I was thinking today of growing some lettuce under lights.

Onions and shallots can be started from seed this month. Probably some other things too.

Jim

Yep, start some lettuce. I'm just having my first salad of winter lettuce tonight from a tray i started a couple months ago.

Yes, it's a long haul. I am totally hearing you, man. I don't know how many more winters I can take. This winter we are thinking about dragging the last of our school-children down to florida for march/april so I can do some gardening. A little home schooling never hurt anybody.

I like to think of this as the planning time of the year for my garden. I sit in front of the wood stove with hot chocolate and write lists of all the things I want to get done in the yard this year (I wont remember what I want to do in the yard unless I write everything down!). I go through all of the garden magazines that I didn't have time for the summer/fall before, order my seeds and go quietly crazy waiting for the snow to melt! I can start seeds in my garage around the 1st of March. I use grow lights and heat mats then move the seedlings out to the greenhouse. I only have 2 months left and counting. Totally understand how you feel! I'm also looking forward to the summer to lose the extra pounds I'll be gaining from all this great hot chocolate and whip cream that I'm drinking!!!!! Here's to a long and frost-free spring, summer and fall!

I love the winter, actually and enjoy some down time from the garden and have lots of other things calling to me that don't get my attention during the growing season, but if I were bored, I would either, catch up on house hold tasks, take up a winter sport because when you can't lick'em, join'em. Gets you in shape for the gardening season and the winter flies by and strangely, you find yourself looking forward to winter. If all else fails, there's always winter sowing. I tried that 4 years ago and I am hooked. It feels like you are gardening during the winter, you end up with tons of plants to plant in spring. The plants you have are sturdier and healthier than indoor grown seedlings. It saves you money, it's distracting, you get your hands in the dirt and it is fun. If that doesn't keep you busy enough, you can trade seeds and then winter sow them. The winter would fly by.

I lived in San Diego and had a small but four season garden. Well, actually it was about three different gardens. Even though it was smaller than what I have now I got pretty tired sometimes, as there was always something to do. Since it's easy to fill every available space of time with gardening, I kind of like the lull here after the rush of preparing for winter, cannning, caring for fall plantings, moving perennials, etc, it gives me time to think and plan. An enforced rest is good for me and makes my garden better and not so over extended.

I guess i'm lucky. A good friend of mine owns a local farm stand so i can go and help take cuttings, plant seeds, x-plant or what have you depending on the time of year. I do miss the long days and being in my own garden though. But as stated above, it's nice to enjoy the season and rest, plan for the up coming year and if time allows, go visit and get my hands dirty while nice and cozy in the GH.
Enjoy while it lasts...Dan

I start bulbs inside for something to do. Hyacinths and daffodils mostly. Then plant them back in the garden in spring.

Up here in the frozen north I am harvesting Lettuce, Pak Choi, Tatsoi, Spinach, Radish,etc. and while it does not grow as big as outdoor plants they are still fun and tasty. I have the lights in the living room it seems to help the Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), also known as winter depression. Just think it will soon be time for onion starting. I will push some lettuce to the side for room. ;) Pak Choi smells so good when grown indoors!(rolls eyes).

Curt

If you'all are bored you can come and weed my garden beds! We received as much rain in the last month as the yearly average in this area, and I got weeds I did not even know we had! The weeds are competing with my crops, but all seem happy with the rain! Well, the lettuces got a little soggy. They's recover. Weed, weed, weed......

I'm with you Den! We've had a bunch of rain over the Xmas holidays! And now freezing (By our standards)
We're also in the lowlands so the water doesn't drain.
I'm hoping my DH will start working on the Greenhouse he's been promising for awhile. It'll be bare bones cause he's laid off, but we have all of the materials.
I've tried doing all the planning...only to run off to the nursery on April 15th (last day of frost for us).
I'm starting plants with my spec ed students this year, so that'll be some fun planning, but it's not something I'm doing at home!
I've gotta start doing some of that computer planning of the garden (yeah, then I'll be on the puter all the time instead of in the yard!)
Might get up to 60* tomorrow and no rain for a few days!
STUFF to DO!!!! NT

Today I transplanted some Pablano cuttings into pots. Dug the holes for the trees that will be arriving end of this week. Watered and fertilized the tomato and tomatillo seedlings. Started getting things ready in the greenhouse to accept all the pots and trays for spring starts. Counted all the fig cuttings I plan on taking tomorrow. Checked the citrus for ripeness. Looked over the fruit trees for pests. Pulled a weed or two. Worked out a materials list for some new raised beds. Still need to get to my winter fruit tree pruning. Ordered some seeds on-line. Not to board.

I have my hands full. I have to prune and weed around over 100 blueberry bushes before March!

Probably too late for you this Year, but you may want to consider setting up an indoor tomato "garden" for next Winter:

{{gwi:12788}}

With a basic 400 Watt HPS light system, things develop pretty rapidly. Photo taken 20 days later:

{{gwi:12790}}

Raybo

January is the worst for me. Cold, dark days. Just flipping through the seed catalogs and looking for stuff to read on the internet. By February, I'm ordering seeds and getting a few things planted.

....just got to make it through January.

I am miserable too, but I take the sting out with seed catalogs and planning notebooks, and re-reading some of my gardening books. Come March, I want to hit the ground running! I am also buying lights and starting seed for the first time soon.

I'm always happy when Jan1 is behind me, we still might and usually do have a month or two of dismal weather to get through but it's not going to last forever (fingers crossed).

The only thing I've started is my croatian lettuce, if I was growing onions the seed would have been planted christmas day, I picked up this hint oh so long ago when I was knee high to a grasshopper:). A neighbor of ours, a fantastic veggie grower always started his onion seed on christmas day on top a warming oven on their wood stove.

I'm also doing some garden chores which I should have done last fall, collecting and cleaning all my garden tools, putting them all in their proper place so they will be at my finger tips when I need them. Wish me luck on this I need it, I've lost one item I was sure I put away last fall and do you think I can find it urghhhh!!!!

Annette

Time to read eliot coleman books!

I planted my tatsoi this morning - aiming to transplant under double protection Feb 1st, when I will direct seed spinach, bok choi, scallions and a few others.

Double protection + 10 hours of daylight starting feb 1st. This is my first time, so I'll let you all know how it goes...

:)

Struggling here to get motivated. I have spent the past couple of years trialing so much that I never knew existed ... until I'm just tired.

But alas, I started some Candy onions from seed minutes ago ... and it feels good!

Jimster, the little "shoebox" containers are really good for leaf lettuce.

{{gwi:12792}}

pnbrown, you are not going nomadic? Can't say that I blame ya ... except for procrastinating ;)

A year of back to the basics lies ahead for me. I'm going back to production as I know it instead of hunting the latest and greatest.

In the frozen north also, cooped up with 4 cats(and a DH)in a small apartment, not enough room to grow anything, no outside structure for keeping anything dormant. It's all I can do to keep my few houseplants alive and rotate pots of wheat grass for the 'bratties'. My overwintering peppers even died a slow death...couldn't stop it, couldn't figure out what caused it. All I can do is wait for March to hang my grow light and start my seeds in my little designated corner. I don't even do WSing until Feb, when the(extreme)minus zero temps are over(or should be). Yes, these are long winters here(sigh).
Oh, and what's with the percentage numbers where my zone info is/was? Just noticed that today...

Not bored here. Normally I garden year round but this winter I am working my butt off trying to get infrastructure work done, and I have just over a month until spring crops go in. My quietest time is July-September when it's too hot to do more than harvest and drink iced tea.

But anyone who is cold and bored is welcome to come help me haul and spread horse manure compost this weekend.

I suppose I could tell you that it was 57 degrees here today and that I planted tulips, but you know, that would really and truly be MEAN. And you know what? The honest truth is, I am bored too. For once the tulips are all in, that's it til February when I start pruning and sowing seeds inside. If you hate winter, you hate winter. And it doesn't matter if it's three months or six months long. I have lived both ways....Well, it would be a lie to say they're both the same, but it would be MEAN to say how glad I am to be here rather than there... :)

Can't do anything outside, it's too cold, too dark, and too frozen. It's too early to do anything inside to speak of.

Ugh. That might actually drive me to housework ; )

We've had over 30 inches of snow, its been cold (teens for highs) and there looks to be a huge chunk of Arctic air on the way for next weekend.

Grow stuff inside. I have a lot of plants going. I just started some Thuja seeds, along with some strawberry seeds. I also have fruit trees growing (cherry/apricot/peach)... I think investing in HPS or a lighting system could help. By March you can move stuff to a hoophouse.

Ugh. That might actually drive me to housework ; )

YAK!!!! NOOOOOOOO
We keep saying that we'll clean out the (bedroom, library, closet etc etc) when it's raining.
Hmmm we've had more rain this year than ever and.......
NOPE! LOL

Frank, thanks for that update. I feel better now, at least I don't have to winter in the upper mid-west!

I was attending a soil-mineralization workshop yesterday. Spent the afternoon standing in a half-frozen soggy field. It was cold enough, let me tell ya. I am learning some possibly very useful things, if anybody is interested.

How do you mineralize soil, PN? Anyway, yesterday my collards were frozen all day, despite the sunny weather warming the hoop houses, so I got under my huge pile of leaves, and there, wrapped in hardware cloth, were three perfectly blanched cardoons, one savoy cabbage, and several pounds of rutabaga and turnip, all in prime condition. They are in my garage or fridge now, and there is more of the same under those leaves.

Compared to all the cold zones, can't really complain in zone 8. I'm still picking ugly tomato off the heirloom and Juliet. But the wet winter boosted the snail population here so I'm out picking about 100 snails every day when it's not raining. Yet they still managed to devour the peas and chard. They strive to keep me busy during this time of the year.

Last spring the late storms and snails killed 2/3 of my seedlings. So this year I was planning on starting most seeds in the garage. I've never used grow light before. Raybo's inhouse tomato looks really impressive. Since I'm trying to stay green and good RTI, I wonder if I may use energy saving bulbs instead of those expensive grow lights sold in the store?

With minerals, apparently.

Borax is an easy way to get hold of boron, for example. Most soils will be deficient of boron because it's highly leachable. I plan to lay some down soon. My zinc is high, which can cause problems. Potassium is a little low, even with all the wood ash I put down. Manganese is low. Sulfur is low.

So get a test, then get all the minerals you need. I was hoping for a simpler method. I wonder if it is not time to try the ancient Amazonian method, powdered charcoal. Supposedly, it minimizes leaching by binding nutrients on its surface, but plants can still access them. The only question is how to find or produce enough of the stuff.

How else would I have known those things?

I have been using charcoal for a long while now. One of the best ways to apply the minerals they say is to mix them with charcoal, or humates. They said that fresh char needs to be sequestered for a while, let it weather or put in the pile, or soak in urine, before putting in the soil because it is so attractive when fresh that it will grab up minerals and if those are minerals in short supply that will cause an immediate problem. So that may have been going on in my home garden.

Wish I had a nice greenhouse like the one in Cozy's picture.

I hear ya' Den & my other northern friends. I don't think the polar ice caps are melting. I think they just shifted to central New York! I have started plotting on paper what I'll be growing this coming season and figuring out what varieties. I requested a bunch of seed catalogs, so at least I can daydream of warm weather. I have Jimmy Buffet tunes in my car so I can think warm! When you've already 80+ inches of snow for the year, it's hard to remember summer.

Ew, 80 inches. We've really NOT had a lot of snow this year. A few light dustings on and off, and one storm of about 5 inches back in December. Calling for 3-5 today, which is relatively light by Michigan standards. So far, I haven't put my plow on my Chevy yet this year, just used the snow shovel. Doesn't break my heart.

10'-20" predicted here starting tonight through tomorrow. I'm looking forward to a 'snow day' flipping through seed catalogs in between dig outs.

I usually enjoy winter but this year it's been tough - too cold too early. However, if it's going to be cold anyway, I'll take snow over gray/dark/damp days anytime.

denninmi and all the other frozen northerners, I feel for you. Winter here is not fantastic, usually wet and grey, but at least we can get out and do something most days even if it's only pruning or leaf sweeping. Today I sowed favas in my little unheated greenhouse. They'll be transplanted outside in February because this year the mice ate every one of my outdoor Autumn sown ones. I had wanted to go down and start digging the allotment over but it has rained all day.

Supposedly in z7 and warmer favas can be used as an over-wintering cover crop and early spring harvest (presuming rodents don't get them before they sprout). I wish I liked the taste of them more.

Well, I got outside today...with the snowplow. Looks like I have a 30 to 50% chance of being able to get outside with the snowplow again tomorrow.

Glad to read I'm not the only one feeling crazy over winter... I'm just about finished with choosing seeds, am looking to purchase a new load of topsoil (for my raised beds) and wishing the snow and ice would disappear... I have an assortment of veggies growing in low hoop houses - but the temps have been so cold, I haven't looked inside since the big storm on Sunday. The snow and ice didn't damage the hoops, so perhaps my salad bar will be ok. So far, we're harvesting lettuces, various greens, beets, carrots, chard, radishes, cabbage, but the broccoli has given up.

Pn - I'm interested in your minerals seminar - any links? And fascinated to hear that I might be able to overwinter fava beans - can't say I'm a huge fan, but maybe they taste better from the garden. :)

Thanks,
Cindy

I'm home for the second day in a row from school because of snow. I've exhausted the catalogs and am really getting cabin fever. Seeds and plants are all ordered and last year's remainders all organized. Yesterday, I found a beekeeper to set up hives on my farm. I also ordered some potash. I have never understood the enormous disparity between FARM and GARDENING supplies. I priced 1/2 ton of bagged potash for $340 but bought an actual ton of it bulk for $5.62--from the same company!!!

Brook

I have to admit that it feels good to live in the South. Even so, I'm fairly busy. I have Brandywine with false leaves, newly born. It's a good feeling.

Cindy: realfoodcampaign.org

Thank you PN! Looks interesting!

Well, the days are getting longer. It's no longer dark when I drive to AND from work. That's something.

I gripe about it sometimes, but I don't think I would enjoy living without 4 distinct seasons. Maybe because that's all I've known.

Still, I'll be glad when I can get a shovel in the ground.