How is your growing season taking off?
jrslick (North Central Kansas, Zone 5B)
9 years ago
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jnjfarm_gw
9 years agolittle_minnie
9 years agoRelated Discussions
Show me your planters in the off seasons!
Comments (10)I don't have any pics but I did mine by the door in seasons. In the fall I bought some long curly willow sticks for height and put in both of them, then I bought dollar store scarecrows in them, one was sitting and the other pot was on a strawbroom. Then I filled in around with a couple small pumpkins and goards and colored leaves. At Christmas I put greenery in them, left the willow sticks in them. Added some silk poinsettas, would a strand of fifty white lights into the flowers. And bought dollar store cardnal birds and sat on the edge. They were quite pretty. And not just holiday. I left them out until feb or so. In March I bought a few stalks of tall spring bloomers in silk, added pussy willow twigs from my tree to the mix, and bought pots of blooming bulbs and just sank in there and added a few pansies for real spring and early summer punch. I still left the corkscrew willows in also. They added nice height and focus. When I got ready to really plant in the ground when it got warm then, I took out the bulbs and pansies and put them in the ground....See MoreHow do you keep vegetable gardening groove in the off season??
Comments (15)We have a 12 X 30' hoophouse to extend the fall and spring seasons. When the ground in the hoop house freezes in winter (as is happening today), I cover everything with remay for extra protection and wait for a stretch of warm sunny days to get things going again. It might be next week or the next thaw might not happen until April. Meanwhile, in the house, I've got potted herbs and cut and come again greens (arugua, lettuce, etc.) in all my east and south-facing windows. Tiny onions and shallots can be planted in pots for cutting too. I've found that I can dig up a piece of perennial herbs like oregano, lemon balm, spearmint from the garden in fall and put them in pots. It's best to do it early enough so they can adjust to the pot outside for a while before bringing them in. Tender herbs like basil and marjoram sometimes cooperate and let you dig them and bring them in too. This year I've got a pot of Thai basil indoors -- so far so good. My 20 year old Rosemary is trained as a standard. It goes into the ground in spring and gets potted up and brought in before winter. It loves the dry, circulating heat at a window next to the wood stove. Lemon grass, bay, meyer lemon and key lime plants all live permanently in pots, going out in summer and back in for winter. Scale is a problem with the latter 3 but occasional treatment with neem oil in summer and washing leaves in the sink in winter, keeps them healthy. For years I bought new organic potting soil for all these indoor pots but the last couple years I have dumped all used potting soil into a couple of old whiskey barrels outside and let the rain, air and outdoor micro-organisms, refresh the soil. When re-potting food plants to bring indoors, I add good compost and maybe some perlite if the soil seems too heavy. I add a squirt of fish and seaweed emulsion to my watering every week to keep the plants nice and green and producing new leaves even duing the short winter days. It works pretty well. Also last year I started a small vermicomposting operation in a 5 gallon bucket in the house. It's not an optimal container, but the worms are doing their thing and they create really nice potting soil from leaves/wet newspaper and a little kitchen waste. Amazing. We're going to start another vermicompost container and put the worms to work on our kitty litter (not for use on food plants!). The wood-based kitty litter is much nicer than the clay type and the worms should produce some good compost for use on ornamental plants outside. One more very easy winter harvest tip: grow belgian endive. Grow them as a root vegetable that you harvest in fall. I crowd the harvested roots, leaf side up, into a large plastic pot, put potting soil around the roots, water, and put the pot into a 5 gal bucket. This goes into a perfectly dark place with temps around 60 F. In a couple months you have gorgeous little white heads of endive. I like to exuse myself before a winter dinner party "to harvest the salad from the bedroom closet."...See MoreWhat do you do to keep your gardening groove off season?
Comments (21)Hey Anniebert-- To clarify, I do most of my gardening in PA (Adams County) zone 6, north of Frederick by 40+ miles. The rest I do in Westminster, MD. I've lived here in MD 5 years and have gone by the wisdom of the local plant nursery (Bowmans) more than by Victory Seeds' frost chart--which most of the links on Google guide one to. Here in Westminster, the common wisdom is to wait until May because the last frost of the season is fickle and can occur right up to mid-May. So we wait to put tomatoes in by that date. Now up in Adams County, also considered in the MidAtlantic zone 6, an examination of the actual last/first frost/freeze records from 1972 to current show that the last frost did not occur sooner than April 20th, but is mostlikely to occur the second week of May--even up to May 20! April is more of a freeze month and we have even had freezes up to May 28!(1994) So, in either place, I wouldn't dare go by the last frost dates you gave! I hope this explains my position and why I was wondering about your "sanity". Haha. :-) As for starting plants from seed--every year I tell myself I am going to get the cold loving flowers like Stock begun in time. I hope this year I can break the pattern of not getting to it in time!...See MoreTaking a season 'off' suggestions
Comments (6)My easiest and most profitable crop is winter storage onions. I, too, have raised beds  66 of them  all 4' X 25'. For onions, I went to the extra work of purchasing four-foot wide, heavy duty, non-woven landscape fabric (I like GCI the best). I then spent several long winter nights cutting holes in the fabric while in front of my favorite TV shows. I made a grid pattern first, with all holes 4" on center. The next row is offset, and so on. Each piece has 1154 holes. I started with 3 pieces, they all held up for 6 years. I still have one in good shape - going on 8 years! I will make several more this winter. The reason I went to all this trouble is that there is absolutely no weeding, the onion plants are set precisely, and harvest is a breeze  just pull back the landscape fabric and most of the onions just pop out of the ground. I then spread them out on the hoophouse benches to finish drying until their necks are very tiny. All together, the planting, the harvest, and the cleaning take less than 5 days work over the whole season for about 600 pounds of onions  in just 300 square feet. The work could easily be done on the weekends. I found a source on the web for mesh produce bags at 18 cent a pop. I give a 10# bag to each of the CSA members, offer more as an Onion Share, and also sell them at the FarmerÂs Market. The best use I have found for them is to trade them with other vendors at the market for crops I donÂt want or canÂt grow well  sweet corn, winter squash, etc. Although I plant a few specialty varieties (red, torpedo, scallions, etc.) the major of them are Copra onions. Well-dried, stored in good conditions, they can last until the following May or June. I used the last one from the Â05 crop on July 4th this year. You might have to spent some time this winter lining up customers for the fall, but you might try contacting a local food co-op (or warehouse) and seeing if they would buy all of them them....See Morejrslick (North Central Kansas, Zone 5B)
9 years agojrslick (North Central Kansas, Zone 5B)
9 years agogrow_life
9 years agojnjfarm_gw
9 years agojrslick (North Central Kansas, Zone 5B)
9 years agojnjfarm_gw
9 years agobrookw_gw
9 years agobarrie2m_(6a, central PA)
9 years ago
randy41_1
9 years agojrslick (North Central Kansas, Zone 5B)
9 years agoslimiest_okra
9 years agolast modified: 9 years ago
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barrie2m_(6a, central PA)