january reflection

january can feel very long, or very short.

on the one hand, it occurs after the glamour of the winter holidays and the celebration of the solstice, yet before it really feels like the daylight hours are actually getting longer. it is the one month in my garden that actually comes close to feeling like winter, in the bad ways - dreary, cold, wet, and brown.

on the other hand, it is the one month in my garden that comes close to feeling like winter! with such a short cold season, it is a blessing to be forced indoors for any amount of time. nothing much to be done when nothing is growing! and though this month can drag on, february looms closely behind; along with it, the garden chore list rises again. pruning trees, shrubs, and roses; moving perennials; weeding; doing a last check of seed and planting supplies; seed starting... then comes truly warm weather and the frenzy of springtime, only to be closely followed by the hotter, stickier frenzy of summertime. so this month, as depressing and listless as it can feel, is very precious.

the last harvest before beds were cleared: lots of radicchio, kale, radishes, and a few sweet overwintered carrots

i have been spending a bit of time trying to smooth out the workload for the next year's vegetable garden, and getting a leisurely start on some spring preparations. i sowed some tomato seeds for a greenhouse tomato trial i'll be doing this spring to try to get an early crop of tomatoes, and it has given me the opportunity to try some neat dwarf varieties i haven't grown yet. more on that in a few months...

we did end up with a spell of warm weather, so i went ahead and prepared all of the vegetable garden beds i'll need for spring planting - probably my least favorite (and coincidentally most backbreaking) task. fussing with drip irrigation, weeding, laying new compost and fertilizer, forking, and mulching with leaves... not fun. but now that's done for the year and those beds are ready for spring transplants, which have just started germinating indoors.

quinn's quality control of the greenhouse tomatoes directly after seeding

with a bit of extra time, it was nice to do some small upgrades on the greenhouse: adding weatherstripping, caulking, and sealing the louvers to keep the heat in. every degree counts when i'm eagerly waiting for the greenhouse to get warm enough to move out spring transplants and hopefully these measures will get me to that point just a bit earlier.

on the theme of improving, i started tracking temperatures around the garden as well - both outdoors and in the greenhouse, as well as monitoring the hot compost and soil temperatures in the vegetable garden. hot compost has been going very well, and needs its own blog post, as i've been taking several neighbors' food scraps to all our mutual benefit!

lastly, i've signed up for three trials with seed savers exchange's ADAPT program and am eagerly awaiting receiving my trial kits in the mail next month.

so just a few things to hold me over until february! until next month.