Going to be 3 degree windchill for me tonight!

I don’t want the southern nasty bugs around her either, lol-but I don’t think these daily lows in the upper 30s is going to get it done. Nature Girl got me to fill up my Botanical Interests cart with Clancy Potato seeds and a collection of ”pole” tomatoes, but I haven’t pulled the trigger yet because of the delivery cost. One of these days I will get over that, but Baker Creek has spoiled me

Seeds and Such also has the Clancy Potato seeds and their delivery is $4.99 but you get 2 free packs of seeds for the early bird special

It is kind of wet around here! Fortunately rain stopped yesterday afternoon and the lake began to recede before pulling dock off the pilings. Glad to see the snow go though.

Seeds came today Cindy Thank you!

Len - It took those seeds over a week to arrive? That's terrible.

Your tax dollars at work.

Nope, sorry Len but this is how the USPS is funded: "The Postal Service generally receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations."

It's DeJoy's new & improved updated USPS policy - The Phony Express.

Hoop house to table...spinach salad with a bit of mizuna and red mustard for last night's supper.

Looks like a sunny but cold & dry week ahead here. Things need a chance to dry out a bit. The carrots & tops look ok after a few hard freezes but the collards have taken it on the chin, it might be the collards swan song. Amazingly the young spinach looks great, the cold doesn't faze it at all. I used my weed wiggler tool to rip up some weeds today so that they'll dry up during this sunny week. Weatherdude is hinting again at a weekend snow, but it may miss us to the north, hope so.

NIce looking harvest, Len.

Vgkg: are you harvesting from your carrots through the winter? j

Out garden is an expanse of white. It makes the white flagging on the new deer fence/ wires less visible :)

Hi Naturegirl, the carrots are good in the ground (like a refrigerator) as long as the ground doesn't become so frozen that it's hard as a rock. That would damage the top of the carrots if they become frozen. I should dig them all up before too long but generally by Feb they have grown to their maximum potential and are best dug up and stored in the fridge. These carrots are from seed that was planted in late August. I'll probably dig up the remaining carrots this coming weekend before the next winter blast hits here.

January beet salad

No rain today so lots of energy! Harvested some salad greens and leeks, then sowed beets indoors and peas in gutter outside under plastic. When the beets germinate they're going straight to the greenhouse.  We want to avoid getting fungus gnats in here this year!

Tomorrow will be very cold here (may not make it out of the 20s) and then we will be getting a "snow event" on Sunday. Not looking forward to that!

Len - that beet salad looks yummy!

Cindy - we are getting the snow event right now. It rained a little in the evening and then turned to a mix after midnight and now all snow. 2" so far and we have at least a couple more to go before it tapers off this afternoon and moves southeast. There is probably a layer of ice under the snow which is both annoying and dangerous.

I'm making both ham and beans and veggie beef soup with barley today. I got the H&B in the crock pot already and getting ready to start on the soup. Then I'll think about cleaning the driveway if the snow is about done. I like to do it 2 or 3" at a time.

We'll be on the mostly rainy side of this storm, it will start as snow but just glad it's not freezing rain so power outages look unlikely here as long as the winds don't get too bad. A high of 33F so it's back to indoor projects today.

Jack - Be careful when you are out there shoveling. It's supposed to be the reverse for us. It will start as snow then change to rain and sleet at the end.

It's 22 degrees here right now and that was also the low overnight. Low tonight of 13 degrees predicted. 100% chance of snow for most of the day tomorrow. The high today might be 30 degrees.

It's a good weekend for football.

I'm hoping the storm track changes some. What they showed was the mass of the storm passing thru and then a long thin tail that keeps coming right thru here for a long time.

I'm thankful the storm missed here...got cold weather but dry. I like the dry. It has been wet/moist here.

The snow has started here. The low temp overnight was 14 and the high right is just 20.

Brrrrr.

This morning looked like it'd be a very nice day here. Bright Sun, not a cloud in the sky. Right now it getting much darker with the clouds coming in, The wind is picking up. The radar shows the leading edge of the storm coming thru.

Meanwhile; the deer are over at the recently sold vacant lot next door eating the greens from a huge bed of garlic. Maybe 50' by 70'. They've never ate that garlic before. Ominous! After the lot was sold the buyer mowed the lot once. But that was before the garlic sprouted.

John - I've never seen deer eat garlic. They must be desperate for food.

This morning I Winter sowed lots lots of greens to put out on the deck. They will take a while to germinate but will be ready to go into the garden by the time it warms up.  I tried putting seeds in it's in gallon jugs last year which was yeah there which was a total failure so no more of that.

Got lucky here, just 1" of snow topped by 1/4" of sleet, topped by 1/10" inch of freezing rain, which will be just plain rain in a few minutes. With the rising temps this should all be gone by lunch time tomorrow. Now they're saying to keep an eye on next weekend for more possible snow? Looking cold too with highs in the 20's Fri/Sat.

The weather guessers on the east coast have a tough job but seem to have gotten this one pretty much right so far with the heavy snow going inland.

Here we have bright sunshine and about 30F so not much melting going on. We have a couple days in the 40s coming up before it gets cold again so hopefully most of the snow will melt and the ice on the roads will be gone.

Len - Living vicariously through your gardening and harvests! I'm not even growing any lettuce in my basement this year nor have I started anything yet.

I'm going to start grilling dinner in about an hour. Ribeye steak, shrimp, lobster tail, stuffed scallops, broccoli, and baked potatoes.

GO CHIEFS!!!!

Sorry John :-p

Jack I want to eat at your house PALeeeze. We are having left over manicotti.

The outside temp has gone up here, as predicted. It's now 32 degrees and raining.

Sorry Len...no leftovers other than a little broccoli.

We are supposed to get up to 40 today and 50 tomorrow so hopefully that will take care of the snow before we are back into the deep freeze for a couple days starting Wednesday.

Jack - Congratulations on the game and your dinner. Wasn't any surprise to me.

So far we got about 5 or 6 inches here as a guess looking out the window. The storm was coming up from the south but is now rotating counter clockwise and coming back for seconds from the north west? It's 27° at 11 AM.

Thanks John! The game sure wasn't much to watch in the first quarter when I think they might have set a record for most punts in a quarter. T.J Watt's touchdown flipped a switch on the KC offense to wake up.

Buffalo is going to be a hand full next weekend.

I'm sure that dinner was great, Jack. Had to be with all that seafood. What did you use to stuff your scallops?

We ended up getting over an inch of precipitation between the snow and rain overnight. For a while it was sleet. It's above freezing and it was most of last night. It's melting pretty well.

Cindy - Yes, the dinner did turn out great but it was a little challenging getting everything done at the same time on the grill. I cheated and bought already stuffed scallops in the shell. Along with chopped up scallops, they had celery, bell pepper, shrimp, onions, spices, and something to bind it like egg and breading/panko.

The snow is starting to melt here as well..

We got some light rain in SoCA this weekend. Daytime highs are in the 60s, nights in the 40s. I worked my planting beds and prepped them w/ new garden soil, then directly sowed mustard greens and daikons, hoping for a decent spring harvest in a few weeks. The chard survived the winter and resowed themselves generously. Two volunteered tomatoes came up in the fall and are fruiting now. I picked two dusky-ripe cherry tomatoes today. The larger variety shows some blushing and should ripen soon. The guardian garlic and onions on the perimeter are happy, fending off the rabbits. Two eggplants clinged on but look rather sickly right now. Spring is in the air!

We ended up with 1" of snow here but it's not going anywhere as the temps nosedive and stay in the 20's today. Maybe another inch or two tonite as this next storm brushes us on the southside. I still need to dig up the remaining carrots, but it'll have to wait until it warms up into the 40's next week. The collards are totally shot now. Once the carrots are dug up the next garden harvest will be for spinach sometime in March. Now it's onward with the fruit tree pruning once these present frostbite conditions ease up a bit.

Len, Your tub of dahlia tubers..Is that in an effort to have earlier blooms, or are you up to something else there?

It's been really cold here. Low the last couple of mornings has been single digits. Today it'll get just above freezing. No moisture to speak of going all the way back to October.

Hey Margi there are two tubs now! This is about creating more plants by taking cuttings from the tubers before planting out. I've done it before but not on this scale.

The tub on the left contains tubers that came from my friend's garden who died last fall. I'm hoping to make lots of plants from the ones he created by saving seeds. I'm going to grow more dahlias and somewhat fewer vegetables this year...or at least that is the plan.

Hey All! Looking for some Pro Mix BX and not finding any unless I want to spend $100 which I do not! Any leads? Alternate products for seed starting with no fungus gnats in the bag?

Len, I usually get my Pro Mix at Ace Hardware but their delivery price is over $100 now. I had to get some from Amazon-it was $91 with free delivery. Ebenshades Garden Center (where Amazon gets their Pro Mix) has a 3.8 cu ft bale for $54. Not sure about the delivery fee. They also have lots of organic soil there in smaller bags for less than $20

We've been dealing for 3 days with snow, maybe 5 or 6 inches total. And went to -2 recently.

When the skies are clear and it's too cold to snow it goes way down, and then we get more snow with a much warmer temperature. Take your pick. I blew the snow off the walks and the car with a snow blower.

I ordered seeds today from Baker Creek. Four different lettuce varieties, none of them the Black Seeded Simpson I always grow. So I went to pay with a gift card and noticed there was a very small balance, enough to order one more package of seed. So I added Long Island Cheese Pumpkin as a gift to the person who gave me the card. Suddenly sales tax shows up on the order which wasn't there without Long Island being involved?? To confirm I looked at two orders I made last year, no sales tax??

I plan on growing the 2 eight foot rows of Black seeded Simpson and 4 half rows of the new lettuce looking for tasty lettuce that perhaps doesn't bolt till later than the BSS. I wouldn't order the seed but my heart problem seems to be disappearing. I'm getting no where near the shortness of breath and have much more energy.

Glad to hear that you are doing better, John.

I need to order from BC too. Maybe in the morning. Busy with a book that I can hardly put down.

Cindy - I assume you won't be doing any planting outdoors; what with the snow I hear you're going to get. We got about an inch overnight which I blew off with my trusty leaf blower.

Cindy I'm ready for another book...what are you reading. I just finished The Lincoln Highway which was a total page turner for me.

Sun out yesterday and today so I will be sore tonight!

Hope everyone in the snow belt is okay. Things are waking up in my little sprouting tray on the deck. Arugula and Kress are leading the pack, but most of the cool weather crops are germinating.

Should be a salad in about two or three weeks, Len.

Have you read Pillars of the Earth by Follett? Or I Am Pilgrim by Hayes? The beginning of Pilgrim is a little gruesome but the writing is excellent and everything he (the author) says is important.

I'm currently reading The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by Gortner. Historical fiction. I've read several of his books and enjoyed all of them.

https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/christopher-c-w-gortner/

I plan to read The Lincoln Highway, too.

This is the first time that I've seen a seed package that included the refrigerate or freeze info.

Jack - I was rooting with you; but apparently my support just wasn't enough. Sorry!

Thanks John, they sure were a train wreck in the second half!