Green

Finally – rain. Gentle, slow, soft, over the course of a few days.

A the end, it did not add to that much altogether – maybe 1/2 inch (as measured by my hand thrust in a bucket that was left out). Nonetheless, it was rain in what has been a cold and dry winter with hardly any snow, hardly any rain, lots of drying wind and temperatures dipping below 0F ( -18C) at time. So, a few days of mild temperature and a gentle rain are making everything sprouts, buds, shoots, germinates, swells… springs!!! It makes one hunger for fresh vegetable.

kale-bed-mid-march1

Among the vegetable that we can harvest now are the kales. Planted as small transplants in late fall, the kale bed (Red Russian, Early Curled Siberian and Black Kale) is growing again. I am harvesting lightly from it and will be able to harvest a lot more over the next few weeks. Just before that gentle rain, I transplanted lettuce & frisee seedlings of various sizes, interplanting them between some of the black kale to try to maximize space use. Maximizing space use is actually a weakness of mine, sometime carried too far! Must come from my former real estate days. The idea, of course, is that the lettuce will be harvested before the kale needs the space. Sometimes it actually happens…

But it is still nippy and we are at least 6 weeks away from the average last frost date, so the Reemay cover remains handy, and on nights like tonight, I decide to pull it over the bed. Another weapon along with old skylights and old windows in protecting seedlings or warming up the soil.

reemay-mid-march

But the worst part of the winter should be over.

Green, I tell you!



3 thoughts on “Green”

  • Nice looking greens you’ve got there, Sylvie. I wish I’d planted stuff in the fall and not waited till December. But I did take advantage of a recent warm spell to plant many seeds and now all kinds of things–mizuna, arugula, lettuce–are sprouting. Yes, we’ll be making our home-grown salad again soon.

  • Oh boy! The kales I planted in the greenhouse last fall are actually the perfect size now, and don’t have that stinky cabbage scent to them (yet). How pretty, though, Sylvie, and I love the old skylight trick. For what it’s worth, I always cram too many things into my beds: sink or swim but hopefully I will eat you all first 🙂

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