Mid February Promise

Bellevue Plot #84, 2/15/11

     The snow has finally melted from the park!  I didn't say it was beautiful.  The collards in the foreground look quite unhappy.  It is wet, muddy, and frozen in spots, but the snow is gone.  Let the dreaming begin.
     On the 13th, I was over at the park with my snow shovel, a first for me.  Somehow, my big plastic orange snow shovel just does not elicit thoughts of spring gardening.  But the shovel was perfect for clearing the soggy mats of straw from the third cold frame.  I am very happy to report that the crunching underfoot during a previous visit was the ice giving way, not one of the glass panels.

Bellevue Plot #84, 2/15/11

     The low part of the uppermost cold frame was the bed with the straw under the glass.  These plants seemed to suffer the most over the winter.  There are two fist sized openings in this frame that were stuffed with leaves or straw, but maybe more air got in.  It is definitely the hardest to clean up to get going again, so the inside straw treatment gets my bottom vote.  I am thinking about pulling everything in this bed to make room for my new veggie starts.  The plants from the frame with the plastic inside look great, as do the plants from the frame with straw on top.  Being in the shade of insulating material during a couple of weeks of the coldest weather does not seem to hurt the plants in the least.  It is about this time, the middle of February, that the sun light is getting longer and stronger.  Growth is soon to resume.

Spinach, arugula, Winter marvel lettuce, Tango lettuce

 
    The little patch of green in the center of the above picture is a clump of volunteer celery starts that are trying to survive the winter on their own.  You can just barely make out the "mother" plant just a little higher and to the left.  The cold frame at the corner of this shot is shown in the next photo.

 

Baby volunteer celery

     The light green clump at the top left are thousands of volunteer baby celery plants.  They appear to have been  very happy under the glass.  There is a volunteer lamb's ear plant, lucky that it had not been pulled as a weed.  To the bottom left corner is a radicchio that is recovering nicely from the Thanksgiving deer raid.  The next threat for that lovely head walks on two legs.

Backyard, 2/15/11

     And you thought the snow was gone!  This is my back yard, only about a mile from the park.  The veggie garden out back is still covered in snow, protected in the shade of the big pin oak.  The shade in this shot is from two maple trees off to the left.  So although I originally rented the Bellevue plot to help get more summer sun for peppers and tomatoes, the winter sun is just as critical in my attempts to extend the growing season.
     So there is mid February promise of better things to come.  Garden on  -  George