PAR Davies Update 11-14-12

Hi Everyone!

A great day last Wednesday at the garden with Suzanne, Jamie, Bob, Carol, Cathy, GA, Susan, Nancy and myself. First we worked and then we relaxed by the fire and ate. We had a pretty good harvest day with 23 lbs total. We got lettuce, cabbage sprouts, broccoli, kale, mustard greens, cabbage and 'micro greens.' Nancy delivered all the produce to the women's shelter. The microgreens were a combination of different varieties of leaf lettuce and spinach. Next week there should be a lot more cabbage and broccoli to pick. We decided to harvest the small cabbage plants that were planted from seed because they wouldn't have time to head up. I've seen them sold at Easy Way before, so I thought it would be good to pick them before they froze.

Gorgeous microgreens!

We have covered two of our beds with floating row covers for winter growing. We have a bed of spinach recently planted that is emerging and a bed of green oak leaf type of lettuce that we have covered. We'd like to see if we can harvest these crops all winter. We have been talking about winter gardening for a while now, and this will be the test to see if it will work.

An experiment in winter gardening

We finished planting the garlic in the concrete block beds. The holes in the blocks have been planted full as well as the perimeter of each bed. The center of the bed is open to a later planting of another crop, perhaps carrots. The garlic should be ready to harvest in May or June. We have approximately 13 known varieties planted as well as a mixture of hardneck and softneck.

We should have no vampire problems going forward

The leaves that Bob had deposited outside the garden were raked up and added to the compost beds.

After all the work was done, we were treated to a warm fire that Bob had going, and we roasted hot dogs, and drank hot drinks. It was so nice to be warmed by the fire as we sat and chatted. We missed all of you who couldn't make it.

'Til next week,

Dianne

Hot dog!