Saturday, December 27, 2008

What's Already There

Even though the garden is covered with snow some of the things we grow are already there. I have to plan around them. Most have been there long enough that I know where they are. There are blueberries, raspberries, and asparagus all occupying significant space. Also we planted garlic in October so I have to work around that. I did sow lettuce seeds in a wooden frame that now has a glass cover. The past several years the seedlings had a good start before they needed to be covered - in fact I had transplanted them so they were properly spaced. They then just sat through the winter and when Spring came were ready to start growing and ready to begin harvesting in a few weeks. This year they didn't get a good start and were certainly not big enough to transplant. I tried to look today to see if any were growing but the snow had turned solid and I couldn't brush it off. Probably I don't have to plan around that lettuce this year. The only other thing that is in the garden are parsnips. But they will be harvested as soon as the soil can be dug. It will be interesting to see how they did this year. While we have good soil it is full of small bits of shale and my parsnips haven't grown into nice large single roots in the past. This year I started them indoors and then transplanted them carefully into cones made with newspaper and filled with sifted soil and set each one into a cone shaped hole in the soil. Unfortuntately they were right next to the flower garden and the flowers eventually grew tall enough to partially shade the parsnips. This is one of the experiments that I can't judge until Spring.

1 comment:

  1. I like this font better than the first one. Have you ever read about square foot gardening?

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