Gardening during the first plowable snow
The weather forecast calls for 2 to 4 inches of snow tonight. We haven't had a really hard freeze yet, the lowest we've gotten down to is the 20's. My vegetables have been handling the weather quite well. But today I decided to finally do some winter clean-up. This could be the last bare ground of the year until the Dog Shit Days of March.
If you have a dog you know what that means. We did a thorough search with the poop bucket, trying to reduce the damage of March when everything thaws leaving behind vast amounts of dog poop that got buried in the snow.
Then we emptied the rain barrels. I love those rain barrels and I hate to empty them, but the lovely brass sillcock could get damaged by ice, and certainly the plastic barrels could be. I use that rain water all the time for re-filling my aquarium tank, rinsing out my compost buckets and watering my plants. Our water is metered and none too cheap and I've always appreciated the free water of these two 55 gallon barrels. Plus, they served as some of my emergency backup water.
So the next thing we did was empty out all our backup water jugs in the basement and fill them with clean water from the outside spigot before we went ahead and closed that spigot for the winter. We have six 7 gallon jugs of water stored in the basement. That's one for each member of the family and the dog, roughly a gallon a day per person for a week. We also have a good Big Berkey water filter, a hot tub, and the muddy gash for backup water. I'm pretty much a belts and suspenders sort of person when it comes to critical systems. Without water this isn't much of a shelter no matter HOW warm the wood stove is or how cold the generator keeps the freezer.
While things were still not frozen, I turned my compost with the handy compost turning tool.
Then I went out to harvest the stuff that might freeze into the ground. I took a trash can with a little potting soil out to the leeks and pulled them, root and dirt and all, and stuck them roots down into the trash can. When the whole crop was harvested I put the trash can in the root cellar.
Small Boy and I picked all the peas, but we left the vines. Bizarrely, the plants are still flowering. I guess it makes sense when you realize it hit 60 degrees the other day. But at this point they aren't setting new fruit and the existing peas were growing very slowly. It was time.
We picked some robust carrots, too. Big yellow ones. I'm contemplating having carrots for dinner. We also dug up the last of the onion, and I also harvested the heads of broccoli in Garden 1 and the sage growing in a planter on the deck.
Still growing: two of the brussels sprouts stalks in Garden 1 (they don't mind freezing), the replanted carrots in Garden 3 (they didn't come to much and I didn't bother) and the various greens in sheltered Garden 2. I am not even using row covers, I just can't kill the greens with a stick!
The muddy gash is filled with water and the boys opined that it would make a good skating rink this winter. These are the same boys who think it would be good for kayaking in. This muddy gash is approximately 5' x 7' big. I'm not quite sure I see the recreational possibilities.
Speaking of the muddy gash, though, I ran into a friend from a club I'm in (the one I call "Over-extended Anonymous") and she reminded me that the garden club wants to put me on their tour next year. They love the whole Edible Landscaping project with the fruits and nuts and vegetables and compost bins and bee hive and water barrels on an in-town lot. In theory it's a fine idea: it's a lovely opportunity to model growing our own food which, of course, increases our food security (not that I'd say that.) I'm very much involved in modeling sustainable living to people who want to see how it is done in real life.
But the reality sort of hit me today: I'd have to REALLY clean up my yard. All of it. Every single corner, including each of my 10 individual vegetable beds, all for the same exact moment. I would also have to finish all on-going projects. That means landscaping the muddy gash, and replanting the parts of cherry hedge that didn't take, and laying down new mulch where it turned to weeds over by the raspberries, and finishing the fiddlehead fern planting and getting the mushrooms going again. The tour is the kick in the butt that I need to get this stuff done, but... it sounds like a MAJOR pain in the ass!
If you have a dog you know what that means. We did a thorough search with the poop bucket, trying to reduce the damage of March when everything thaws leaving behind vast amounts of dog poop that got buried in the snow.
Then we emptied the rain barrels. I love those rain barrels and I hate to empty them, but the lovely brass sillcock could get damaged by ice, and certainly the plastic barrels could be. I use that rain water all the time for re-filling my aquarium tank, rinsing out my compost buckets and watering my plants. Our water is metered and none too cheap and I've always appreciated the free water of these two 55 gallon barrels. Plus, they served as some of my emergency backup water.
So the next thing we did was empty out all our backup water jugs in the basement and fill them with clean water from the outside spigot before we went ahead and closed that spigot for the winter. We have six 7 gallon jugs of water stored in the basement. That's one for each member of the family and the dog, roughly a gallon a day per person for a week. We also have a good Big Berkey water filter, a hot tub, and the muddy gash for backup water. I'm pretty much a belts and suspenders sort of person when it comes to critical systems. Without water this isn't much of a shelter no matter HOW warm the wood stove is or how cold the generator keeps the freezer.
While things were still not frozen, I turned my compost with the handy compost turning tool.
Then I went out to harvest the stuff that might freeze into the ground. I took a trash can with a little potting soil out to the leeks and pulled them, root and dirt and all, and stuck them roots down into the trash can. When the whole crop was harvested I put the trash can in the root cellar.
Small Boy and I picked all the peas, but we left the vines. Bizarrely, the plants are still flowering. I guess it makes sense when you realize it hit 60 degrees the other day. But at this point they aren't setting new fruit and the existing peas were growing very slowly. It was time.
We picked some robust carrots, too. Big yellow ones. I'm contemplating having carrots for dinner. We also dug up the last of the onion, and I also harvested the heads of broccoli in Garden 1 and the sage growing in a planter on the deck.
Still growing: two of the brussels sprouts stalks in Garden 1 (they don't mind freezing), the replanted carrots in Garden 3 (they didn't come to much and I didn't bother) and the various greens in sheltered Garden 2. I am not even using row covers, I just can't kill the greens with a stick!
The muddy gash is filled with water and the boys opined that it would make a good skating rink this winter. These are the same boys who think it would be good for kayaking in. This muddy gash is approximately 5' x 7' big. I'm not quite sure I see the recreational possibilities.
Speaking of the muddy gash, though, I ran into a friend from a club I'm in (the one I call "Over-extended Anonymous") and she reminded me that the garden club wants to put me on their tour next year. They love the whole Edible Landscaping project with the fruits and nuts and vegetables and compost bins and bee hive and water barrels on an in-town lot. In theory it's a fine idea: it's a lovely opportunity to model growing our own food which, of course, increases our food security (not that I'd say that.) I'm very much involved in modeling sustainable living to people who want to see how it is done in real life.
But the reality sort of hit me today: I'd have to REALLY clean up my yard. All of it. Every single corner, including each of my 10 individual vegetable beds, all for the same exact moment. I would also have to finish all on-going projects. That means landscaping the muddy gash, and replanting the parts of cherry hedge that didn't take, and laying down new mulch where it turned to weeds over by the raspberries, and finishing the fiddlehead fern planting and getting the mushrooms going again. The tour is the kick in the butt that I need to get this stuff done, but... it sounds like a MAJOR pain in the ass!