PNW: January 2015

Howdy Pacific Northwesterners and all who read about the region or its people and challenges. Hope you had a great holiday season and are now enjoying a well-deserved rest from it! Hope everyone has a great new year, with plenty of good fortune and at least some little lesson to every other kind of fortune that makes up for what a pain in the neck it can sometimes be. We gardeners especially, it seems, never stop learning lessons. If you know what I mean. :0

Around here, it's too dry for snow but too cold for rain. It was 25 degrees early this morning, and it's still in the 30's now. Just yesterday, in the small town only a couple of miles from our house, it was 52 degrees and I was wearing shorts and barefoot while washing the dogs. Today all I want is an endless supply of hot beverages and gloves I could actually type in.

Nothing's going on in the garden that I know of, because I don't check. It's too cold!

HI Marc and all of our PNW'ner Friends!

Its COLD & Rainy....blah!

keeping busy looking thru all of the seed catalogs we been getting in the mail and surfing all the garden web sites to see if there is anything that entices me LOL

hubby said to me as he was pulling out a large amount of mail from the mail box:

*how do ALL these garden catalog companies know our address?*

oh hubby


happy gardening
rose...... who wonders what others are trying new this year in the garden?

Any spring bulbs peeking their noses up?

May the new year bring you good fortune as well

With one foot in the PNW and the other in your region, Turan (at least that's how I see things), I've noticed a tulip or two breaking ground, and a few onions I planted in the fall have survived, along with a self-seeded cilantro.  There are also five surviving spinach plants, which were planted too late.

Weeds!

LOL!

No, the spinach plants are small, and are growing right where I planted the seeds.  The sole cilantro (so far) is immediately adjacent to a cilantro plant that went to seed.

So there!

I checked the garden for the first time in a couple weeks the other day and got a nice big bunch of kale. Boy have I come to love that plant. I've got a few varieties. Slugs and snails seem to vastly prefer the dinosaur kale. The purple ones they ignore, and my other broad-leafed green one they hassle a lot less. Of course a huge armful sautees down into a much smaller plateful, but I was glad to have fresh veggies in the winter.

Especially since our stores are getting so expensive! Even the basics. I checked the price for lettuce yesterday at Safeway ... $2.50 a head. Not exactly huge ones either.

That's great that you had kale. So, the dinosaur kale is your sacrificial kale, the purple for you, and you share the other. I had armfuls and they blanched down to a few frozen packages! But, at least none are going to waste.

And you've gotta love a plant that thrives on neglect. Plus there aren't a lot of options for winter growing for the table as opposed to over-wintering that don't take more attention than I've been willing to give the garden this winter.

up by the front of our house along our walk way I see some spring flowers poking thru

hugs
rose

We tend to have a lot of false springs around here. Wish it killed off more weeds!

Hello to the PNW!  I hope everyone has had a good start to 2015. 
According to my Mother Earth planting calendar, it's time to start green onions, leeks, bulbing onions, parsley, artichoke, arugula, endive and lettuce starts indoors (I don't have a greenhouse).
I am doing Walla Walla onion and leek starts again this year. 
Pea seed will be planted out in the next few weeks and I will be starting the tomatoes indoors around mid February. 
Has anyone started anything yet?

Hi! I just signed up today and found these posts. I am in the planning stage to have a great garden this year and hoping to get a lot of ideas from all my neighbors on this forum who live in the Pacific Northwest. I have the old edition of the book and did some gardening about 15 years ago til life got in the way and took so much of my time and now I'm ready to get serious again.

:welcome:jodyk
jody, please do get the latest edition of the SFG book, yuo will not regret it.
I reckon gardening will give you a new lease on life.  It did me. And I think they are a wonderful group of people here.

PS Where are you in the PNW.  Can I claim you for Canada?

Thanks Kelejan, I will see about finding the new edition and  I live close to Tacoma in a town called Bonney Lake. I have lots of Canadian friends...Love Vancouver and Victoria Island.

Kelejan wrote::welcome:jodyk
jody, please do get the latest edition of the SFG book, yuo will not regret it.
I reckon gardening will give you a new lease on life.  It did me. And I think they are a wonderful group of people here.

PS Where are you in the PNW.  Can I claim you for Canada?

+1 on the book.

Jody, Welcome to the Forum from California! I also encourage you to get a copy of All New Square Foot Gardening, 1st or 2nd Edition, by Mel Bartholomew.

During the VN war, my husband was stationed at Fort Lewis. Being from sunny, lower lat California, it seemed the summer was 3 months long! But, I know folks can grow beautiful gardens up there.

JodyK, welcome from Atlanta, GA.

You're already getting some good advice, so I won't chime in.

Glad you've joined us!

I meant to say welcome JodyK too.