winter greens

It has been very cold nights, some down into the low twenties, but often warm again during the day. The leeks I left in the garden didn't last, but the few green onions left are still okay, and I can still pick to eat sorrel, winter savory, sculpit, and purple dead nettle in certain sheltered spots. What I tried to grow in my little greenhouse- only part worked out. Nearly all the pots sprouted- but the lettuces are doing very poorly and leggy. Lack of light, or the soil was too poor, or it's just been too cold for them to thrive. Tatsoi I only got one good plant, but that one's doing fine. Haven't eaten it yet because I wish there was more. Chervil all growing but are slow to put out their first true leaves. Dill is okay and I've used some of it. Tokyo bekana is doing well!

A bit spindly, but grew much better than anything else. I actually picked some to eat just yesterday, glad for a bit of fresh greens. 

Maybe if I do this again next year, skip the idea of lettuces (unless I start them sooner) and just do the cabbage and spinach relatives.

poor paradise

 My paradise fish not bright anymore. It happened so gradually I barely noticed- but then one day saw the long streamers on his unpaired fins are gone, and his color dulled. He's still just as eager to eat but often slow about it- still too busy looking up at my hand, the minnows grab food from under his nose, ha. On a very few occasions I have seem him flash against the edge of a leaf, but then when I watch close for a long period of time, I don't see him repeat it. I hate to think he's coming down with the same virus or whatever illness that my two previous paradise fishes had. Even though it was eight months without one of them in the tank, and the minnows all seem fine. Does my tank harbor a pathogen so long, or do I just keep getting paradise fishes that are generally unwell (poor breeding?) or is something about my manner of keeping them not good enough. I don't know.

blanketed

This past week I did the final work putting the garden to bed for winter. Turned the compost pile- there was less than before, only the bottom fourth or barely third was finished material, but it was very finely done, with a clear demarcation. I put six wheelbarrow loads on eight garden beds, the rue and perennial herbs just got leaf litter mulch. On top of the compost layer went four wheelbarrow loads of finished leaf mould from last year's pile. Started a new one. While it feels quieting to see all the beds flat and dark with their winter mulch, it also feels restful and I sure was satisfied, happy even, to find the rich darkness at the bottom of the piles. It still feels something miraculous and wealthy, to dig up all this goodness from heaps of waste and blanket it over to feed next year's plants. Only green in the garden now are a few leeks, sorrel, winter savory and lavender in the perennnial bed, rue and some volunteer borage on the back wall that brave the cold a little longer. 

All the vermicompost went on the front lawn, when I emptied out the blue bin a few weeks ago (don't think I mentioned it here). The worms were looking a bit poorly but now with fresh bedding and regular feedings again (I had ignored them lately) they're looking better.

The green tomatoes I picked and put on kitchen windowsill didn't ripen, they just got moldy and tossed. Should have tried making fried green tomatoes! Half the cowpea pods I picked just withered icky-looking too, but the rest I am waiting for them to dry and see if the seed inside is any good. Next time must watch the weather reports more closely, and pull them all before the first night the drops below freezing. We've had a few now.

end of season

The garden is winding down, and so is my interest in keeping this journal going, for some reason. I had a final harvest of cowpeas, now there's half a small jar of the reddish dried beans in pantry, waiting for me to try them in soup. We had a few days of hard frost this past week, which killed off my coleus (one sheltered in back corner of the garden lasted a few days past the others), 

then the cardinal climber vine, then finally the black-and-blue salvia. I've mulched most of the perennials cut back, with leaves but need to shelter some hostas and others with wood chips maybe.

Gathered up the last bit of chard, collard greens, one volunteer fall tatsoi and some purple dead nettle, it was just enough for a plate of scrambled egg breakfast. There's still a pot of kale on the deck. I've brought indoors all my geraniums, two potted figs, the cuban oregano, chives, thyme, stevia and bay leaf to overwinter. My coleus cuttings all rooted and are potted up now, brightening the windowsills. Four of the five cuttings I took of that unnamed purple glossy-leaved plant rooted and got potted too. 

Persian shield cuttings haven't grown roots but I refresh their water jar weekly and hope.

Bright pink thanksgiving cactus is blooming right on time, better than ever. One stem of my crown of thorns plant died but the others are growing new leaves. I finally have a row of five different-colored violets all blooming together, so pretty in the bedroom when the light shines through them. The madagascar palm is doing poorly so I'm collecting and saving rainwater for it (the spider plants and asparagus plant will get it too) as I think it's something in the tap water making brown tips happen. Lipstick plant is flowering upstairs and has a new shoot, too.

I mail-ordered garlic bulbs and got them in the ground just in time, I think. Two kinds- hardneck 'Siberian' and softneck 'Silver Rose Silverskin'. I planted the hardneck on the side of the ninth garden bed closest to the stairs, and the softnecks closer to the inside. With space on either end and down the middle, where leeks will go in spring. 

Instead of making hoops and plastic rowcover, I reskinned my greenhouse with actual plastic panels (noted in a previous post). Last year in some pots I just had in there for storage overwinter, weeds and grass sprouted and lived just fine through the winter months. So this time I put all the soil for storage in bags, and planted pots in the greenhouse with seed. Tokyo bekana, tatsoi, chervil, dill and a variety of lettuces. 

Four shelves- not the top one because I can't reach up there to water as these pots have more depth than the usual seedling trays, so the plants will have room to mature. Not sure how well it will work. Most of the seeds sprouted but the young plants are kinda leggy and leaning around seeking light. I guess the pots above shade the ones below too much. Maybe would be better to just use two shelves, with an empty one in between, so they don't block the light from each other. 

I cleaned up more thoroughly this time, rinsing out and stacking to put away in my storage room all the empty pots, tools and things. Very upset that I found a lizard met its end in a stack of pots. Not that he fell in and couldn't get out- which has happened before so I usually put them upside-down if left around now. No, he tried to shove his head through a drainage hole and got stuck. Seeking escape or going after a bug I don't know. Wedged so tightly I couldn't pull the pots apart. I felt terrible. I wish I had been around when it happened, if I'd heard him scrabbling might have found, and cut the plastic to free him. Too late now. I have left the pot in a corner on a patch of bare soil, expecting the decomposers will do their job. Sad as it makes me. 

Stil have pictures to add to a few older posts that are missing some, or to post retroactively fill in for the fall months were I wrote little maybe.

Need to do a final mowing of the lawn (which got fed vermicompost from my bin a few weeks ago), while it has light leaf cover. Then raking of the back yard, turning the compost pile, spread compost on the garden beds, with a layer of last year's leaf mulch over that. And the garden goes to sleep until spring.