Quarterly overview

Here we are the first full month of winter. Sadly, we've had very little rain. It's sunny and 76 degrees outside. That smashes 60 year heat records.

Clean up:
The last of the cherry tomato plants were pulled out of their planters on December 20th, along with most of the pepper plants. Although they still bore fruit, nights of near freezing temperatures had killed the plants.

The last pepper plant came out of the half whisky barrel today. It was covered in small green anaheims.

Constant weeding of the wood sorrel is keeping it to a dull roar in the areas planted with broccoli and fennel. Everywhere else it's going like gangbusters. It would be great to hit it with the weedburner and then dig under the ashes.

Planting:
New plantings of parsnips, turnips and radishes were sown directly in planters outside on January 12. Successive plantings of broccoli and fennel were started on January 9th. Still to be planted are garlic, onions, lettuce, kale and chard.

Growing:
The fennel is still limping along. The broccoli still looks great. The biggest plants appear to be on the verge of sending of flower stalks. Very little of the interspersed dill seems to have germinated. New seeds were added in the first week of January, but no new growth is apparent. Peas in the pea barrel are small but healthy looking. The onion seeds all germinated and a thin, green chivey line stands erect in a shallow planter. Many of these will get used like scallions.

The pale purple icelandic poppy has emerged from underneath the white carnation in its flower pot. The carnation is sending up some small white blooms.

Looking ahead:
Towards the end of February, Scarlet runnner beans will be heavily sown over the long strip to fix nitrogen and choke out weeds. Also to be planted are freesia and perhaps some gladiolus bulbs.

January planting

Where once there were cherry tomatoes... I put parsnips in one big gray planter and turnips in the other. Radish seeds went into a long, shallow box. The other long, shallow box has onions planted last month. A skinny line of green has erupted like single chives all in a row. Since these are meant to be bulbing onions, quite a few will get plucked and used like chives or scallions to give the others room to grow.