Design

A quick trip to a local big-box home supply store required an initial detour through the garden center's display of vegetables and herbs (not the point of the excursion!) It looked like there were more plants than the last time I visited. I wasn't surprised with the array of hardy kale, cabbage, and other transplants. Even the herb varieties offered up looked OK, although cilantro and arugula transplants are decidedly unsuited to the warm spring weather that's just around the corner here. But I've got to give the transplant producing company credit for being proactive and imaginative; they had snap pea transplants (!) for sale (also labeled as sweet peas...), onion plants in 6-packs, and a number of other things that I hadn't seen offered before in previous seasons. Now snow peas are very easy to sow directly, and best grown that way, but geez, what a clever idea to try to get folks to buy a 6-pack for more than the price of a packet of seeds? They were attrac...

It was a perfect late winter day here, temperatures in the upper 60's (°F), sunny and warm. It felt more like spring. The winter honeysuckle was covered in honey bees foraging for nectar. After a weekend away largely spent on indoor house activities (yuck), it was nice to return home and spend an hour or so turning over the remaining beds, sowing a first series of snap peas (Sugar Sprint) and garden peas (Wando and Maestro), a round of arugula, and a flat of mixed lettuce, to go in the cold frame when the weather turns cold again. I replanted some favas (broad beans), too, mainly as an experiment, since I think there may not be time for a crop to mature before it gets too hot. My fall planting of favas had a few blackened survivors still with healthy-looking roots, but it was really way too cold this winter for most normally winter hardy greens. Even collards show signs of frost damage. This week looks like it will be mild; I'm going to continue to put in onion sets and so...

I'm so glad that we're finally beginning to think about winter vegetable gardening here in the Southern U.S. I just listened to a podcast this morning from BBC Gardens Illustrated , where Sarah Raven talked about how in the U.K., folks are growing more crops through the winter. Uh, we get a LOT more light in the winter that British gardeners do -- why not take advantage of it? I put together a new cold frame today (it's a good thing I don't earn my living as a carpenter), but I'm thinking about coaxing some of the more tender winter greens through colder times. I'm delighted that my English (garden) peas are flowering profusely now. I may actually be able to harvest some English peas this fall (I've already harvested about 10 peas -- whoopee!)