Sleeping garden

Spring is coming, Spring is coming...

Gardening indoors

We recently had a cold spell for a couple of weeks where wind chills were below zero. Temperatures are now in the 30's during the day. My youngest daughter says it smells like Spring. Perhaps that is a bit of hopeful thinking, but it certainly is a relief to be past the bitter cold.

With the Holidays behind us, I am beginning to think about the garden and looking for an opportunity get out my gardening books to make a garden plan and schedule for seed starting. It is nice that we have the 5 garden frames to start with this year. One of the benefits of the soil mix that we prepared is that it will be very easy to plant seeds directly as soon as the temperature begins to warm. Perhaps I will even have time to put up a greenhouse to get an extra early start.

My friends at Osage Gardens in New Castle, CO inform me that January 26 is Eliot Coleman day at their latitude (~39N). This is the day when there are 10 hours of sunlight and plants begin to grow again in anticipation of longer days and sun warmth. We are at 43 degrees N, so not far behind.

I have been sprouting 4 tablespoons of alfalfa/clover seeds and 4 tablespoons of mung beans which yield about a quart and a half of alfalfa sprouts and a pint of mung sprouts every five or six days. So far this has been a good pace when supplemented with lettuce from the market. We like the sprouts on sandwiches and in our salads or even on top of crackers with cheese. I am hoping to start a tray or two of sunflower and buckwheat sprouts this weekend which will grow to three or four inches before harvesting.

Thinking about the new year

I knelt down to have a look at the remaining lettuce this weekend. Unfortunately, it looks pretty frozen. The weight of the snow and ice on the plastic cover pulled the sides up far enough that the lettuce was exposed to below zero wind chills. I will check again on Christmas Day when a high near 40 F is forecast, but I think this may be the end of the 2009 garden.

It is hard to believe that we will be starting seeds for the next garden season in only 8 weeks. It seems very close.

I have been perusing several gardening books online, they all receive excellent reviews on Amazon:
The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses - Eliot Coleman;
The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener (A gardener's supply book) - Eliot Coleman;
Backyard Market Gardening (Good Earth) - Andy, W Lee;
Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting - R.J. Ruppenthal;
Sprout Garden - Revised Edition - Mark Mathew Braunstein;

Happy Holidays to everyone and a happy and prosperous new year. The best is yet to come!

Final harvest...almost

I intended to make the final harvest this past weekend, however there was so much lettuce that I decided to harvest only half, put the plastic cover back on and get the rest next weekend. I was able to harvest several carrots, a beet, lettuce, kale and parsley. In future years with more planting, we should be able to eat fresh veggies from the garden right up to the New Year with nothing more than a thin layer of plastic covering the beds. We just need to get the timing right for the Fall planting. I believe that will be somewhere in mid-August.

Update March 23, 2011: Based on subsequent experience, mid-July would be the latest for us to plant in order to harvest greens through the winter.