We rarely get snow here, so I just had to step outside to share this view with y'all
The vegetable garden in December
Here's how the same view looked in July
Same thing here, and it won't last long, but here's the Christmas Snow...
this was taken when the snow began to fall last evening
and this wa a few hours later. it was really coming down and the wind was blowing like crazy.
The weather prognostigators are saying it will be in the sixties this weekend. I hope they are correct because we want to set-up more raised beds. Right now it's 25F!
I love the snow photos.
Your snow photos are beautiful, and Honeybee, it makes me wonder whether raised beds aren't the answer for me, too, but we have so much effort put into our rows right now that I think we'll just leave them as is.
It's 24 here and we have so much snow that I almost couldn't open the gate to get into the chicken yard. I had to kick a path with my boots. We probably have about 18 inches. At least the sun is out now!
I wish it didn't snow so much here.
These free range roos are not enjoying it much either. I'm glad we don't have 18". That must be completely miserable.
greenhouse_gal - I prefer the "row method" for vegetable growing. This is the first garden where I felt it necessary to have raised beds.
For one thing, the garden is on a slope. Luckily the beds are across the slope from North to South so the plants don't shade each other. I felt that if I went with the "row method" I would be constantly retrieving dirt from the bottom of the garden when it rained.
For another thing, the ground is hard red clay, and although clay is nutritious, it packs so tightly that roots don't have room to breathe.
This led me to installing raised beds, which, as I have found out, is not a perfect solution. The beds were filled with all kinds of bagged stuff from the gardening center. But they lacked, what I call, "substance" - the mixture was too "light" - which meant we constantly had to keep the beds watered.
This coming year, we are re-planning the raised beds. Thanks to the work of millions of earthworms, the top one or two inches of clay soil is now black dirt!
I have completed two beds by mixing the black dirt with the existing purchased soil, adding mulched leaves, and compost. I have eight more beds to do. I am hoping the addition of the black clay dirt will mean the soil will hold more water. My summer water bill in 2010 was prohibitive.
The first four summers I had 48" wide beds, but found it awkward to reach into the center to harvest. The new set-up will have 36" wide beds. The first summer I tried the "square foot" method, but quickly decided it did not fit our needs.
I have 30" wide beds with 18" wide paths between them. Elliot Coleman recommended 12" wide paths but they seemed too narrow for us. I like the 30" width for the beds because I can plant double or even triple rows of some things, but they're still not too wide for me to lean across them. I have a landscape rake with wooden teeth on which I can affix plastic extenders on either two or three of them, evenly spaced apart, and I use that to mark my rows before planting. It's so much easier than putting up string!
But I'm still thinking that my garden is too big for me to care for easily and last year it got away from me. I didn't have my helper last year, either, though, and that made a big difference. DH and I have too much else to do in the summertime to get in all the garden chores without making much too much of a job of it! After all, it's supposed to be fun!
I love your pics. Put your feet up by the fire and read some seed catalogues. I bet it will be spring before you know it.
these two were taken this morning. i figure we hd about a foot of snow here
those are some evergreen bushes on the side of my house and this is a shot directly from my front door over the front lawn and into the street
I think we could safely call that a white expanse. Lots od snow creme out there. It's the only good thing about snow. :) The snow was nearly to my knees on top of the mountain.
Ah ah ah a a a
I am going to make ya envious !
Is taht picture NOW?
yeeeessss, this mornig.
here more ... envious yet???
some broccolis
The only thing greener than your garden is my state of envy! LOL
That looks great.
Your snow pics could've been us last Christmas! Dane, do you have pics of LAST Christmas with the snow on your garden? Or what about in January when we had the big snowfall?
drthor, you have a little bit of a 'mean' streak :) ... love your garden beds -- what did you use for those hoops?
Mary
Just PVC pipes.
They are waiting to be cover just in case of bad weather. So far I did cover them only once !!
This was the veggie garden last year on Dec. 25th
greenhouse_gal - I had considered 30" beds, but decided to go with the 36" for next year. Maybe I'll try 30" for 2012! The pathways will be 36" wide so we can pull our garden cart around easily.
Our tomatoe plants are usually such huge monsters that they hang over into the paths, so I wanted to give them plenty of room.
The photo is of the garden cart which someone left out in the snow!
drthor - What a contrast between the two years on the same date. Must make gardening very unpredictable!
Your photos have reminded me that spring is not so very far away. And, no, I'm not envious of your beautiful garden. I know how much hard work went into it.
yes hard work, but lots of pleasure.
This was in February, when we did have that record snow here in Dallas.
The same spot on the picture above.
I was so scared to lose everything, but actually my veggies didn't suffer ... and some I really think they did like it !!
This message was edited Dec 28, 2010 8:47 AM
What veggies are under there in February? I know ones in the mustard family seem to like cold weather.
Here we were last Christmas......The new veg garden was behind the fence to the right. Am expanding this spring. I love the photos of the snow, but once every five years or so is enough for me. Loved it when I was younger, though. Just not when I have to feed cattle and horses in thirty below wind chills! Hope not to see that in TX now that I'm here. Its the wind chills that always got me!
CajuninKY, you should enter that photo in the contest next year! The look in that rooster' face says it all!
Lots of them: lettuce, spinach, kale, kohlrabi, chicory, broccoli, brussel sprouts, fava beans, turnip, beet ... cauliflower .... I forgot !! but lots of them !
Most of them really don't need any cover ... but I do anyway.
Broccoli and Brussel sprouts came from cold places and they usually did grow between rocks with poor soil and bad weather. So they are really hardy vegetables.
Kohlrabi is a "must" in Norway. It really likes teh cold weather and last year they were under the snow with no protection and they did great !
I started my cool crop from seeds in August and planted them by the begining of September (even if I thought it is too hot). In this way I do have great plants when the cold come.
I have decided that it is not worth to do a second crop of tomatoes in the fall, so as soon as I remove the tomatoes I do have room for all the cool crops, which it give me more pleasure too !!!
Terri - that was Texas last Christmas? I'm in 8a and don't remember snow like that! Am I getting really forgetful?
Yes, we're pretty north of you and east. I don't think we get the same weather as you all do. And the Christmas snow seemed to concentrate right over the top of us in the Alba area (we are south of Alba in a community called Grit--about 1.5-2 hours east of dthor). Then we got another snow storm in Jan or Feb? Both had pretty much the same depth of snowfall each time for us. With the first snow (Christmas) in the photo above we have a lot of wind and most of that shown in drifts and blown snow. The second seemed to have less wind and more accumulation. My place is in kind of a weird little micro climate. We seem to get the extremes of the area weather for some reason.
We visited Brady a few years ago while traveling. Its pretty there--we liked it!
Living here's a little frustrating -- having to travel distances just to shop stores other than wally world and the local hardware store!
Dr. Thor has made me very jealous!! And on top of that he gets to eat TexMex food! Are you able to garden in the summer? Some rare birds here have greenhouses in which they grow cold weather crops during the winter. I wonder if they have to add extra light because now we're only getting about nine hours of daylight. Oh how I love our long summer days when it doesn't get dark until around 9:00 PM. There's so much that can get done.
yes, I am able to garden in the summer ... and all year around actually ... you just need to learn the varieties of veggies that can take our extreme heat and drought.
Millions of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers ... some zucchini (it is very bad here for the squash vine borer)
Yessss you can be jealous ...
Picture is from one of June harvest ...
and some more ...
yes ... I have a mean streak on me ... but it is nice to dream about the spring/summer harvest ...
You are a mean thing but you take good pics. :) Love the composition in the first shot. Did you eat the squash flowers and were they males?
Bell peppers, jalapenos, melons (watermelons and cantaloupe), cherry maters all do well in the hot summer. Also, okra LOVES the heat. My lemon cucumbers did great last summer in the heat (if the stupid leaf footed bugs stayed off them!). This is the cucumber harvest in early August.
Yes I eat the zucchini flowers, only the males.
I think this is the main reason why I grow zucchini.
I make a butter with:
2 eggs
1 cup of flour
1 cup of white wine
dip in the butter and fry them.
Sometimes I insert a piece of mozzarella and one anchovie inside the flower before frying.
and yummy yummy !!!!
That photo of the 'four plate harvest' is a classic, D-thor. You should enter that in next year's Photo Contest.
Shoe