New England, February 2016

mollyhespra wrote:

camprn wrote:-13°F and only one of my water lines froze.

OH, that's not good.  Potable water or in your heating system?

The hot water line to my kitchen sink. It cleared after an hour  with some gentle heating. Its a pex line so it was just a waiting game for a small ice plug.

Jack Frost strikes again!  This mornings bedroom window art:

Close up:

Isn't Mother Nature amazing!?!  (when she's not freezing pipes)

Btw, the divided seedlings are fine.  
Only lost a few spinach mustard (in the blue bowl).  I've never started spinach mustard inside before since they grow so easily when directly planted.

CC

Wow that's nice CC.

Beautiful art!

What a great view of Mother Nature's art.  Thanks.

Beautiful designs! Thanks, CC!

So all that rain and warm weather washed & melted most of our snow away and, lo and behold, there's my daffies poking up about 3 inches!

This weekend I'm starting annual flowers.  I'll start my 'maters and such on March 7th.  

 is right around the corner, folks...we're almost there.

I took a seedling inventory this morning and now I have to figure out where to put it all.

I know that most of the lettuces will go in the spaces where the summer crops will follow.
I think I'll put plastic over couple of beds today to get them warmed up. I'm getting very excited to have fresh greens again! The sooner the better! 

What's everyone else up to?

CC ... looks like you have your planning under control. Do you mix things up in the boxes or do you plant several squares of one veggie next to each other (or even dedicate a box to a certain type)? I can't wait for our snow to melt so I can see if there is any sign of life from my tulips, garlic and leeks.

trolleydriver wrote:CC ... looks like you have your planning under control.

haha...well, you know what they say: "Man plans and God laughs".  In my garden it always looks good on paper but then Spirit moves me in other directions and the plan ends up looking nothing like the garden.  It's the weirdest thing.

trolleydriver wrote:Do you mix things up in the boxes or do you plant several squares of one veggie next to each other (or even dedicate a box to a certain type)?

So far every year I've had at least one covered box for the leafy greens to keep the cabbage moth out.  That's the plan this year, too, but who knows...

But I must say that when I plant different things in all the squares in the open boxes, I have the best growth.  It really does confuse the insects.  But I do plant a row of the same trellis veggies, like a row of peas or beans or tomatoes or cukes.  I tried mixing up a trellis row last year but that whole box was a bust so I couldn't gauge the results.

trolleydriver wrote: I can't wait for our snow to melt so I can see if there is any sign of life from my tulips, garlic and leeks.

My tulips aren't up yet, but the garlic came up last fall.  Did you direct plant leek seeds in fall?  What's that about?

CC

CC ... I direct planted Leek seeds in a square last year. They came up but remained small. I was told (I think by KJ) that they require two years to mature. So I left them in over the winter. Not sure if it's maybe too cold here for them to survive. I've just sown some more indoors to see if I can get a head start for this year.

TD, that's fascinating about over wintering the leeks. Please let me know if it works.  I grew some last year for the first time, started inside about now, and they were fantastic but took some work.  I would rather over winter them if it's do-able.

CC

After winnowing dried seed heads, the leeks have been sown.

Got two boxes covered with windows this morning to start warming up.



Chard and collards are still going from last year. I also ate some kale this morning that was delicious.

Daffy's and a surprise iris.

CapeC......Thanks for the garden walk this morning.

Oh, you're most welcome, QB.  I put the green daffies and the iris up just for you.


So I made it out to the compost pile just now to dump my 5 gal buckets that have been filled with kitchen scraps when I couldn't get outside.  It was wonderful and gruesome at the same time.  There was a small pile of ornamental cabbages and a giant white pumpkinstill laying around waiting to get to the point were I could chop them up and throw pieces into the compost.  So I jabbed the pumpkin with my fork and *whoa*...it splashed vomit smelling snoodge all over my shoes and pants. 
 
 It was awful. But I kept working on it and got it all taken care of.  

And there were tons of worms underneath it so I know they like it.  yuck!
Oh, and as I was trying to take a photo of the mess and the worms, I dropped my tablet in the snoodge.  

It was wonderful to be out there again.


New compost pile all tidied up after accepting kitchen scraps, snoodge and cabbages.


Miss Lilly wants me to spread more compost from the finished pile but I'm dogged tired now.


Off to do some laundry...
What a great day!

....and a new word is born, snoodge.   I'll have to remember that one.

Molly, I was just reading NE March 2015, & filling in my calendar, and saw that you seeded an explosion of globe onions.  How was you harvest?  Which variety did best?

Did anyone else in the cold northeast have a good globe harvest?

CC

quiltbea wrote:....and a new word is born, snoodge.   I'll have to remember that one.

You never know, if we use it enough we could make the dictionaries.