Still Snowy after all these Days

     Someday.  Someday the snow will melt.  It must.  It should.  Maybe.  Till then, I still make my trek over to the park to look at my cold frames.  Expecting some miracle.  Hoping for salad greens begging to be taken for a ride.  I am led to believe that five or six feet down the earth is at a steady temperature of something like 50 degrees.  Isn't that the driving force to geothermal heating fields for homes?  If it were 50 degrees, I naively expected that heat to migrate up to the surface when protected by a cold frame.  In my dreams, the snow on the frame would melt from the slight heat within, then the open glass would allow for solar gain and the plants would be happy and I would be happy.  Somewhere along the line I was mislead, for alas, that has not been my experience.

Bellevue Park Gardens 2/2/2011

   On Wednesday, January 26th, we received 10.4 inches of snow.  A lot of it is still here on February 6th. The picture above shows the park gardens on 2/2, a week later.  Still plenty of snow, cold frames still covered.  A closer picture of that same day below

Bellevue Plot #84, 2/2/2011

   Hardly any melt whatsoever in the week.  Certainly no reason in my mind to disturb the snow cover.  Plus the fact, it was cold, baby, cold.  So maybe another day would be better.
    Another day has come.  And gone, and then some.  This morning is February six, a beautiful day.  Blue sky, no clouds.  Great morning to go to the park.  The temperature is even above freezing at 9:00 in the morning, a minor miracle.  I will be able to take off the glass tops, look around, maybe even have an early February salad.  After walking the dog, and still with damp shoes, I hop in the truck, ride over to the park, and there it is.  A parking lot still covered in snow and ice.  Ruts from some other vehicle that have turned into perfect training runs for the luge team.  Still a landscape of snow.  My lonely tracks in the snow from days before nearly gone from the wind trying to erase all evidence of my prior visit.  Well here I am, I might as well go visit.

Bellevue Plot #84, 2/6/2011

   Looks nearly identical to the picture from 2/2.  A little snow has melted from the box, hardly any from the low frames.  Not much reason to pull off the snow.  Let things sleep.  Today is supposed to be 40 degrees and partly sunny.  Tomorrow 45 degrees and partly sunny.  Maybe tomorrow will be the day.  Maybe.  Wishing and hoping.  Still snowy after all these days.  -  George
    

Get Down and Dirty

     Oh no, disaster strikes.  My garden cart full of soil stashed away in the garage has been all used up, finished, gone.  To start more seeds, I need dirt.  Not just store bought dirt, but good out of the garden dirt.  The experts advise to use "sterilized" growing medium to avoid disease and the dreaded "damping off".  Just goes to prove I am no expert.  And cheap to boot.                                                                                                                                        

 
     Somewhere under that pile of snow is dirt.  Only  a nut would try to get potting soil now.  I confess, I am the nut, but you were already starting to suspect that.  Figuring the dirt would be heavy, I grabbed the little toboggon meant for the grand children.  Never been used.  The slight mound just in front of the toboggan is the remains of a leaf pile from the autumn collection.  Leaves that should have been shredded by the garden tractor if the fall had not been too short, too wet and too cold.  But with the snow cover and the leaf cover I figured there would be good treasure underneath, and non frozen at that. 

     There is at least six inches of snow still covering the yard and gardens.  We got ten inches about ten days ago, yet it is still mostly here.  You can just see the layer of leaves starting at the bottom of the snow cover.  I had chosen to dig at a spot where the leaf cover had probably been no more than a foot, rather than the next pile over that probably has five feet of leaves.  That is a project waiting to happen with the advent of some spring weather.

   The leaves had now broken down or packed down to only about six inches.  Digging out that layer revealed the treasure I expected.  Dark brown, moist, thawed, and beautiful dirt!  Well, you do have to be a certified nut to understand my glee.  So I dug out a container full of dirt, filled the leaves back in, then covered everything with snow.  Almost looked like a big squirrel had been digging.
 

    The trip back to the garage was uneventful, made far easier by the kiddie toboggon.  I will have to hide that for future use.  Then to the basement, where more work awaits.  This is my home made dirt sieve, made from boards that I salvaged from a beautiful red oak pallet rescued from a local garden center.  The screen is quarter inch rat wire.  Using the little plastic cup in the picture, it is easy to push the good dirt through the screen, leaving twigs and larger leaves on top.  They go back to a container to take them back to a trip through the compost pile.

  
     Voila.  Good dirt!  Beautiful dark, loamy, sweet earth.  A treasure gathered to await seeds, the start of this year's garden.  Was it worth it?  Yep, in spades.  Got me out in the garden, some dirt under my nails.  Today it is raining a freezing drizzle.  I may have questioned my own sanity going out today.
      So when you can, get down and dirty.  -  George

Pushin it on the Porch

      My porch / mud room / green house is like a life preserver to me during the dull, cold winter months.  Covered with only single pane glass, it does cost me a bit to heat.  But the oasis in the middle of the winter is worth it to keep some of my tender plants alive, and get a jump on spring with young starts you can't find at garden centers.  Several years ago my wife gave me an electric heater by DeLonghi, equipped with a thermostat.  I have it set at the lowest possible setting of 42 degrees, so the heat kicks on at that level.  Just don't bump the heater.  Knocks it off cycle.  Don't have a power outage.  Knocks it off cycle.  Other than those two potential freeze ups, everything is fine.  The porch usually stays 10 - 15 degrees warmer than ambient temperatures from the solar gain during the day.  So I will bear the cost of heating the porch to keep stuff alive.

        The two glass panels to the left are almost a direct southern exposure, with the ones to the right being western.  In December, we were lucky to top out the day temps of just over 40 on cold days.  A couple of days ago with it 30 outside but the sun bright, we hit 53 on the porch.  Heat wave!  I put the bamboo shades down at night, though that helps insulate just a tiny bit.  Also at night, I turn the paddle fan on at low speed to distribute the heat, figuring the cost of the fan to be lower than the cost of wasted heat rising to the ceiling.

     This shot is a flat with garlic starts in the front and 1/2 flat of arugula in the back.  Darn, now I will have to lock the door to keep daughter Barb from snitchin the arugula.  Grand son Wesley is known to eat his unfair share also.  The garlic cloves were from some plants thrown away on the communal compost heap.  They were too small to plant in the fall for a summer crop, so I figured I would try them inside.  Maybe eat them as green garlic.  Waste not.  There are little tiny garlic starts in the back ground cell pak that were from the teeny tiny bulblets at the top of one of the garlic scapes.  The literature says it will take 2 - 3 years for those plants to produce edible garlic.  I can wait.  Right now my time is cheaper than my money.  Those little seeds cost me absolutely nothing, but will yield the joy of watching them develop.  This particular arugula is "Ice Bred" from Fedco Seeds, though I just planted some more arugula from seed I saved from last year.

The flats on the upper shelf are mainly from the cole family, possibly kale, kohlrabi or broccoli.  Yes they are labeled, I just can't read them in this picture.  I start them in the basement where it is warmer, but then move them to the porch as soon as they get a couple of little leaves.  The cold temperatures on the porch seem to slow the rate of growth so the little plants don't get leggy.  At least that's my story and I am sticking to it.  There are two six packs of Giant Winter Spinach started.  Some time I am going to hit the 15 minute spinach window just right where it is not too early or too late to plant.  So far I am still waiting to hit that perfect time.  Spinach for me is a tough crop.  Maybe a couple of good days before Murphy appears in the garden to steal away the beautiful spinach before I get my merit badge.  On the lower shelf are a couple of flats of Walla Walla onions and red burgundy onions, both from seed.  This is the first year I have actually started onions by seed.  I think the packets were on clearance for 8 cents per pack at the Christmas Tree Shops.  A bargain if just a few come up.

      This container is filled with "round about" lettuce.  Round about in that Lou Gallo gave some extra Black Seeded Simpson plants to Bob King at the park.  Bob had a nice stand of lettuce in December before the predicted sub freezing weather, so I asked Bob if I could dig some for my cold frames.  Sure, no problem.  I actually intended to give them to daughters Barb and Em for their cold frames, but that was before the weather got "too".  Too cold, too wet, too snowy.  You got it, just plain "too" something or other.  They have sat quite happily on the porch for a month and a half.  I'm about ready to have a salad.  Barb and Em, it is much "too" snowy to worry about the lettuce now.  Maybe in a week or so.  Maybe not.  Maybe "too" bad. Next year there may be multiple tubs of lettuce on the porch.  For that matter, they could probably make it as mini cold frames, burying them a few inches in the garden, and just putting the lid on.

To the left is a Jade plant on the bottom of the picture, and artichokes at the top.  The Jade is a pretty tough customer, having survived on the porch over winter in prior years without heat or water.  Please don't send the plant police after me.  He revived just fine in the spring.  The artichokes though are trying my patience.  I have tried them several times.  I have given plants to other folks to try.  I WANT to taste a home grown artichoke.  They are supposed to, maybe are supposed to, or just maybe will over winter if you are very, very lucky.  I have not been so lucky.  They sulk, they rot, they die.  So this year a couple are being pampered on the porch.  And look great.  No problem, right?  Well maybe there is a problem.  I planted artichokes and a near relative called cardoon.  Labeled both, somehow lost the labels.  Does anyone on this side of the Atlantic even know what cardoon looks like?  Or how to cook it.  I have started both again from seed, and have a new labeling system.  If I don't lose the labels.  If the labels don't smudge.  If the birds don't take a liking to the labels.  If the fox babies don't like new shiny toys.  Cardoon anyone?
      Till next time, dreaming of spring  -  George

Goodbye January

     Finally!  The calendar says it is the last day of January.  Finally, not a day too soon.  I visited the park today to check on the cold frames, really to check on my greens.  Parked the truck back by the maintenance sheds as the parking lot by the barn was not plowed.  Not a complaint, just an observation.  Someone had driven through the lot and compacted the snow there into a couple of walkable ruts.  The ten inch snow of last Wednesday has compacted down to about six inches, but has not melted even on paved areas.  Staying in the path traveled by some courageous four wheeler, I was able to get to the edge of the community garden and gaze out at my plot, number 84, close to the middle.  Some animal tracks had pierced the virgin snow, but none approached my plot.  I could see that the tallest cold frame still held snow, unlike last year when the two foot snows trashed many of my single paned cold frames.  Making them look like white donuts, with the snow stacked on the edges, but imploded with a donut hole in the middle where the glass collapsed onto the veggies.  So far, that does not appear to be this year's fate.  But why trudge out to the middle to disturb the frames?  The snow cover is insulating the plants from at least the wind.  Tonight is forecast to be another wintry event, with maybe one to three inches of some combination of snow, slush and rain.
     So tomorrow will be February.  Hooray.  Not usually looked upon as any great gardening month here in Delaware, but one month closer to spring.  By the middle of the month the days will be just a little bit longer.  You will be able to feel the increasing strength of the sun on your skin.  The surviving plants, hopefully there will be some, will have enough light to start growing.  Supposedly, even if one heated the cold frames, there would not be much growth from mid November to mid February due to short day length.  With that in mind, I have been starting seeds, to have the next set of plants to try to push the limits.  Ah, maybe we are about to turn the corner.  Goodbye January, I will not miss you.   Prepare to garden on  -  George

Brrrr, it be cold!!

     It wasn't supposed to be like this.  Joe Bastardi of Accuweather promised in late November that the worst of the winter would be over by the end of December.  Well December was indeed cold, but the garden survived, and we were on to the New Year with a mild winter in store.  Wrong!  Joe, what happened?  It is twelve degrees as I write this.  A new monster heating oil bill hit just yesterday.  With predicted lows of seven to nine degrees for the next couple of days, what would happen to the plants inside my single pane cold frames?

  So this is what the garden looked like on January 19th.  The little bit of snow was adding some nice insulation.  But by the 20th, uh oh,

 

    The snow has melted, and the veggies look great.  But the cold is coming!  So how do I insulate?  It is windy out at the park, I mean really windy.  I could put leaves on top of the cold frames, but would expect them to blow away.  I could cover the frames with row covers!  But that would violate my rule of keeping things CHEAP.   And the plastic might shred in the wind and blow away.  Come on, as the saying goes, "Think outside the box."  Eureka moment!  Not outside the box, why not think inside the box?  Leaves or insulation placed INSIDE the box would be protected from the wind!!!  I have never read of anyone else insulating inside the box, so will it work and can I patent the idea?
      

      Above is the original cold frame, the box in the upper right hand corner of the above photos.  The light colored leaves that look like little celery leaves are indeed celery seedlings from the seed spread from summer seed heads.  And the little bitty fern like leaves that look like carrot tops?  Yep, baby carrots from all of those beautiful seed heads I encouraged to grow last summer.  The ones that look like Queen Anne's Lace.  So I am anxiously waiting to see how these volunteers will develop this spring.  All of the plants in this box are volunteers transplanted or naturalized from mother plants in other areas of the garden.  Too small to point out are the baby water cress plants that sprung up even after that long brutal stretch of last summer.  Ah, did I say summer.  I would love to be hot, humid, and sweaty right now.  For at least a few minutes.

    So I opened the box cold frame in the top corner and put two used (courtesy of a neighbor's leaf donation from the fall) clear plastic bags over the little plants we just looked at in the picture of the open box.  In the picture above, you can see the reflection of the bags now in the box.  So a layer of plastic under the glass to help that frame.
    Now for the fun part.  I took off all the panels from the middle frame, then unrolled sixteen feet of plastic sheeting (a donation of a roll of bags that never had the proper seals between bags).  The five mile an hour cold wind that was hardly noticeable to me, was highly noticeable to the plastic.  It was instant flag and kite day at the park!  I would secure one end, scurry to the other, and by that time have a sixteen foot streamer!  Time and time again.  Really a little embarrassing.  Totally frustrating.  So in the end, that idea had to be abandoned.  Luckily I had another five used plastic bags that fit the job quite nicely, and  a large frame was done.
     By this time, the whole endeavor was feeling a lot like work, and it dawned on me that the forecast was for two to four inches of snow that night, BEFORE the predicted cold weather.  Duh.  Dummy.   Mother nature was going to insulate for me if I had the patience to wait.
     Well guess what?  Joe, the weatherman was wrong again.  We got less than an inch of snow, and it wasn't going to do the job against seven degrees.  So, what to do?  I was not willing to chance losing my little veggies, so it was back to the park.  Now 28 degrees, and a brisk twenty mile an hour wind.  Took my trusty pitch fork inherited from my grand father, and borrowed an overturned garden cart left by a fair weather gardener from better climes.  Figured I was not likely going to meet them at their plot on such a lovely gardening day.  So with my pants flapping and my teeth chattering, I hauled five carts full of straw from the communal compost pile.  Lifted the glass panels and tucked straw underneath.  But then the thought of having to pull all that straw back out to get to the veggies overwhelmed me.  And made it easy to conclude that the third bed should be covered with the straw.  After all, the pile I just forked had not blown away.

    So if you go to the park today, you will not see the plants above that you could have seen yesterday.  Instead, I hope that my little veggies are safely tucked away.  Some now with an extra layer of plastic below the glass, and some with straw either above or below the glass.  A fitting experiment to see which, if any, might keep old man winter from claiming the spoils.
    Now I may have a week or two away from the park before the worst of the winter hopefully is done.  Time to relax?  Nope, time to get all of the cold weather crops seeded indoors before their debut in the spring.
    Garden on,  George

Starting the New Year

     That miserable cold December weather made me stir crazy.  So with a little warming on January 2nd, it was back to the park to get cold and dirty.  This picture shows my two previously completed cold frame projects and a bed that was hastily covered with plastic before the cold weather set in.  I was worried that the instant bed would crush the plants as there was not much headroom, actually there was no headroom.  Snow and rain had formed frozen ice jams on top of the plastic, so I feared for the greens underneath.  So, onto the first building project of the year!

 

      The plastic was gingerly moved away from the bed to reveal that the plants starts had indeed made it, and actually looked pretty happy.  From bottom to top is celery that I rescued from the communal compost pile, a couple of garlic starts, two rows of arugula, and several rows of mizuna mustard.

     Above is the "before" picture.  Shown are the glass panels that have been "lovingly stored in the garage for over a decade, just waiting for the perfect opportunity."  The opportunity is here.  The boards on top of the compost pile are "Trex" lumber.  I got two 20 ft x 6 inch and one 12 ft x 12 inch from responding to a Craigslist offer.  Free!!  Well over $100 if I had purchased the stuff.  And oh yes, the glass panels were rescued years ago from a neighbors trash on the curb.  Thrift and recycling at its best.  Please notice in the above picture the desolation of the surrounding plots.  December was cold and windy, and even the hardy cole crops suffered.

      This was a quick and dirty construction job.  The north side of the cold frame is the Trex 2 x 6 anchored upright by several oak slats driven into the ground and attached with screws.  The south side of the frames sit right on the ground.  When time permits, I will add height to the frame to allow for taller veggies, but this was a quick rescue mission!  So here above is the completed frame in only a couple of hours.

     This is another picture taken right before the completion of the new cold frame.  The higher cold frame in the top right corner was my first frame.  Most of the plants in it are either volunteers that grew right there, or have been transplanted there.  There are tons of volunteer carrots and celery growing around the garden from the seed heads that I left to grow last season.  The plants in the frame to the left of the box were started from direct seeding on 8/27/10.  From left to right were Easter Egg Radish mix, Rouge d'Hivre lettuce, Tenderheart Chinese Cabbage, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, Champion collards, arugula, Pak Choi, Tyee spinach, Fedco Tenderleaf Hardy Greens, Ching Chang, Fedco Senposai, Mizuna mustard and Tah Tsai.  The three that have not done well are Pak Choi, Tyee spinach and Ching Chang.  I wish I had more of the beautiful little Tah Tsai.  Many of the plants from this bed were thinned and transplanted to the other two frames.

     Planted in the second bed and very successful are Fedco's Thick Ribbed Chinese mustard and ice arugula.  Both of these will be new standards for the garden.  Also very nice is the fairly sweet Red Russian kale, which never makes it to the frying pan because it is so good eaten straight from the garden.   -   So ends the first try,  1/9/11   George

   

Thanksgiving Greens

   

       Yes there was a fall harvest.  Several gorgeous open heads of radicchio developed from a spring seeding of a Burpee mesclun mix.  I just had to try to make a salad wreath from the radicchio picked Wednesday, November 24th.

      The only plants to make it through the hot summer from the spring mesclun planting were several of these beautiful bronze flat heads.  After lots of picture surfing on the web, I have concluded that they are radicchio.  I have no clue as to which variety. 

       These were the various greens picked to stuff around the radicchio. On the counter are pickings of mizuna mustard, chinese greens, red russian kale, tango lettuce, pea plant tops, tah tsoi, pak choy, frizze, arugula, red ribbed dandelion, and oak leaf lettuce. 

      Pictured above is the completed project.  Turned out to be both beautiful and delicious.  It is now the middle of January as I am rewriting this as a Blog post, and wow do I wish that I could sit down with this beauty for dinner!

      After the Thanksgiving feast, I took daughter Barb over to the park to look at the garden.  Somebody had cut and taken my other five radicchio heads and topped out the red ribbed dandelions!   Nothing else was taken, but to say I was irate and bummed is a major understatement.  Foul words were probably heard at the park. To rip off a fellow gardener on Thanksgiving was an insult to all gardeners.  The Friday morning after Thanksgiving I went over to the park to resurvey the damage under better light.  Nothing else taken or amiss.  Looking very carefully in one bed near the dandelions, I spied one, then another and yet another foot print!  I was going to go to the park office to see, if with my new evidence I could have the culprit arrested, but I didn't really expect that they had identifying deer hoof prints on file.  So, with the crime solved my anger was significantly appeased.  I had been visited by the dastardly deer herd, not two legged thieves.  Much easier to accept than some other gardener helping themselves.  Interesting that the only things chomped were both of the chicory family.  And lucky that the topped produce will regrow over time from the deep tap roots.  So the gardening goes on.  Have to build some cold frames to protect some things from the oncoming winter.  Hoping your Thanksgiving was good -  George