This site is an archive of ChiotsRun.com. For the latest information about Susy and her adventrures, visit the Cultivate Simple site.
Thank you for all your support over the years!

A Nice Window

February 4th, 2016

It’s been a little warm here the past few days, our blanket of snow has melted and the ground can be worked. It’s the perfect time to broadcast a few seeds for cold tolerant varieties like arugula, cilantro, mustard, and a few other things. Winter will return, in fact we’re supposed to get snow tomorrow and next week it will once again be in the single digits. These seeds don’t care, they will wait and spring forth when they’re ready.
winter seeding 2
They won’t germinate as quickly as they do when the soil is warmer, but they’ll germinate when the conditions are right and I’ll have a much earlier crop that I would have if I had waited.
winter seeding 1
I’m also going to be seeding a flat of lettuce, which is something I do every year. I find that having a flat of greens ready to go into the ground in spring gives me a jump on the season and has me harvesting greens for my table at least a month if not 6 weeks before direct seeded crops. I love having things ready to plant as soon as the ground is ready. This winter has been fairly mild, which means my overwintered spinach is thriving and should start growing as soon as conditions improve in a month or so.

What are you doing in the garden this weekend?

6 Comments to “A Nice Window”
  1. Brian S. on February 4, 2016 at 10:43 am

    Sounds great! I started a flat of tatsoi, mizuna, spinach, and some other greens a week or so ago to transplant in a couple weeks. Our snow here in West Virginia melted off a couple of days ago, and I may direct sow some arugula and mache this weekend. Spring and gardening season are starting to seem not so far away! What is your process for overwintering spinach? That would be an interesting thing to try for next spring.

    Reply to Brian S.'s comment

  2. JJ on February 4, 2016 at 10:59 am

    We have a small raised bed that’s overhung by neighbor’s trees that gets too much shade to be very productive (it was originally a sandbox build by previous owners). Just some dead weeds there now; if I clean it out over the weekend and work the soil a bit it would be perfect for some spinach seed. That would officially be my first act of gardening for 2016 ;-)

    Reply to JJ's comment

  3. Chris on February 4, 2016 at 12:55 pm

    Planting my dwarf peach trees and scattering some cold hardy seeds around!
    Love your chickens! :)

    Reply to Chris's comment

  4. Charlie@Seattle Trekker on February 4, 2016 at 1:38 pm

    Good luck on your early start…This has been a winter with no snow and the ground is warmer than I have seen it in years. The one thing holding us back here is the ground is so wet and so soft it makes it hard to get out into the garden.

    Reply to Charlie@Seattle Trekker's comment

  5. Jennifer Fisk on February 4, 2016 at 4:21 pm

    I will probably scrape up the turkey droppings from their roosting site and toss it into the garden. I might even scoop up the berries under the bunny hutches and put onto the garden.

    Reply to Jennifer Fisk's comment

  6. Kyle on February 4, 2016 at 10:35 pm

    I am playing ring-around-the-rosy with transplants. I made a few design mistakes over the last couple of years (is there a year without mistakes?) and am doing some editing. I got introduced to Planting in a Post-Wild World over at Root Simple and immediately started to understand why some parts of my garden were legible and others made sense on a page but not in reality.

    So, everything that is obviously not legible is getting rearranged. A bamboo clump that was supposed to be taller got put in a big pot. A japanese maple got moved to a more temperate location. I inherited four badly-placed boxwoods and they are going __________? A fig is getting moved to a sunnier spot. Red osier dogwood are getting moved to a wetter location.

    The good news is that there is a lot that IS working that I can build on this year.

    Reply to Kyle's comment

About

This is a daily journal of my efforts to cultivate a more simple life, through local eating, gardening and so many other things. We used to live in a small suburban neighborhood Ohio but moved to 153 acres in Liberty, Maine in 2012.

Admin
Read previous post:
First Seeds of 2016

Yesterday I planted my first garden seeds for this year. What were they? Artichokes. At 180-240 days these babies take...

Close