Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Garden Update

It has been quite a while since I did a post on the garden. This is mainly because not much is happening. I neglect to plant much for the fall/winter season and what I did plant really didn't take off this year. All is not lost though, once the sun starts strengthening late February I will have lots of area ready to plant. This should give me a nice head start on the spring garden.

Here is a photo of the garden presently. We have had kind of a strange winter so far. Snow levels have been really low. Seems we get about an inch at a time followed by a melt shortly after. More normal weather is forcasted now however so all we are waiting on is a good snow cover.

This year I am going to try my best to not over plant the garden. So there will be much less variety this year. This will allow better plant spacing and more of each crop to harvest. It will make for some hard decisions, mainly that I can't plant 15 different kinds of tomatoes!

Below are a few photos of the crops that are growing in the coldframe right now. They never really grew much this fall. Hopefully I will be able to harvest something from the frame once the sun strengthens.

Claytonia, seed shared by Thomas

Red Pac Choi

Tatsoi

Red Scallions, seed shared by Thomas

I planted these this spring and they grew bulbs instead of
scallions. I saved some bulbs this fall and planted them up.
Hopefully they will grow into some bunching onions.

The last point of today's post is to announce I will be doing a seed give away soon. All I have to do is go through my seeds first. My seed box is overflowing and there also is half a drawer full. Once I short thought what I have extra off I will make a few groups and do a draw for them. Keep an eye out for the post and maybe you'll be lucky enough to win some free seeds!

12 comments:

  1. ahh, the winter just brings time for dreaming of the spring garden doesn't it?

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  2. Over plant the garden?.... yea. I am guilty of germinating far too many seeds sometimes.

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  3. I appreciate you for posting suxh a wonderful Blog. The longevity of grow lights is also so much higher than other lighting units, saving gardeners from spending money again and again for the repeated purchase of lights.

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  4. We are the opposite - far more snow than usual. far earlier than usual and it stayed for ages and ages.

    It has thawed now but could well be back before winter is over and done with.

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  5. Your little tunnel looks great! We still have a bunch of greens, kale, collards and such tucked under ours.. I love the photo of the claytonia too - I have a patch in the cold frame. It's a nice treat this time of the year.. thanks for sharing!

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  6. The young plants in the cold frame are poised to leap into growth once the weather and the sun strength begin turning around. They will make some good early spring harvests. I have quite a few items at about the same stage of growth in the greenhouse that are just biding their time now until the sun strength and day length increase.

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  7. I overplanted the fall garden this year, but it still seemed to produce well. The soil there has so much compost in it that right now it is fertile enough. I'm wondering how the soil will do in the raised beds.I can't wait for spring.

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  8. Definitely not much happening on the allotment at the moment. Scratching my head to try to think of things to blog about!

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  9. Those are beautiful red pak choi. I hope they start to grow once it warms up!

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  10. I have about the same going on here. I few seedlings under cover but mostly a lot of snow. I've decided that I'm going to pare down the veggies next year. Only grow a few kinds and buy the rest from the farmers market. I'll follow your progress so I can see what I would have been growing as we often grow the same things.

    Happy New Year.

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  11. HI! I am very happy I found your blog, I used to live in Canada, Ontario and also in Manitoba, I moved to California, and started a garden just now. I am also posting my progress in my blog
    If you want to check
    http://howisitincalifornia.blogspot.com/
    I will use some of your tips and link to your page when I do.
    I am impressed in how are you growing stuff in winter, I lived there and the people I know love to sow and grow vegguies but only did it during summer! I like your blog

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