Garden Assessment

We had too cold a winter this year to have a winter garden. Some years our winter weather is mild and things grow well. Other years, forget it. I never know for sure, so I always plant in hopes of a nice winter harvest. After Dan’s accident at the end of January, our typical seasonal routine was put on hold, including planting an early spring garden. I told myself it probably didn’t matter anyway, because we got so much rain. Now it’s time to prepare for summer garden planting, so I spent some time the other day assessing what needs to be done.

Cabbage-collards were my only green to survive the harsh cold.

Then we got a streak of really warm days and it decided to flower to make seed! Even so, the young leaves are tender and tasty in a salad.

I had planted two beds of sugar beets last fall, but had less than half of them made it. These are a first for me, for goat feed and to try my hand at sugar making.

The cluster above needs to be thinned out and the few others need to be mulched.

Multiplier onions survived and are coming along.

And my garlic is beginning to die back. Harvest soon.

A year ago last January I planted garlic bulbils in the hoop house. Here they are now.

I’m happy they’ve done so well, especially since they’ve undergone some neglect from time to time during hot weather.

Plantings in the hoop house were slow growing but survived better than what I planted outdoors. We currently get several salads each week.

All in all I think my garden did fairly well despite the snow and cold. We don’t have a surplus, but we’re still harvesting a few things to eat.

The next couple of weeks need to be spent in soil prep for summer veggies. Along with that comes the question of whether or not we’ll get good rainfall for everything to get a good start. It’s always a guessing game, isn’t it?