoped, as it allowed rot to set in under the surface. However, it did protect some of our plants that managed to live above the "rot line", and as such we have two big beds of spinach ready for early spring action.
Once the frost cloth was removed, followed by a few days of rain, our collards wasted no time and sprang to life. Yumm, yumm, we're gonna be eatin' some collards this week (I even bought a package of bacon, for that purpose).
The lettuces fared wonderfully under the frost cloth, and we've already harvest about a pound of our purple loose leaf and the green and purple romaine variety.
Turnips and spinach. Well, the spinach survived my leaf experiment, but of the turnips only a handful made it. So, lesson learned. Frost cloth? Check!
And with the few days of rain, and removing the leaves, this second spinach patch really popped forward. Everything here was about half the size you see here when we covered them up for Jack Frost.
More spinach. Can you tell we were determined have us some dang spinach? "I yam what I yam," as the good sailor with one eye would say.
The weather this weekend is PERFECT February spring weather. I know, February isn't really spring. BUT, to a gardener and beekeeper as myself, when buds start appearing it's spring. This week red maple trees suddenly had lots of buds sprouting forth. They'll be opening in the next two weeks. This is a sign to get to work. First off? Get rid of that Pompass Grass monster in our back yard. I'd been afraid to tackle this giant. It was H-U-G-E. Yvonne's electric hedge trimmer sliced through that monster no problem. Olive decided that the grass fronds were new playtoys. Puffs of dog and grass were everywhere!
Olive shows off how well she can "place", which is to hold a spot until released on any surface. This old stump is what I use to chop wood. It was a perfect place for "place". "Look, Mommy, I can do it!"
2 comments:
Maybe I missed it in a previous entry - have you tried growing arugula? I finally had a salad with it this weekend and it sparked my interest.
We have not. Once we've finished out the batch of seeds we have this year, we'll be getting new and arugula is definitely on the list.
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