It’s true. The days are getting longer and at any warm spell I find myself hankering to get in the garden. What is there to do in the garden in January? Plenty! That is, if you didn’t do garden clean up earlier… and if you have been lucky enough with your cold weather crops to still have some yum-yums waiting for you. I harvested a peck of spinach, a peck of turnips (and greens!), a peck of cabbage, swiss chard, kale, mustard, arugula and pak choi last weekend.
The unveiling… We’ve got food!:
What do you get? A gallon of sauerruben: a turnip and cabbage ferment.
We cleaned up our tomato row (finally!) by removing the trellising and burning the tomato plant remnants. Then we pulled back the remaining mulch so we could add some fertilizer to the bed, then covered it back with a thick straw mulch. It is true that we have a vole problem because of the mulch. But we don’t have a weed problem. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.
This is our new lasagna row! I collected lots of boxes in the fall and put them directly on the sod where I wanted a new row. Then I gathered a truckload of leaves and piled it on top. Now we have layered chicken manure, more leaves, compost (boy it feels good to build a compost pile that feeds your garden beds that feeds the food that feeds you!), more leaves, and mulched it all in with straw. Come spring, it will be ready to plant!
The last photo is what the garden looks like after putting it to bed for the rest of winter. The green areas are winter rye cover crop. The row cover is protecting spinach and swiss chard as well as our garlic that was planted in November and the greens are up. That’s the lasagna bed on the far right.
If you are itching to get in the garden, think of what you can do to make your spring planting easier and sooner. And of course, thumb through those seed catalogues, look through your previous year’s garden journal about what varieties you preferred and if you wanted more or less, get inspired, and start making this year’s garden plan!
Great harvest!!