Late Winter, 2016

The winter of 2015/2016 has been a very mild winter so far, compared to the past years.  We're at the end of February, and we've only really had a handful of mornings with much frost, and only about 3 mornings that have dipped into the upper 20's.  We've been with highs averaging around 60 lately.. the weather has been beautiful.

Cool Weather Stuff:

From the fall, we still have the cabbage and spinach:

Ferry's Round Dutch cabbage and Spinach planted in fall from seed

Because we've had such mild temperatures, these plants have been doing very well this winter.  We've picked about 5 heads of cabbage already, and I've left the plant stumps to see of they form smaller heads later. (you can see at the bottom right one of these, next to the bricks.  I haven't had to cover them at all.  The spinach has been growing very slowly, and still recovering from the flea beetle damage earlier in the fall, but with the warmer weather recently have started growing again nicely.  

At the beginning of February, I had also planted some more seeds,  including more spinach, and also snap peas, and flowering sweet peas (not edible, but for the beautiful fragrant flowers).

In the picture below, you can see the sweet peas, and below it, the patch of spinach I started about a month ago from seeds.  These spinach are all from seed I saved from last year, so it might be a mixture of different spinach types.  The sugar snap peas are on the other side of the garden and are about the same size too. 

sweet peas (top) and spinach seedlings (below)

The turnips I started in the fall have also done very well and have gotten to about baseball size, and we've picked a most of them already. I started a new patch too, just in case the winter would be mild, and it worked out good.  These are the newer plants, doing very well, and are definitely ready for picking and eating the greens.

Here is some lettuce I planted about 2 months ago. Notice the large glass above it.  Since lettuce isn't as cold hardy, I had them covered during cold spells, but lately haven't needed to cover them, plus the plants are getting pretty big too.  There are some volunteer German chamomile plants in there too that I am letting grow. 

 

And I'm giving broccoli another try.  Last few times it hasn't done very well.  (weather problems mostly) But the last time it was successful I had saved a bunch of seeds, so I sowed a bunch of them to see if they would sprout, and they did!  I probably should thin these out soon, plus weed some of the area.  This is the "di Cecco" variety which doesn't produce the large heads but produces multiple smaller one.  

Broccoli (di Cecco variety). Can you spot the volunteer cilantro plant?

Warm weather stuff

I started some tomato seeds indoors about a month ago.  I'll bring them outside and inside depending on the weather.  I probably will wait another 3 weeks until I can try to plant them permanently.  These are the rutgers variety. I also planted about a week ago 2 pots of spaghetti squash, and 2 of table queen acorn squash. (the larger yellow "Dickey's" cups...you'd recognize them if you are from Texas) The spaghetti squash has come up fast, but the acorn is coming up too.  I'm doing this to try and get an earlier start.  Like the tomatoes, I might wait 2 or 3 weeks before I put them into the ground, but in meantime I'll bring them outside on nice days and inside during cold nights.

Happy Growing!