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| Final tomato harvest |
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| Tomatoes at Christmas! |
Hi, Suzanne!
I thought you would like to know what is going
on in the garden and what is planned. The tomatoes and peppers were pulled the first part of
November. There were a lot of green tomatoes that I put in bags to ripen. We
were still eating the Black Cherries the week of Christmas.
The peppers did
very well, but I believe would have produced even more if they had not been
planted so close together (one square foot each). I had no idea they'd get as
big as they did, and next year will spread them out a little more. All the
square foot markers will be removed because I find that not everything fits
into this template. Overall, I was really happy with the peppers and tomatoes
from my little patch.
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| Final pepper harvest |
I am now trying my hand at winter gardening. One problem
I've had is not having enough fall/winter seedlings to fill all the space when
crops are harvested. I bought some lettuce and collard seedlings, but most of
the fall seedlings in the stores looked old and wilted. I started about a dozen
Baby Romaine seedlings myself, and also direct seeded some things. I have
spinach, mustard greens, kale, parsnips, kohlrabi, beets, carrots, several
varieties of lettuce and snow peas.
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| Mustard greens - these did well and I've planted more |
I had slow germination on some things,
especially the kale and spinach. I finally tried soaking the spinach seeds in
water overnight, and then had good germination in less than two weeks on direct
seeding in December. I seem to have more success with seedlings than direct
seeding. The snow peas had lots of blossoms but very few peas. I don't know
why, because those planted last spring did very well. I have talked to two
other gardeners who had the same problem this fall.
So far, the only root crops
I've harvested have been the carrots.
Everything else is slowly growing with
the protection of the row cover. I will be getting my soil tested again because
I have a feeling I may be low on nitrogen and possibly need to add lime.
A great book for learning about winter gardening is TheWinter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman. I was happy to find out that he used
the same brand of row cover that I chose for my garden. I put hoops over the
entire bed and covered it with Agribon AG-50 row cover, which is supposed to
protect it to 24 degrees. For lower than 24, I plan on putting on an extra
layer of plastic. The row cover can be sourced here.
My next project is seed starting. I am setting up a small
area with just the light fixture yet to be hung. I hope this will enable the
garden to be more productive, as I will be able to have a constant supply of
seedlings ready to put in whenever there is an empty spot.
Suzanne, it will soon be a year since I started planting in
the raised bed. I have learned a lot. I am looking forward to expanding with
the second bed. I will be correcting some of the things I did wrong last year,
but I realize that there will always be other challenges to deal with. I look
forward to learning new things and sharing experiences with other gardeners. We
all learn so much from each other. I will send you an update of anything that
might be of interest to veggie gardeners in the coming year. Thank you so much
for asking me to share my adventure.
Dianne
---Thomas Cooper
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