February Gardening

Author: Lanie

It was a bit chilly, but I managed to get some seeds in the garden: radish, beet, rutabaga, parsnip, artichoke, and kohlrabi.  I think it’s the wrong time for kohlrabi, so that’s an experiment.  My greens and lettuce are bolting because it’s been so warm.  I’m not planting onions or potatoes, but I still have some bunching onions that have been growing for 3 years now.  The garlic I planted last year is already up.  It’s the wild variety that grows around here.  I planted some from the huge amount I dug out in the country.  I like the adventure of that, but I can’t remember ever having that many chigger bites!

These are the little starts in my makeshift greenhouse right out my back door.  I have mache (a little salad green-sometimes called corn salad), micro greens (even littler salad greens), and parsley because I can’t get it to start in the ground.  I really want to keep the micro greens and mache in the pellets and just snip them, because being in the beds is too much of a hassle for me.

    

I also have a few crocuses that produce the saffron threads.  Now I know these few won’t produce much, but are fun to mess with, and I’m pretty excited about them.  Maybe they’ll produce a fortune for my heirs!!!

 

Author:  Kathy

This is the time of the year that I find myself thinking about my summer garden. I get all the seed catalogs out and order new things that I want to try. I get my seed collection out and look over them, making decisions on which ones I will try this year.  Something that really helps me to be organized about it all is making a map of the new garden for the year. The maps evolve as the year progresses. I have a raised bed system so I have each bed or plot numbered. I make a note of each specific variety of veggie I plant and it’s progress and production. I think I will remember all these details but I don’t. Things to note are date of planting, any bug problems, rate of growth, diseases, volume of production ( I am not precise here, I just put down, good, bad or somewhere in between) and  taste. I use these yearly maps to make sure I rotate my crops the best I can, to do away with varieties of vegetables that didn’t do well in my soil or in this climate and to make better choices for the up coming year. Having said all that I still try new things just to see if they will work and I try some of the things that didn’t work in hopes that this year they just might.  Also, in Feb. I quit planting things in the greenhouse, because by April the greenhouse is too hot for anything.

 

Author:  Don

I have a sketched layout of my garden to keep track of what and where I planted so I can cull out what didn’t work and move plants around as needed. For example, last year I planted 2-3 varieties of watermelon, cantaloupe, green beans, squash, tomatoes and okra. My guess is several plants didn’t yield any fruit due to last year’s record heat and intense insect issues.  With that said, I’m thinking about taking out some of the melon varieties, Romano green beans, and two of the three okra varieties because they didn’t produce.  I’m planning on sinking some large pots in the ground, in the garden, to plant my seeds in this year, that way I can control the soil and nutrients better.  Also, because of the mild winter, I’ll probably need to ramp-up the insect management.  Typically, spraying with soapy water controls most things.  My wife likes to blast the leaves with water alone (on a daily basis) and has really good success with it, even controlling red spider mites.