snowy day

We have a foot of snow on the ground now, very early for us. It's still coming down. Very pretty.

In stormy fashion
Ends the dark season;
The wind's in a passion
Out of all reason.
Winter, so loth to go,
Howls, spitting out the snow,
Like froth of madness.

~Danske Dandridge, "The End of Winter," 1902

mom's garden during ANOTHER March nor'easter

Arrgh! (Or as my sister wrote, AYFKM!!?) We're in the middle of our third nor'easter in 10 days. The first was 2 inches of heavy rain with very high winds and lot's of coastal flooding. The second was about 8 inches of very heavy wet snow that brought down lots of trees. This one is a blizzard that will give us 2 feet of fluffy snow with high winds. Some years, I'm out planting peas about now.

March nor'easter aftermath

Here's the aftermath of the nor'easter we had last night. Eight inches of very heavy wet snow piled onto the trees and brought down many branches, including two huge ones from my beautiful Carolina silver bell that landed on my chicken coop. No damage to the coop but it took a lot of effort to clear and burn the fallen wood.

I had built a lean-to over my new little lettuce tunnel and the plants look just fine underneath.

winter garden

My garden is snow covered from an early storm. We got about 5 inches of heavy wet snow yesterday. My winter tunnel collapsed at the ends. I didn't put the top support on. I'll do that soon. I use duct tape and attach a PVC pipe along the top apex of each hoop to keep the hoops from collapsing inward. I'm also missing a hoop at the left end.

I opened up the tunnel today and loved the feel of the warm humid air that escaped. It's great how the sun warms the air through the greenhouse plastic. My tunnel has two layers - one of greenhouse plastic and then another of winter fabric row cover.



I've been experimenting with different greens in my tunnel. Spinach always does super well. I tried a big row of arugula this year and it's awesome too. Escarole and mustard greens are great. I pick a salad bowl once a week and alternate with store-bought. I have several varieties of lettuce growing. I'm really pleased with my iceberg lettuce Ice Queen. I have 4 heads and looking forward to harvesting a couple for a nice Christmas salad. I think this lettuce would be even better if I had started it a bit earlier and had bigger heads, but the loose outer greens are holding up really well in the cold tunnel.

All of my greens will start growing soon - late January - once the sunlight starts to increase. Nothing's growing now, but my tunnel greens always grow like crazy with increasing sun and then by Feb and March it's full. I pick leaves here and there and am patient until the daylight increases.

fall and winter garden planning

I've finished planting most of my fall vagarables now. This week I'll plant a couple more. Fall vegetables are ones I harvest before they are killed by cold weather and don't use any cold protection.

I'm beginning to plan my winter bed now. I'll use the same double layered tunnel that's worked well for me the past couple years. I'll fill this bed with crops that are full grown by early November so I'll be able to harvest them all winter.

My fall vegetables: beets, carrots, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, lettuce, arugula, spinach, escarole, and broccoli.

My winter vegetables: spinach, escarole, lettuce, and arugula.

I'm keeping record of my planting on my 2017 planning list.

snow shoeing to my garden

Ten days after my last post and our scenery is whiter. And colder. We had 10 inches of snow Thursday and another 3 or 4 last night. It looks like we're in a snowy pattern with more to come.

snow on the garden

We got about 6 inches of fluffy snow.

today's garden work

It seems I should be finishing up with my garden for the season, but I'm hurrying to get my winter crops set. This is what I did in the garden today.

- Clean out tomato debris from my winter bed (this bed has hardware cloth dug in 8 inches around the base to deter voles and also has brackets to support the PVC hoops)

- Spread compost and manure on winter bed (3 bags Black Earth compost and 2 bags composted manure) and dig it in (I dig it in only turning a shovelful here and there, trying to both distribute the amendments and preserve some of the soil structure)

- Plant seedlings in the winter bed, including chard, broccoli, bok choi, lettuce, and spinach - leaving room to seed more spinach

- Mulch the winter bed seedlings with salt marsh hay (I have no water at the garden, so I hope they take root OK)

- Put in place low metal hoops and tall PVC hoops for my double layer winter tunnel

- Clear out my watermelon bed for planting a few cloves of extra giant garlic given to me by a friend (most of my garlic - 70 cloves - was planted several weeks ago in my community garden plot)

- Amend the garlic bed with compost and manure, dig it in, and then plant the garlic (I need to mulch this bed later)

- Cover my lettuce bed with row cover since it might go below 30 tonight

I'm glad my new pup Charley and big sister Suzie are so good. They ran and played nearby while I worked. The leaves and cool weather are great fun for them.

inside my winter tunnel

My winter tunnel is full of greens. Spinach, several types of lettuce, arugula, radicchio, kale, chard, collards, salad turnips, daikon and salad radish, cilantro, some frilly red mustard, escarole, bok choi. Can't beat this balmy December weather for cool weather crops! I have parsley, escarole, broccoli, beets and kale outside with no protection.



Plants in my tunnel are from my winter seed sowing calendar, which is part of Skippy's full-season planting calendar app. I planted everything to test the planting dates in the app.

The app is $1.99 (iOS or Android). I think the price will go up for the next season (probably to $2.99), so it makes sense to get it now. All pf the app updates will apply whether your buy before or after the price increase. The calendar has spring and fall planting schedules too.

I'm counting down the days til my spring planting begins - end of February!



My only complaint with my tunnel is that I wish I had planted more of them! Next year...

plastic tunnel is getting ready to assemble

Right now, the skeleton of a tunnel is standing. Bare white PVC arches over thin metal hoops. When night time temperatures dip to freezing (32F), I pull cloth over the metal hoops and then remove it in the morning.

I'm hoping to get some use out of the tunnel this year. Last year, voles or chipmunks ate everything inside once I closed the plastic up.

This year's attempt to keep critters out:
- 6 inches of hardware cloth dug in around the edges of bed
- castor oil/soap mix soaked into soil at edges of bed
- I'll secure the plastic to edges of bed when I close it up
- Watch carefully for holes the past weeks so I don't close it up with a critter inside

It would be nice to have salad greens all winter. We'll see.

I'm still not sure about the plastic tunnel concept. I've read that it works, but still haven't done it successfully myself. Mine is so far from any heat source (except the sun and soil). I suspect it's success depends on the winter weather - snow cover, sunny days, temperatures. Interesting to read:
- excerpt from Eliot Coleman's Winter Harvest Handbook, overwintering in a tunnel
- Johnny's Winter Growing Guide

My tunnel will have two layers: (1) a layer of winter cold protection Agribon fabric on the low metal hoops (I actually doubled this layer because the roll's width was twice my bed's width - it made it easy to double it), and (2) an outer layer of greenhouse plastic that will go on the PVC hoops. Today, my husband and I used duct tape to attach long 1x2 straps of wood to the apex of the PVC arches to keep snow from collapsing the hoops.

At my old house, my cold frame was right up against the south wall of our house. My baby spinach would survive the winter and start growing in February. By March and April I'd have a frame full of spinach.

I wish the plants in the bed were a bit bigger. Next year, I start them a couple weeks earlier. (I followed my winter planting app dates - I'll adjust them earlier too.)

It's a nice warm November. Maybe I won't need to close it up for a few more weeks. The hawks do a good job keeping the critters out.

turnip seeds

The turnip seeds arrived a day later than the rest of my Johnny's shipment. They're planted now too.

September 11, 2015 
Turnip, Scarlet Queen Red Stems

sowing for winter garden - 9 weeks before Persephone

I just got a package from Johnny's. More seeds to sow for my winter garden. Here's what I have going so far:

September 6, 2015 (10 weeks before Persephone)
Kale, Red Russian
Kale, Vates
Blanching Onions, Nabechan
Radicchio, Perseo

September 10, 2015 (9 weeks before Persephone)
Collards, Flash
Swiss chard, Peppermint
Cilantro, Calypso
Lettuce, Bibb, Winter Density
Lettuce, Romaine, Truchas
Lettuce, Butterhead, Skyphos
Escarole, Natacha
Endive, Tres Fine
Mustard Greens, Ruby Streaks
Daikon Radish, Miyashige

Looks like I forgot to order the turnip seeds. Maybe I'll find some in a store this week. And I noticed that escarole, endive and mustard greens are not on my app. A winter garden has to have these! I'll add them in the next version. I've never grown Daikon before, so this is an experiment.

My Johnny's package also had some Fall Greens Manure Mix, a cover crop. I'll try scattering this under my tomato plants soon, to get it going. I can also plant it now in my squash beds, which have petered out.

Lastly, the package had AG-19 row cover, which will be one of two layers I'll use to protect my winter garden from the cold.

sowing seed for my winter garden

Even though my last year's winter garden was eaten to the ground by voles, I'm planting another one this year. I'm planting all of the crops included in my Winter Planting Calendar App (part of my Full Season Calendar App). I'm using the dates recommended there. It'll be a good double check of the app.

The app requires an input of my "Limited Daylight Date", which is the date when my area falls to less than 10 hours of sunlight per day (also called the beginning of the Persephone Period). This is November 10 for me.

The week of September 1 (this week), I'm planting kale, bunching onion, collards and radicchio. Next week, I'll plant Swiss chard, cilantro, lettuce and turnip.  I'm planting indoors in pots as the weather is still so hot and I don't have a good watering system outside. I'll just baby the seedlings indoors for a couple weeks, and then set them out.

For cold protection, I'm planning to use greenhouse plastic over PVC hoops again. I plan to use double cold protection this year: I'll add a second layer of Agribon floating row cover over the plants. For vole protection, I'm planning to dig in a 6 inch deep layer of hardware cloth all around the edge of the bed (as soon as the weather cools down a bit). I'll attach it to the outside of the raised bed. I also plan to soak castor oil into the soil at the edge of the beds. I'm thinking I'll be bold and set up two raised beds for winter this year, rather than the single failed one I set up last year. Why not.

snow blowing the garden

My husband and I removed a good foot of snow from the garden today. Husband pulled the snow blower down there and made fast work of it. I just want to see some soil!! I hope this will help.

Boston breaks its all-time snow fall record!

As of tonight, Boston officially has had 108.6 inches (9.05 ft, 2.76 meters) of snow this season, topping a all previous records back to 1872. I was trying to find the snowfall total for the western suburbs of the city, where my garden is, as we have gotten quite a bit more than Boston. I'll add it here if I find it. Like everyone else in the area, I'm thinking:

"All right already! Let's have Spring now!!"

The Boston Globe wrote last week that, given the amount of snow cover we have now (officially 15 inches now in my town) and the rate its melting, we'll likely have snow on the ground til mid-April. MID-APRIL!! By then, I usually have a backyard full of crocus and daffodils. I often have peas and fava beans a couple inches high; my garden beds are surely turned and ready to plant by mid-April. I often have lettuce, onion and kale seedlings hardened off and ready to plant.

I guess we'll have to play it by ear this year in the garden. Go with the flow, wing it, see how it goes .... And, yes, I'm still planting by the calendar because who knows what will actually happen.

I heard someone say "Since we've broken the all time snow record, let's see if we can break the all time sun record next!" Yes! Or how about the all-time best gardening weather ever.