Gardening in winter

Winter has been snowy and cold here in the Southern US. Way beyond usual. 

Normally, I'd be out mulching and harvesting kale. But the frigid cold and ice has kept the kale frozen and wan.  It's not exactly ready to harvest.

And it's hard to even think about revisioning a home landscape or winter vegetable gardening (or any of the other programs I'd thought up for late January at the Garden where I work).

But I've got personal plans for low tunnels and quick hoops, etc. for next year.  And our (now) unheated teaching greenhouse at the Garden is an experimental cold house.

And, I just ordered organic 'seed' potatoes from Wood Prairie Farm, perennial leeks from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and am trying not to order anything more before I survey my seed supply.

I could order onions from Dixondale Farms, however. I just received their catalog in the mail.  Onions aren't something I'd normally grow from seed, so it's rewarding to order short-day sets that are ready to go, and will bulb up in our lower latitude.

Fall vegetable gardening

I'm doing another three-season vegetable gardening program tomorrow, this time for our Osher Lifelong Learning program.

Amazingly, 24 people are signed up - a remarkable number, it seems to me, and totally encouraging as interest in vegetable gardening!

In my own vegetable garden, my beds are turned, lots of cool-season vegetable seeds are sown, and I've got flats of lettuce mix, greens, and arugula going.

I'm plotting with my fellow garden educator about growing fall greens in an unheated (and unused) hoop house at the garden where I work.  Hmm, that sounds like fun!

We actually have two hoop houses as possibilities (in our after-school greenhouse, my Sprouting Wings colleagues have added water containers painted black, to provide radiant heat, so it may be more congenial than the totally unheated hoop house.)

Overnight Sunday rain

It was a perfect winter gardening week: a week of sunny days, including a weekend, followed by an overnight rain. My pea, spinach, arugula, and lettuce seeds should have nicely settled in, along with the onion and leek transplants.