A day of firsts!!

First greens harvest... First cutting of chives...

I wasn't expecting the green onions or spinach to be ready, I hadn't even brought a bag to put them in!!  They were all planted last season and are coming back very quickly.  The chives are always welcome spots of green in the early spring.

First sprouts from the 'winter sown' project!!

I finally took a few decent photos of the winter sown projects.  These seeds were planted outside in late February in one gallon containers.  The Spinach/Swiss Chard container is on the top, and has a decidedly 'brassica-esque' sprout,  the Cabbage container is below and is looking good!!!  The cabbages don't have true leaves quite yet, but man are there a lot of them!

It's only over when all the spinach croaks!!

I guess I really need to take the hint.  The ground is frozen, and the season has truly come to a close.  I just wish I had been able to get some of the parsnips out for Thanksgiving.  Darn...  

Last week we had some brutally cold weather, I harvested the last of the turnips, and a few of the parsnips.  The cold scared me off, and I figured I would come back to get the rest.  Silly me, the ground went from 1/4'' frozen to over 2'' of frozen topsoil in less than a week!  So I'll wait until the spring thaw, or perhaps I'll get impatient and build a cold frame.  I did grab the last of the chard, and some kale also a few beets that were still out there.  The beets were almost on top of the soil so the just popped right out.

The one plant that is still surviving in the garden is the spinach.  As I've said I have it under two layers of remay, and a little bit of straw, it looks great.  It isn't throwing out many new leaves now because our days are so short, but it is hanging in there!  Maybe it'll last until March, and give us some early greens.

Fall harvest

I went down to the garden yesterday and peeked under all the remay and straw.  I found spinach and swiss chard.  The spinach is super dense, the leaves are a really rich green and very thick.  It is tucked in under a light remay.  I used a tomato cage, laid on its side to keep the fabric off the leaves.

  The swiss chard is still hanging on, of the two varieties I planted the fordhook is doing much better than the five color silver beet.  The fordhook is a green chard with white stems, whereas the five color comes up in.... about five colors.  I pick all of those leaf by leaf so that the plant can keep on growing.  The bok choi though I cut out whole.  I had to leave a lot of it in the garden, as there were slugs and snails tucked behind the stems.  

There is also futo negi left, they are the gigantic bunching onions I was given earlier this year.  They grow like chives but are very large, I can't wait for them to spread.   I think they will fall into the hardy catigory, they show up very early in the spring and are one of the last to go in the fall.