Winter Seed Sowing - The Finalists

I've been immersing myself in YouTube videos and Reddit threads about winter sowing, and I think I've made my mind up which seeds I'll try for the first year.  

I have leftover Whorled Milkweed, which didn't fare so well last year when started in the house. I'd really like to get this established in the meadow area.

Teasel, which I discovered can be invasive so I didn't even crack that seed envelope.  If I only sow a few, grow them in pots, and cut back the seed heads before they naturally distribute, I may be safe.  They are a nice structural plant.   

Annual asters (Sea Star mix) are apparently good candidates for winter sowing, and I have about half of a package left from last year.  

I have a package and a half of Rococo blend pansies and I'm trying to decide if I want to winter sow them in containers or sprinkle them around the cottage gardens and between beds in the hillside garden.  These are seeds I purchased in 2023 and started indoors, then transplanted out in containers.  They were spectacular, and when autumn rolled around I'd neglected to empty a small pot of them.  To my utter shock, they came back the next year in that pot and thrived. They reappeared last year, as well.  We'll see if the seeds are still viable.

I'm going to try winter sowing some cool weather greens, too.  I have cabbage, kale, and spinach that I'll attempt to coax to life.  I sowed cabbage seeds last year directly in one of the shadier raised beds and they were not much more than an inch tall by the end of the season.  I sowed spinach directly in a bed twice and both times it failed to even germinate. I think our springs are getting too warm too quickly, and it's affecting these crops.  Hopefully this will give them an edge and get them started in optimal conditions.

All of these seed packets were purchased for previous years, so I'm not 100% confident they'll even germinate, but you never know.  I grew Roma tomatoes from the same seed packet for four years previously, so it's worth a try.  Next step: deciding on the actual containers.  

Addendum - after I hit publish I realized I have other seed packets already in the fridge to keep them cool!  Great Burnet, Verbena bonariensis, Valerian, and side oats; the latter two I also sowed directly in the meadow back in late November.  I have a number of seeds I collected from the gardens, too.  Clematis, Vervain, Ragged Robin, Poppy, Mallow, and Penstemon.  Looks like I'm going to need more containers than I had bargained for!

garden ruminations and the fix

 

As I sit here on a snowy December day, my thoughts turn to vegetable growing.  I fully admit that I start with a bang during spring months that are so filled with promise.  Like an echo, that initial push of excitement fades into the distance as the reality of growing conditions, my own mistakes, and unpreventable climate or weather related mishaps begin rearing their ugly heads.  The hot summer months are when I begin to look around and adopt a defeatist attitude about my gardens.  This isn't a healthy pattern, so I need to fix it.

I've been looking at my simple garden layout and thinking about what has worked well in which beds, what has failed miserably, and figuring out the why of it all.  

 I developed this layout initially to keep track of my perennial stock; to determine which plants I had in which beds.  As I moved the perennials out, I thought this chart would help me determine simple crop rotation for vegetables.  That didn't work because I tend to use any open spot as a perennial holding area for new plants, plants I've started from seed, or plants that need a specific growing condition that I haven't prepared yet, thus throwing my rotation plans into chaos. So what other uses might this chart have?  How about light, and where to better plant specific vegetables according to their need for sun or shade?

This chart is situated as though I'm standing at the bottom of the hill, in the entrance.  The top is fairly west, the left is fairly south, the bottom fairly east, and the right fairly north.  It's not exact, but it's also not evenly split.  The left side of the garden is shaded by the large trees of the forest garden from around noontime to three or four o'clock, then it's hit with full sun for a few hours until sundown.  The right side of the garden gets pretty much full sun all day.  Using this information, I can determine which vegetables will do better in which beds.  Well, you would think, anyway.  Last year I tried growing lettuce in the old tub at the very bottom left, and it was a massive failure.  Likewise, radish and cabbage in the far upper left did almost nothing.  I'm not sure if it was light conditions or if the soil was missing something, but I may revamp those beds altogether and try again.  

Since adding the hay ring in the center, I've been frustrated by the way one side of whatever I've planted at the base of the ring - peas, cucumbers, or pumpkins - grows better than the other.  I've been thinking of adding more trellises in the hillside garden for vining vegetables, and thought...gee, do the trellises need to be a certain position for optimal output?  Well, duh, young Skywalker, they sure do.  The hay ring is positioned east to west; that is, walking through the open center you are moving east to west, with plants on the north and south sides. In this situation, one side gets more sun and grows faster and better than the other.  Trellises should be positioned north to south, so they get the full benefit of light on both sides as the sun traverses the sky.  I'd like to add vertical trellises (and possibly arched) for cucumbers, peas, and possibly some smaller squash varieties.  My beds are all lined so that if I start in one row and bend a trellis up to the next row for arched, they should work great, with the open center running north to south and veg planted on the east and west sides.  If I go with just a vertical wall type trellis the length of the beds, I already know that works because I've done that in the past with a small piece of hog panel.  

My next thought is that if add trellises, I need to know which beds will best lend themselves to the potential shading of afternoon sun from the vining plants.  A quick check on "what vegetables benefit from afternoon shade" led me down a rabbit hole of confusing information.  The internet.  At once the most and least helpful informational tool.  So what do I know to be true?  I know cool season crops need sun but don't thrive in heat, and many can be coaxed through the summer by providing some cooling shade.   

Armed with this information, I'm now going back to my trusty seed box to take stock of what seeds I have on hand, which ones need to be scrapped due to age, which can be started inside, which can be direct sown, and what plants I'm better off letting the garden center start for me.

 Who says gardening in northern climes stops when the beds are buried under snow?

 

Suddenly...

 Well now, that escalated quickly.

I feel like we only had a few weeks between too hot to function and why is it so cold?  One of the best things has been more consistent rainfall, though.  We haven't quite put a dent in the drought, but it's getting there.  Now the concern is the ground freezing before it can absorb this beneficial water.

I had picked all the squash and brought them inside after the second hard frost, which finally killed the actual plants.  Those were pulled up and hauled off to the compost heap.  I was shocked at how many acorn squash were still on the vine.  The other day I finally quartered and roasted one of the blue hubbard squash - the top one in this photo.  I gave the other one away because who needs that much squash, right?  

It's amazing that a squash that size, probably 15 lbs, cooks down to this:

I've given most of the acorn squash away, too.  Let's face it - the less I have to pretend to enjoy food prep and cooking, the better.  Since these did so well, I'm feeling like that's the path forward for next year; purchase small plants and be done with it.  The plants I buy tend to do better than what few I manage to start from seed.

On the chore front, I've been waylaid by weather and shortchanged daylight by the turning back of the clocks, but I have managed to get some fence posts pounded, the pasture mowed, and the wildflower meadow mostly knocked down.  Garlic is planted, so that's scratched off the list, and despite my best efforts to get everything in pots planted, I've had to bury a handful of perennials in the hillside garden beds to overwinter.

I decided to take down the section of track fence I had put up two years ago, which sounds like utter madness, but let me explain.  That section was put up with six foot posts, which are actually about five feet tall once they're pounded into the ground.  My fence is taller than the posts, so it just looked awful.  You can see in this photo how the top six inches of the fence isn't secured to anything.
 

My plan is to leave the fence posts in place and get a roll of fence that suits the height better - 48" should do the trick.  Hopefully the deer won't breach the shorter fence, as it's close to the house, but I've been finding deer poo not ten feet from my back door lately.  Clearly proximity to the house is not deterring them! Meanwhile, I've purchased 7' t-posts that should accommodate the taller fence nicely.  They were a bit harder to set, because I had to stand on the tailgate of the truck in order to effectively use the pounder.  

freshly mowed pasture

 

new section of mule track with 7' t-posts

old fence removed

  As I was working on the fencing chores, this happened.  Never a dull moment.

 

I also decided to take down the rope and post fence in the meadow area. I'm not sure if I'll put it back up next year - even though I liked it, I finally decided it didn't quite mesh with the overall feel of the area.  

I've been slowly emptying plant pots and spreading the soil in the meadow area to build it up a little, and to act like a mulch by adding a little protection over winter.  I still have some finish mowing to do, and some seed to spread.  I've bought a grass called side oats that grows in clumps, with long stems that hold oat-like seeds hanging down one side of the stem.  It's a prairie native, so I'm hoping it will fill in some of the bare spots.  I also have Valerian seed that I'll spread now, along with some of the wildflowers that I gathered seed from earlier this year.  

The polytunnel cover has been removed and put away for the winter, and the last of the tomato and pepper plants hauled off to the compost heap.   It looks so bare out there now.

The last big pre-snow chores on the list are to tackle the bittersweet and briars that have grown up outside of the mule paddock, and around the pine stumps in the pasture.

I spent nearly a day cutting and pulling bittersweet along the new fence area, and made a pretty good dent in it.  Two truckloads to the dump, and all I need to do now is get in there with the wheeled weed trimmer and knock down those briar bushes and weeds.  I'll open it up so I have another place to haul manure for the winter, and hopefully make the pasture look a little more tidy.  It's almost time to put the tractors, mowers, and trimmers away for the season, and it's been spitting snow for days now.  Time is a-wastin'!

 

The Return of the Friday Chore Day

I'm not complaining about hot, humid weather now, am I?  Glorious crisp, cool autumn weather is upon us, and I'm trying to knock out as many chores as I can before snow flies.  Thank goodness for my every other Friday off!

I haven't worked on the alpine garden because I really wanted to get the manure pile moved before winter.  You can see how much the pile had grown over the last year - in the background to the right of the barn.  That's just a fraction of it.

I picked away at the pile a few weeks ago and moved it over to where the forest garden will be.  Today I snipped some wayward saplings and then spent two and a half hours bucketing manure across the yard.  That old tractor of mine sure does a number on a body!  I feel like I've been beaten half to death, but the pile is moved.  What little I couldn't manage to scrape up I hand raked and spread it around.  It will compost nicely over the winter and add to the soil back there.  

 

The stall mats are out because the rat plague has reached a zenith of infuriating activity.  From what I understand, they are awful everywhere this year.  I don't really feed grain to the mules, so I'm not sure what they're after, but they break through every barrier I put up.  I'll be working on a solution to that - they're too smart to get trapped, but I've found a second one dead in the water bucket.  A sinister plan is hatching!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the driveway...

 Manure has been dumped, then hand raked to get the worst of the lumps out.  The tractor can't get any further up the bank than what's there now, it's steeper than it looks.  Once we have snow I'll haul my daily manure up to the wall area via my manure sled and dump it.  I still have to cut some more saplings and brush toward the end of the driveway area, but that will open up easily accessible areas to dump the manure from now until snow flies.  I still have some 50/50 mix that I'll start spreading over the manure, and next year hopefully I can add either some more of that or topsoil.  I should be able to start planting in here next summer, so long as we get a good winter to rot that manure down.  I'm excited to create this garden, especially in among the mossy rocks and tree roots.  I love the ferns that are already there, and will be adding more.

Between this project and the backyard gardens, I have enough going on to keep me busy for the next few years.  Boy, those garden centers love to see me coming!

 

Alpine Madness

 I've been saying for a few years now that I'd love to try my hand at an alpine garden, and today...well, today there's no turning back!  My super awesome neighbor came over with his tractor and dug out a depression in the back yard, then set rocks in it.  And so begins the alpine madness...

 I'm sure it just looks like a bunch of rocks, but I can see it filled in and full of amazing alpine plants.  I have a stockpile of smaller stones that can fill in the gaps, then over that I'll need to add gravel - drainage is key.  Then a mix of sand, sharp pea stone, and soil will top that off.  

I love some of the stones he placed deliberately - the square stone that I can put a bird bath or statuary on.  

 

The cubby area that...hmmmmm...I wonder if I could finagle a water feature in there?

The triangular and flat topped stones that can be used as seats along the garden's edge.

 I probably won't get the garden planted this year, save for the little blue spruce tree I've been hanging on to for a few seasons, but I am so excited to spend the winter researching the perfect plants for my new rock garden!

battle weary

 Despite my best efforts, the aphids and white flies are winning.  Into the woods I have tossed six pepper plants and about two dozen zinnia seedlings.  The aphids moved on to my globe artichoke and whorled milkweed seedlings, but I'm not giving up on those quite yet.

In happier news, I've kind of, sort of potted up my dahlia tubers.  I've given them no heat mats or grow lights, just the indirect light coming from a window that faces east.  

                           

In our zone, dahlias take forever to develop and flower if you wait until the danger of frost is gone.  I have a terrible habit of not remembering I've overwintered the tubers in a box somewhere, so by the time I get them out and get them in dirt, they're months behind.  For the last three years I've managed about two or three flowers between about a dozen or more tubers.  For those who are unfamiliar with the plant, if you live in a zone that gets killing frosts, snow, and temperatures that go below 40* for months at a time, you need to dig up the tubers and store them somewhere dark and frost-free.  They're a delicate plant, and when leafed out and blooming, the slightest touch of frost will cause them to blacken and begin dying.  Being that fussy of a plant usually means I avoid them, but I also love the amazing colors and never ending varieties of dahlias.  I'm hoping this head start means these plants will bloom toward the middle of summer rather than early autumn, but I can't be sure I've timed it right.  I do know that in twelve days of minimal care, they're already pushing through the soil.

 

I have to turn them every other day so they don't lean so much, but I'm really excited to see if they do bloom this year.  Some of them have, and I've noted the colors (red, pink, salmon, and orange), but some of them I've had for years and have no idea what colors they are.  Once it's warmer and they can go out, I'll transplant them into proper containers.

Speaking of outside, I may have jumped the gun a bit by putting out the cheap cloche over the big planter.

OF COURSE.  OF COURSE IT'S SNOWING...AGAIN.  Ugh, three to five inches expected.  I had hoped to start hardening off the leeks but I need it to be just a little warmer, even with the cloche.

Before it snowed again, I did clip some broken branches off one of the Midwinter Fire dogwood bushes.  Supposedly they're like willow clippings, in that you can just shove them in the ground and they'll take root.  I cut the base on an angle and cut most of the lower branches, then pushed them into the ground.  I think I was supposed to cut all of the little branches off, but we'll see what happens.

 But for this weekend, no poly tunnel covering, no hauling the tractor out to move manure piles, no removing the two downed trees on the track fence (finally found some guys to do that!), no working on the dead hedge.  I'm just a girl, stuck inside a house, asking for spring to come.  

 

 

blackbirds singing a song to lure spring back

Safety first update

 A few posts ago, I talked about the snow stops I had installed on the barn roof, and how they performed in a small snow storm that involved a changeover to rain.  Last weekend we had a storm that left behind six inches of fluffy snow - our biggest storm this season.  I know, it's been a lackluster winter as far as snowfall.  At any rate, I was able to gauge the effectiveness of the snow stoppers a little better this time.  They don't work quite as well as I'd hoped, but I'm still glad I had them installed.

 On the hay room side of the barn I figured the non-stoppered roof snow would give way much quicker, but it appears it came down all at once, despite the guards over the hay room door. The snow definitely spread farther where it wasn't slowed by the stoppers, but it still packed down like cement despite that.

On the mule's side, it was the same thing.  The snow came off all at once and formed a packed mound in the paddock.

I've marked the second photo - the yellow indicates the area I had run the snowblower through, to open it up.  The snow from the roof landed in a mound between the blue lines; at least it blew out farther away from the barn wall than it normally would if the stoppers weren't involved.  And luckily, it wasn't a massive load of snow by the time it came down.  This just makes me think that with deeper snow loads, I shouldn't assume I'll be safe under the eaves.  I have to admit I was a little surprised the snow still came off like this.

Completely safe, on the other hand, are the greens I started earlier this month.  

I started another sowing of arugula and mesclun mix (sweet this time) about two weeks after the first sowing.  I'm completely addicted to the arugula, and can stand there picking the tiny leaves off and eating them for far too long. I don't know if they'll ever get the chance to mature at this rate.  

As January comes to a close, I have two more weeks to wait before I can sow my stratified seeds and see how they do.  I've also ordered some last minute items like seed potatoes, sweet corn seed, and more mini cucumber seeds in preparation for the garden this year.  I've been hauling manure out back to the mound, so I'm definitely going to be planting squash out there, and hopefully corn.   I'm feeling optimistic about the coming season...let's hope it lasts into spring.

New Year, Old Me

 I haven't made any New Year resolutions; I never seem to stick to them.  This autumn I was put on blood pressure medication which made me feel like an utter failure.  I am terrible at weight loss (food is my kryptonite), so instead of vowing to diet, I decided I'm going to move more.  I'm using an old Fitbit tracker and making sure I'm at least getting the requisite 10,000 steps in, but I try to aim higher.  My average since August is 11,000+ steps per day.  I despise regimented exercise, so walking, gardening, and yard work are my motivating tools.  I was a little worried I would fall behind during winter, but so far we haven't really had a winter.

What little snow we did get in December was washed away in oddly warm temperatures with rain.  As soon as we flipped the calendar, we flipped the temperatures.  We're going to see pretty much a consistent daily pattern of mid 20sF during the day, with teens to single digits overnight for most of the month.  I'm a little more than worried about losing some of the late planted perennials if their root systems weren't well established, but we'll see how it goes.  I'm actually surprised by how much green can be found in the hillside garden and cottage beds right now.  I tried to mulch as much as I could, but I was really banking on a deep snow pack to insulate most of my beds. 

The lack of snow has given me the impetus to finally start cutting back the brush and invasive plants where my forest garden will be.  My wheeled weed wacker is currently being repaired, so I'm using loppers to work my way through the tangle of bittersweet, briars, and Autumn Olive saplings.  

So far I've managed to cut back the small area in front of the wheel barrow.  It's not as easy as you'd think, not with the ground frozen completely solid and much of the debris stuck fast to the dirt.

It's not something I'll get done in a day, but I think by plugging away at it at least a half hour each day, I should get most of it cleared in a short time.  And it gets me moving, which is my bigger goal.  

I had also started cutting back the sumac whips behind the dogwood garden in the front.  My main reason was because I absolutely love seeing the sun set the Midwinter Fire bark aglow, and the sumac behind it was a distraction.

 Although, the sun behind the fuzzy sumac whips is beautiful in its own way.

Behind the house, it's been cold enough to freeze my little water feature solid.  I never did get around to putting a flagstone path between it and the fire pit area.

Speaking of the fire pit area, I'm rethinking the wall of asters I planted along the edge.  I think I may move them elsewhere, and plant something smaller along that edge, or leave it so the granite edging can be admired.  The asters also detract from the Yellow Twig Dogwood, which needs a serious pruning and maybe a new location.  

I don't cut back the asters because I've noticed the smaller birds going for the seed heads at times, and I like to encourage foraging.  Unfortunately I forget to pinch them back and they get leggy, which means they flop when the snow comes.  Unsightly!  

One last movement inducing task this winter will be hauling my daily mule manure to the wildflower mound.  This was something I've been wanting to do for two years now, but never got around to cutting back all the weeds and grass first. Unfortunately, Reputa suffered a broken throttle cable and a failed tube in one of her tires, so she is down for the count right now.  Pushing a wheelbarrow full of fresh poo across the farm twice daily in the pitch dark will be a good way to keep the step count up. Right?  I mean...right?  *cries softly*

 

 At this point, it's pretty well beat down and I can see what I'm doing.  The goal is to cover the slope with manure, then mulch heavily, and use this area to grow either corn or squash...or both.  Add in some pole beans, and I'll have a three sisters garden.  Not a bad idea!  Now, let's see if I can actually accomplish these tasks.  Full disclosure - no breaths will be held in the coming months.