Early 2017 Season Preparations

7 years ago

Hi RMG! We have finally reached December, the month of the year where you really can't do much gardening in zone 5.

I normally like to spend my December daydreaming about how glorious my next gardening season will be, regardless of any grim reality from the previous season. I've learned not to jump the gun TOO far usually, having started some seeds in December under lights or heat in the greenhouse to find little successes. Legend has it that leeks and strawberries and snapdragons can be started this early ...

Anyway this year I've decided to try to take a longer view after obtaining 30 yard waste bags from my neighborhood and about 500lbs of composted horse manure from a local farm, and an abundance of free time (long story).

So I spread my winter mulch in the main garden

And I built a leaf mold box/potato planter out of 4 2x4 sheets of plywood, not pictured.

And I built some 8x2x18" raised beds. For these in particular I excavated a foot down and have filled them up with layers in order of partially rotted logs, vegetable compost, native clay soil, fall leaves, more soil and a top dressing of 8" of horse compost.

I've been watering this all in and am excited for the potential. I'm considering whether to plant it with winter rye now or cover with black plastic to make sure the horse poop finishes as much as possible. Not sure if that matters if it has 3 months to age before Garden season starts.

Anyway enough about me for now, what are you all up to?

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Comments (5)

lizbest1
7 years ago
Feeling incredibly lazy after reading all of the things you're accomplishing! Most of my winter cleanup is done and I finished edging the 4 new peony beds my husband tilled for me. Have 6 peony roots in the garage and some bags of alliums that need to be planted, want to get it DONE! Feeling guilty having them still sitting there....
digit (ID/WA, border)
7 years ago
Well ... I buried some kitchen scraps in a garden bed here at home, not toooo long ago ...

Drove over to the big veggie garden last week. Collected lots of kale leaves. Tractor guy never made it out. That's fine with me. Brought some cilantro home and will probably make tacos with fresh salsa, tomorrow. The cherry tomatoes will be from the fridge.
Snow fell this afternoon on whatever is left out there. It will stick and more will be added through the weekdays with no chance of melting.

I've received quite a few catalogs!

Steve
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locust, I'm also in the Bay Area and have been working on my soil for the past month or so. I just got some new community garden space, and the previous person took her soil from the raised beds (fine with me, I have 4 compost bins and needed a place to put all the compost), so I have been adding a couple inches of coarsely sifted homemade compost, an inch or so of used coffee grounds (because they're free, they add more organic matter, and the worms like them), and an inch or two of mulch (free from tree trimmers) on top. I have reconfigured the garden beds, and some of them needed more soil, so I fine-sifted the path mulch and got some more good compost/organic matter to add. I also added some soil from the paths. Even though it has been raining (seems like) every other day, it was easy to move soil from path to bed with the digging fork (I would not use a shovel in such wet soil, though). I always mulch my tomato gardens and the tomatoes have done very well, and in fact, a couple sheets of newspaper and half an inch of wood-chip mulch (plus the shade from tomato plants) got rid of bindweed in the tomato garden in one season. It's still too early to plant tomatoes (though everyone I know, including me, could not resist planting a few already, with lots of protection), and I think sheet mulching is much preferable to leaving the soil bare. I keep my soil covered with mulch at all times to protect the earthworms. Even a couple days without rain and with hot sun makes the soil crack, and when it rains hard the worms need the mulch as a refuge. I do not till; tilling destroys the soil structure. So for your soil, I would add compost and mulch on top of the existing soil now, and plant into that when you get the plants. If weeds are a problem (and they soon will be, if your soil is uncovered!), pull out or at least knock down the weeds, then add a couple sheets of newspaper underneath the compost and mulch, or just under the mulch. Around here, the birds will eat young seedlings until about May or so, and we sometimes still get cold night temperatures into April and May, so the plants need to be protected with cloches, water walls, bird netting, or whatever you have.
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Wow Tony, that is one awesome fireplace I must say! :) I'm a worse tomato grower ever, lol. Trying to find my perfect tomato plant for about last 10 years, hahaha! Weather here in a High Desert is very challenging and it hard to grow vegetables up here. We have a large temp fluctuation between days and nights in spring and fall, and about 105F in July. This when my plants get stunted and I give up. Only cherry tomatoes do fairly well here, I've tried a few varieties of larger sweet tomatoes but never succeeded. Some plants grew taller than me and didn't get any fruit, and a very few gave me 2-3 miserable tomatoes in entire season, lol. And not only that.... about three years ago I've got some kinda wilt disease and all my tomatoes were dying from the top down for two years in a row. So I gave up and switched to container gardening, covered all dirt with a bark and install about 20 half-barrel containers, bought new soil and finally got some tomatoes last year, yay! So this time I decided to look for some early medium size tomatoes to bit the heat and ordered a few new varieties from Tatiana: Bursztyn Caraibo Bychie serdtse (bulls heart) Aunts Ruby yellow cherry Ananas noire and all my proven performants: Early girl Sweet million Sweet hearts Black cherry Sun gold and Sun sugar Super sweet 100 I only have 1-2 plants of each and for now bring them in and out, but will plant them out probably in a week or so. Right now they are in a 4" pots sunbathing on my front yard. Oh, forgot to mention, my small backyard is facing Northeast, so right now it doesn't get much sun because of the shade from the two story house and tall trees, another reason for me not to rush to plant them out till next month. Here is a picture of some of them :) Happy gardening everybody, hope all your plants are doing great!
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Enjoyed your video. Lots of beautiful tomatoes. Looks like you are on your way to a great harvest. I don't have any advice on the wilt. It did show up in my garden this year. It struck two plants, took them out quick, but has not spread to other plants. The two wilted plants are in the raised bed. The raised bed has the least amount , or none that I can recall, native sandy loam from my garden. I filled with compost from a nearby recovery facility. The first two years, there was no wilt. I did add a bag of new soil this year. I will have to see what happens next near. Knowing where the wilt is, and could continue, may affect my decision to plant something else there.
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gjcore
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Today I dug up all (most?) of the root vegetables. Lots of carrots (some huge ones), beets and leeks. Are leeks root vegetables? Harvested lots of rosemary and sage. I've had the rosemary plant growing for 4 years. I'm haven't been planning on putting the coldframes out this winter but giving up of the rosemary bush is kind of sad. Probably won't make it through the winter :-(

Other than that dug in leaves into the slightly frozen soil where the carrots, leeks and beets came out of. Did some tending to the compost and mulch piles. About as ready as I can be for the start of winter.

If I have the time tomorrow will try to take some rosemary and thyme cuttings before the big freeze arrives in Colorado.
nbm1981
7 years ago
Wow, there are some ambitious people here! After 6 weeks of not really doing anything in the yards AT ALL, I did get my dwarf pear and cherry trees and red currant potted in whiskey barrels moved into the garage and I got my strawberry barrels mulched heavily with leaves. I also leaf-mulched my in-ground strawberry beds and raspberry plants (which still have green leaves on them!!). I threw the already decomposing pepper and tomato plants that I pulled in October on top of the in-ground beds to break down and add as much matter to the soil as they can before spring. I'll remove whatever doesn't break down in early-mid March. I kick myself almost every day for not having started a fall garden back in August - we'd easily still have lettuces, radishes, etc., even with the few sub-20-degree nights we've had. I was able to pick tons of fresh rosemary for Thanksgiving, though, so that was good.

I am so excited for all the seed catalogs to come in (I've gotten a few), though in all honesty, I have more seeds than I will ever need. Oh well, it's too much fun and it's such a great hobby. I filtered through my seed box over this past weekend and started brainstorming what I want to focus on in 2017. I'm going to be starting greens (lettuces, Asian greens), micro tomatoes and perhaps a few pepper plants between now and the end of December under my basement grow lights. Beyond that, I think it's going to be a big tomato year again (as always), as well as beans and unique fruit. Baker Creek has some wonderful and unusual fruits that I am dying to grow out. I'll have some peppers, squash, melons, etc., too, of course, but it's always fun to throw some new stuff in the mix, especially since I'm relatively new to gardening (2017 will be my 5th summer).
popmama (Colorado, USDA z5)
7 years ago
My uncle is moving from his home in Aurora all the way to Grand Junction and he will not be able to take his garden with him. So last Saturday, I went to his house and took possession of a few plants from his yard: two heucheras, a lungwort, and a huge clump of the most beautiful ice plant I've ever seen. Since I have a history of killing ice plant, I promptly gave that large clump to Gardenchloe in hopes she can keep it alive. I planted the other three plants in my raised bed as a temporary home for them over the winter with the intention of moving them to a more permanent location in the spring. I only hope they survive.

Other than that, I just got some covers on my potting bench and grill before the chill came.

Early 2017 Season Preparations

Comments (5)

lizbest1

digit (ID/WA, border)

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gjcore

nbm1981

popmama (Colorado, USDA z5)

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