Winter Garden Update - December
Here it is: the last garden update of 2007. The garden, being a beginner's winter garden, is much less outwardly attractive than a spring/summer garden. But there is at least one point of excitement (garlic, for those who were wondering).
Lettuce / spinach patch. The spinach has not been too impressive, but the lettuce loves the current conditions. Ironically, we have not yet had salads from this lettuce. And does anybody know what those weeds are? They have popped up all over the garden and grew right through the pine needles I put down in certain areas.
Peas. Doing quite nicely, considering the freezes they have gone through. Like I think I mentioned in a previous garden update, we are growing these more for nitrogen fixation / garden diversity than for actual yield. Good thing, because we haven't gotten any pea pods yet.
Garlic! We are very excited about our garlic. Harmony planted about 50 cloves. I have counted up to 47 sprouts, which is the best germination percentage we've had yet.
Carrots, and some more garlic. Hopefully these carrots will look a bit more normal than previous carrots, due to the fact that I tilled this soil and supplemented with mushroom compost and manure.
Perhaps another monster carrot in the making? Hopefully. Harmony says that we will never again plant carrots in containers, because the ones in the ground always yield a LOT more vegetable matter. This one is not as big as our previous monster carrot, and probably will not get that close.
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You're doing a wonderful job! The garlic looks particularly lovely and green. :-D Thanks for the pictures.
You'll want to be careful with the pine needles. They have a high acid content, and unless you have very alkaline soil, this might burn/overload most veggies.
Do the weeds have somewhat puffy, separate, almost succulent leaves and grow close to the ground in a slight spreading manner? Those are pursalene (Sp?) which are edible and are a sign of good soil fertility.
Veiled,
A lot of the places where I put pine needles were not places where we wanted things to grow. We have acidic soil (I think), but the pine needles + soil didn't seem to bother too many of last year's plants. However, some of the pine-need-mulched plants were tomatoes, which I believe are acid loving. I also mulched the marigolds with pine needles, and they did fine. But I will choose something else last year (pine needles happened to be free and available)
After figuring out the correct spelling (purslane ;)), I did a bit of reading about it. I don't think it's purslane, judging by the looks of things. Too bad.