Category: Journal

Well, after almost no snow though January, February came in with a vengeance. In the first 19 days we had 17 with at least a trace of snow and 14 where the temp never exceeded freezing. Because of Kathy’s work we actually left for the city before the big (5-6″) snow came in and by the time we got back the melt was underway so I didn’t get any really good photos of that. The ones below are actually from the end of January so there’s been some snow here for over 3 weeks now.

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With things so inhospitable outside we all had to figure out how to spend our idle time. The humans did more reading and internet surfing. The feline contingent discovered something a little more exciting.

We finally got the first real snow fall yesterday. Total to date up until now was less than 1/2″ and the bulk of that was really freezing rain. The outside decorations will come down on Monday (MLK Day) as is rather traditional for me so it was nice to get a few pictures of the lights with snow, even if it was during the morning.

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So, as usual, I’ve not kept up with my posts. Maybe it will only be something that happens after retirement? Anyway, my COVID gardening adventure has worked out even better than I expected.

• More lettuce than we could eat
• About 8 spinach dinners
• Radishes didn’t do as well as I expected but enough to make Kathy happy
• Carrots – Didn’t weigh them but enough to munch on very tender half-longs for a couple weeks
• All the green onions we need (and they’re still going strong)
• Green beans for about 4 dinners. Again, not as impressive as I wanted but rabbits had their way with them before I got some chicken wire up. Lesson learned.
• Broccoli was rather disappointing. Maybe these just need more space but we had a couple dinner’s worth.
• Onions – 5.5 lbs in 2.2 square feet
• Potatoes were around 21 lbs in about 1 square yard of containers. Better than I ever thought
  • White – 4.5 lbs (2.2 sq ft)
  • Russet – 9.5 lbs (4.2 sq ft)
  • Red – 7.5 lbs (2.2 sq ft)
• Tomatillos about a pound so far and still going. Having a little trouble with bugs on these
• Cucumber – More than we can eat. Have been donating most of them to a food pantry
• Zucchini – Again, more then we can eat and I’ve cooked them a lot of ways. Excess to the food pantry
• Tomatoes – Not weighing but we’re getting close to more then we can keep up with eating and building up speed
• Peppers – As many as we’ve needed with lots still on the plants.
• Pumpkins – Still underway. Have a few that are looking good

I’ve learned that I need to spray the cucumber and squash / pumpkins with a fungicide from the start. They’ve been hit hard by fungus even though I have them properly spaced and use drip irrigation. But in general, insects haven’t been a significant issue and I’ve used no pesticides. Fall planting isn’t too far off so I’ll make some adjustments and see how things go.

Here are some pictures of the harvest and plants. Oh, did a picture of Corona sneak in there? 🙂

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I’m putting a little faith in the weather man who says the lowest temperature through April 19 is 37 degrees and added the warm weather vegetables to the garden today. Now, one of the good things about container gardening is if he’s wrong, I’ll just need to move some pots into the garage for a night.

So I spent about 6 hours prepping, planting and cleaning things up and now have added potatoes (russets, red and white), tomatoes (7 varieties), tomatillos, peppers (green, red, yellow and orange bells) and some hot banana. I haven’t seen any jalapeno or red cayenne yet but will keep my eyes open. Also have a couple types of cucumbers. I also started sugar pumpkins, zucchini squash and a couple other types of cucumber from seed so things are flushing out pretty well.

Next week will be focused on wine! Time to rack and start the whites.

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Some more spinach, leeks and the hazelnuts that wintered over have been added to the entry garden. A lot of this is in response to the whole COVID-19 thing but since we’re here most of the time now why not learn and maybe get some food that’s better for us and should be tastier. So here’s the updated photos since last weekend.

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I bought some leeks from the garden store. Not sure what they think people are supposed to do the way they have 150 plants in a 3 inch pot other than to break them up and replant them. So that’s what I did. About 8 plants per pot. I’ll see how they grow and the ones that take the best I’ll cut out and plant into 3 10″ pots I have waiting for them. Saw a great video on Home Grown Veg that makes me hopeful that if I can get these to grow along with the potatoes going in next week I’ll be able to make a potato leek soup later this year. They just look like little wisps now but we’ll see how they turn out.

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And I took a couple pictures of our daffodils. I do love the Barrett Browning because they reming me of my grandfather Dr. Barrett Brown.

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