Our coldest months are finally behind us! At least I hope so. March can be so iffy for us. But spring flowers are blooming everywhere and that's always cheerful, no matter what the weather is like.
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Almond |
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Forsythia |
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Japanese magnolia |
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Peach |
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Daffodils |
February went from frigid to mild and with a lot of rain, so my winter garden has been growing like crazy! We've been eating a lot of salads and sauteed greens from the garden.
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Cosmic purple carrots and broccoli. We finished the broccoli
heads a while ago but the plants continue producing florets. |
To top our salads, I still have plenty of
feta cheese stored in herbed olive oil. That plus black olives (Dan's favorite) make for delicious fresh winter eating.
Everything we're eating from the garden was planted last fall. Some things made it, others didn't. Here's what's there now ...
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Carrots, beets, multiplier onions, heading collards, & clover |
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Savoy cabbages with living mulch of clover |
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Claytonia (miners lettuce) |
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Mizuna mixed with chickweed. The mizuna is already trying to go to seed! |
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Carrots, lettuce, and chickweed. |
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My main garlic bed. |
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Resting garden beds. Some I filled with leaf mulch,
in others I grew a cover crop of annual rye & clover. |
How about you? Anything happening in your garden?
29 comments:
Very nice!
Hi Leigh wow what a wonderful garden you have,your veggie garden is awesome Thankyou for sharing your amazing garden with us xx
Wow; look at all those flowers and VEGGIES! I'm suddenly very hungry for fresh food....
HEre in Connecticut we still have winter - garden soil is still frozen. How wonderful to have continual fresh produce!
we used to have reasonably good weather from march onwards - usually with a cold snap in april. last year we had nearly no spring, it was cold - until it turned hot suddenly end of may/june:( the last two weeks have been nice and mild. everything is out early, daffs in full swing, all buds are swelling... and just now we're getting another cold spell, so I hope that the plants won't suffer too badly:( there is just no point in starting things early, if they get stunted a few weeks after:( the only place where stuff is growing is the polytunnel... a few fresh leaves are always nice at this time of the year! but I do get itchy garden fingers now - I think I'll start with looking after the porch and greenhouse plants, where a bit of pruning and re-potting wouldn't do any harm:)
Us too! Everything is blooming out. Monday and Tues snow and freezing rain forecasted.
Thanks Gorges! Do you and your Mrs. do any gardening?
Thank you Sheryl!
Michelle, I know what you mean about being hungry for fresh food. I'm thankful for the growth spurt prompted by warmer weather. :)
Karen Ann, I always hope for continual produce, but the seasons don't always cooperate! Very thankful for plenty of rain and not too many frozen days.
Bettina, that sounds like a typical spring for us! It's the pits, isn't it?
Jo, It pays to keep an eye on the forecast. Never trust a few warm days this time of year! LOL
Oh, oh, oh! All that fresh greenery! And your blooms! Feasts for the tummy and eye.
How's our garden doing? Hahahahaha! A long way from showing even a teeny, tiny bit of soil! Or greenery. Or bloom. But it will happen!
Beautiful! You are such an inspiration. Do you also cure your own olives?
Sigh. I certainly did not need to read this post. After an especially brutally cold, snowy and icy winter, our ten day forecast is calling for especially cold temperatures with more snow and ice. The high temps are forecasted to be 30 degrees colder than our average highs for this time of year. They are also forecasting an El Nino event is forming which means an especially hot summer. I can't wait!
Gorgeous, oh how heavenly spring is!! It's a long way off for us, we are buried in snow with more on the way. I'll have to live vicariously through you!
Leigh,
Your garden beds look amazing this time of year. Absolutely nothing is blooming or planted yet. It's 22 degrees with ice right now. I think we have another few weeks before we really see anything blooming around here.
Mama Pea, it must be hard to be patient this time of year.
Connie, I tried to grow an olive tree but we just aren't tropical enough to keep them alive. So olives are one of those items I buy as a treat. :)
Ed, yikes. They're telling us we'll go back down into the 20s next and to expect snow! Hopefully, it won't kill our fruit tree blossoms. A hot summer is not welcome news!
Debbie, we get an early spring and an early summer too!
Sandy, that's too cold! But it's heading our way, unfortunately.
Snowdrifts, that's what's happening in my gardening spots. *sigh* Normally not safe to plant before the 21st of May... in for a long wait yet.
Wow - I love veggies that are not the typical shade you see in the grocery store - like those carrots. Do they taste different?
Thank you for this wonderful, lovely, green post! I really needed it today. xo
It is a little upsetting to see this post. Our snow is just now melting off but our ground is still frozen solid and more snow in the forecast. No much hope for fresh vegetables from the garden in a while.
I started some acorn and spaghetti squash seeds in the house today, then maybe some cucumbers and summer squash. Also did geranium cuttings today in pots, so I can have a lot more this summer.We are having snow today to add to cold weather this weekend. But, I think we will at least have a lot of moisture when the time arrives. You have a lot of daffodils, the beds look very fertile.
Like Ed, we are running a solid 30 degrees below normal temps. Yesterday's forecast 3" of snow turned out to be 8". Gardening looks to be far off in the future, which makes seeing yours especially fun.
I am sorry to say I don't even have a garden...I miss it. But I do enjoy hearing about yours...and in the spring and summer I live vicariously through emails from my sisterinlaw telling me what they are going in their
Leigh, the garden and flowers look great! We are due for one more blast of cold and after that hopefully, the soil will warm up enough for our spring planting.
I have a second area, so I hoping to get some fast growing grain in.
Wonderful!
I have cabbage and kale in the greenhouse. Outside the green house I have mud, standing water and clouds. More rain last night and now. Should be a bit better tomorrow and Monday. Then at least two more days of rain. I think the goats have grown gills.
I am not "Green" with envy but I do envy your Greens. Your place is filled with spring. Wonderful to see. We are getting winter again with snow in the forecast.
Mrs. Shoes, good to hear from you! Have you given up blogging? Yes, you are definitely on a different spring schedule from us.
RT, I think the carrots taste better than those in the store! Not sure if it's the variety, or just that they are so fresh. Very fun in salads.
Susan, I just saw the snow photos on your blog! Sorry to see you've had trees fall down too. No fun.
Donna, Sorry! I'm in a part of the country where we get an early start on the garden, but it peters out much earlier than others because of our intense summer heat. So there's a trade-off in the end.
Phil, good for you! I definitely need to get some early starts going too.
Tpals, our all being in different parts of the country keeps things interesting. I'll be envying you all come July and August, when my garden has dried up from the summer heat.
Rose, that's the beauty of the internet. We can enjoy things we lile through one another!
TB, our winter blast is settling in as I type. Hopefully everything will do just fine. Very interested in your grain project!
Goatldi, more rain! And after such a horrific summer fire season. Nice to hear you have something growing in the greenhouse!
Fiona, it's been a mild winter. Which means the weeds haven't stopped growing and have a head start in the garden! :o
Hi! I am surprised by how many winter veggies you have! You will have to give me some lessons! Still real cold here. Nancy
Nancy, it's all up to the weather! We were fortunate to have a mild winter so far this year.
You must be warmer than us...what plant zone are you in? I am in 7a with first frost 9/30 - 10/30 and last frost 3/30 - 4/30. I still need to start my seeds...TODAY!!! I am already behind! Do you start your own and when? I jotted down your Fall plantings. I have decided in order to protect from voles and critters here that I will hopefully be building my own Earthworks bed with a self watering function as it is so hot here I can't keep up plus I pay for water and this method will help conserve it. I could have built raised beds and used hardware cloth to keep out the voles but it contains lead so that was a no-no. I wish I could plant in the ground but the people around me use weed killers and if my poison plants come back I may have to...I had poison everything (sumac, ivy and oak) in this yard and growing up the side of the house. It's a jungle down here! LOL! I admire the people who garden here as they must be really good! I was good in Iowa....but it was easy...just throw it in the ground and it grew! LOL!
Sam, I'm in 7b, so just a little before you, but it sounds like we have a similar jungle problem! LOL I need to be out there planting peas and more greens NOW!, but the ground is still terribly muddy. Maybe I'll do it this afternoon. Voles are a terrible problem, which we don't have, but we do have moles and chipmunks! It's difficult to stay ahead of the varmints.
One of the best authors for cool season planting is Eliot Coleman (Winter Harvest Handbook and Four Season Harvest). His books have been a tremendous help with my fall and winter gardening.
Well! Since you asked ... (haha!) Like you, we had SO much rain, which didn't help a fall/winter garden plan. But then Hurricane Florence ruined all hopes of winter gardening. So we don't have things mature and edible right now. But my peas are up, and my onion sets are well up. Asparagus is up and looking good. Strawberry plants are looking good and in the ground. I have onion, oregano, and basil seeds in soil cells in the greenhouse, and collards, kale, and spinach seeds sowed in their garden beds. That's as far as I've gotten! Your winter crops look SO good!
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