Poring over seed catalogs, reading garden books & planning the 2012 garden helps.

This winter I'm going to do some experimental hydroponics, and am heading off to Wallyworld to buy an aquarium airstone & plastic tote. I'm thinking some fresh buttercrunch lettuce will be nice. Some alfalfa & mung bean sprouts in a jar will cheer things up a bit as well.

Indoor projects, things I put off all gardening season helps keeps me occupied. Vit-D also helps with the S.A.D. season.

I deal with it by INDOOR gardening. My house looks like your local garden center. LOTS of different plants, AVs, Streps, Sundews, Nepenthes, a few Dendrobium orchids, an Autumn fern, etc. They keep me busy. Reading gardening info in books and on the net helps, thinking and planning what I'll grow this year and how.
Yes, winter to me is a drag too but I'm retiring in a year and a half so at that point it won't be as much of a drag.

Periods of stupor interspersed with flashes of frenetic insanity.

Either that or I spend a lot of time goofing around online.

Bacon. I eat more bacon because it makes me happy. And we all know we need extra calories in the cold weather, right?

Seriously, about like you do. A wood fire, hot cup of tea, gardenweb, and one of those blue lights. It really does help. Doesn't make the cold go away, but keeps it from feeling like the world is ending, too. Try using it from about October onwards, that seems to help keep the winter blues from taking too much a hold. Then get out those seed catalogs and a notebook and start dreaming!

Oh, and we also take walks too.

We bought a large pig this year (split with another family), and we turned into bacon anything that could be baconized. And this is incredible bacon. No doubt meat consumption helps. We have lard, this year, too, and you could do worse than roasted rutabaga soup with garlic and croutons sauteed in lard.

Due to the very mild winter, I picked a wheelbarrow of vegetables yesterday: carrots, parsnips, Hakurei, radicchio and collards. Only the collards were under cover. It took my wife two hours to clean them up.

I also have to rack 65 gallons of wine (3 families), site the mini-orchard for next year, and I have some oyster mushroom sawdust blocks nearly ready for production. I also need to make some krauts. With the new grow lights, we are only 3 weeks away from starting the solanaceae.

I grow. I use to be bummed out over the winter too. Now I grow/harvest year around. I transplanted and direct seeded lettuce, kale, arugula and green onions on 12/30. It was nice to til and work up some ground. I even found a few happy worms.

{{gwi:8926}}

Jay

What Denninmi said...

Here is a link that might be useful: local weather

Winter sowing works wonders for my winter blues.

ray,

If you have a spare South facing window, and supplement that with a grow light for 3 hours per evening, then you might want to build a few of these next Fall.

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Here are the plants after 5 weeks from seedling transplant:

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Growing fresh tomatoes indoors will keep your spirits up over the cold Winters:

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Attached is a link to the Construction Guide.

Raybo

Here is a link that might be useful: InnTainer Construction Guide

It was 80 degrees today and it will be 74 degrees tomorrow. Winters are a tricky thing. I think I need to start moving the artichokes into the shade around noon or I'm only going to have flowers to eat in July.

Man I hate these winters.

I recommend checking out the Winter Sowing forum. I live in northern AL, where I can do some outdoor gardening year-round now, but I spent most of my adult life in MA, in cold, snowy winters. Winter sowing was, and still is, a great blessing for me.

Here is a link that might be useful: Winter Sowing Forum

Looking at all the seed catalogs, eyes wide, screaming over new varieties of tomatoes (kinda like the christmas target lady) grouped with sobbing uncontrollably in the corner, and drinking hot cocoa until I explode. Sometimes I go through my seed packets, and then plot out my garden only to crumple it up in frustration and fury, swearing off gardening for the year. Only to mix and repeat.

I'm surprised my husband doesn't fly south for the winter!

Glib, now I'm drooling. Send me some bacon??? Pretty please?

Raiquee, lol.

glib!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would love it if you could point me in a direction of some good mushroom growing info. I've been wanting to do oysters, and cruised the web but often found myself getting lost in infos for growing those mushrooms that make you a bit nuts. Needless to say, I left a bit confused. A great place to buy spawn/innoculant would be great too.

Bacon, beer, homemade bread, reading posts here, and seed catalogs! Not necessarily in that order! LOL

I only have one to two months I really can't plant much of anything. That's how I "deal" with winter. :)

Next month I get to plant a bunch of herbs, and vegetables like leeks, onions, fennel, etc.

fungi.com is where I buy my stuff. They will send you a booklet, but I want to stress a few things. Save this post somewhere. In a nutshell:

1) I much prefer to grow shiitake than oysters, because they fruit more reliably on less humidity (70% is fine). They also do better on logs.

2) Oysters will do better on blocks of various substrates, from straw to sawdust. They are amazingly easy to propagate but less easy to fruit (95% humidity is a bit tough to maintain with the primitive tools I have)

3) Logs have to be from LIVE hardwood or softwood, cut between leaf fall and first leaf (winter). No conifer or fruit trees, and no dead wood. Same for sawdust, which also needs to be pressure-cooked. I then handle it with rubber gloves that have been sterilized with bleach, and instruments that are sterilized by placing on the gas flame of the kitchen stove. Don't do sawdust the first time around, just fresh logs with dowels.

4) if you cut a LIVE tree, the stump will gladly accept Lyon's mane or maitake inoculation, besides the two aforementioned. Then wait five years. There is usually as much mass underground as there is above ground, so even one stump doing well is like winning the lottery for 30 years running.

5) Best way to start logs is to wait two weeks after cutting, soak overnight (in a 55 gallon drum), drill and hammer the dowels in the log.

The dowels have to be preordered because after arrival you want them in the basement for a month, so the mycelium recovers. To minimize stress, I only order them in october or march, for injection the next month. Waxing of the ends and the injection points is recommended (fungi will sell wax). Never expose the logs to direct sunlight under any circumstance (where I stack them in the summer, they catch a little sunlight around 8 am for about 30 mins. That is OK)

After injection, I have success with stacking them on top of a large plastic sheet, cover loosely, and water occasionally. Water pooled at the bottom will keep the humidity high. This will work if done in my basement in late Fall or in my garage in spring. I have also had success with placing them in a garbage bag (air circulation will be more limited), though I prefer the loose plastic sheet.

Starting them properly is fundamental. Once it has taken over the log, the mycelium is fairly robust and hard to kill, and will survive some drought. But early on, treat it with the care due to any seedling, with 100% humidity. I have some logs that were soaked in a cursory manner (one hour), and they all failed apparently.

6) In the good season place the logs outside in shade, on a pallet, stacked. water every 3 days it does not rain in summer. Have another pallet nearby because once you start fruiting you need extra room to stack the batches in the order in which they were fruited.

7) Logs will start fruiting from 9 months after (really small 10 lb ones) to 18 months after (50 lb ones). The small ones will also be done fruiting earlier. An average 25 lb log should last 5 years, peaking at 2 years. Last september, in ideal conditions (it rained a lot while fruiting, and the daily highs were around 60), I got 210 shiitake from 9 logs. During the hot summer, the same logs may give you only 50-60 (oyster will give you zilch in summer).

8) to fruit, soak the logs overnight, and place under a plastic tent. I have actually a hardware cloth cage, covered with a plastic sheet held down by bricks, because the squirrels eat shiitake with gusto. Wait 5 to 14 days depending on temperature, misting daily.

I only fruit logs outside during the good season (every 3 months, so about ten logs every 15 days, more or less continuous, as you can imagine it is too difficult to do inside), then freeze or dry (next year, dry only). We eat oysters right away. Shii stems are tough and are best separated from the cap, dried, and ground into powder for soups and omelettes (the powder is excellent). The caps are best eaten whole or chopped.

glib,

NICE information. I have tried buying a couple of the counter-top kits (closet kits?) and wasn't completely satisfied, but I still keep wanting to try again. I don't know about growing any mushrooms outside here, though, as I live in a very arid climate. Keeping the humidity up would be a constant chore! OTOH, I do see native mushrooms during our "rainy season," so there must be enough moisture for some varieties.

Catherine

I cope with winters through hot chocolate laced with vodka! Hmmm, drinking some right now. Just read a great how to for some cold frames I'd like to build along the new fence line, dreaming of putting cantilevered shelves along the top inside of the fence to hold seedling trays for winter and spring sowing. Sewing instead of sowing on cold or rainy days, working on class materials for the garden classes I teach and lastly, on nicer winter days, working in the garden! Winter is where I get the chance to do the heavier work that I hate doing in the high heat. Hubby helped me put a new "stone" (reclaimed concrete) walkway from the driveway to the veggie garden. I make more compost and move compost and large amounts of soil around, make new raised beds, steal leaves from neighbors :)...and garden! We have many warm winter days and I have a year round vegetable garden. Do lots of cooking too. 1001 ways to eat giant winter radish, daikon, asian greens, salads, turnips, rutabaga, turnip greens, collard greens, kale...then there are seed catalogs, garden books, my garden office tidying, organizing the garden materials, cleaning tools...the list goes on and on!!

Make a plastic tent on the North side of the house, then, and grow them there. You will still have to manage moisture. Too little air circulation, you get green mold (which kills the fungus). But that means opening the tent once a week or so.

I hate you jrslick.

;)

I'm jealous as hell really.

I admire him, and read all his posts. But there are veggies under my puny hoop houses too, and they taste as good as those, just not as many or as varied.

Florida. Where there are also cold waves and the house has no effective heating, so sometimes we are colder there than here, but it's always much warmer during the days and something is always growing even if only weeds.

Tommyr,

A little jealous, I get that alot. I truly believe that more people should have hoop houses and grow year around. In the next 10 to 15 years, I hope there will be high tunnel farms near cities and towns and they will be able to produce food for their communities.

Jay

Tunnel farms are present near cities everywhere in the developed world or in Russia. You may remember the tsunami seen from the air knocking down tunnels near Sendai in N Japan last March, but they are everywhere in Europe. Of course, the tunnels disappear in the warm season. It is only here that they are missing, since we prefer to buy January tomatoes from Mexico, rather than buy local hoop house collards. Canada has a lot of fixed green houses that I have noticed, and not so many tunnels.

I remember seeing those too. It was very sad to see that. I agree they are in Europe and Asia, but not here.

Jay

Perfecting my sourdough bread making - and warming the kitchen at the same time. These Ca. houses aren't supposed to have this much cold weather. Can't complain - have 4 boxes full of assorted lettuces, grn onion, beets, spinach, garlic, broccoli, etc., my best year, cuz I remembered to cover stuff with Remay cloth.

A new low-chill peach tree arrived yesterday - hard part is deciding where to dig the hole - things are getting pretty crowded - had to have it tho.

Sleep too much but nice warm bed and great place to watch all the golf matches (in sunny, WARM, Hawaii) on TV.

Just finished 2nd batch of lime wine - and the tree is still loaded. Found a nice spigot to put on the primary fermenter, cuz I'm not very expert at the siphoning part of my new hobby. Hope it works OK.

Also starting new seedlings under lights - more cabbages, parsley, thyme, onions, and daring to try early Roma seedlings in a sheltered place next to the south facing wall - never give up!

Bejay

I spend my winters (DJF) at a nudist colony in the Caribbean. I like to unwind (naked) for a few months. I'm usually like a piece of old leather when i jet back in March.

In reality, I've been sick for 10 days straight. Winter sucks.

I start a lot of seeds very soon, so that is usually something. I have my low tunnel still set up and its still very warm inside (although its warm outside...we haven't had winter yet.)

wintersow and wintersow some more