Over wintered greens

Dietrich and I went out to check on the plants in their hoop houses today, half expecting everything to be dead. And, there's life! According to our friends:

"Yay! Life reigns!"
"babies babies everywhere"
"SPRING!"


The purple kale, shown above, was the hardiest over-winterer. It still is chugging along, looking awesomely tasty. The frosts brought out the deep purple even more in the leaves.



Spinach also looked great, showing more growth even. Spinach is super hardy, growing (slowly) in very cold conditions. You can see our yellow onions sprouting behind them.

Here, our hard-neck garlic is sending up shoots. They're all super happy and ready to get photosynthesizing after the dormancy of bulb life.

We also planted our lettuce bed, some carrots (yellowstone and 2 nantes varieties), radishes (pink and purple!), and a row of arugula. Let the spring spring soon.

Garden workdays to be announced later! I can't wait to get dirty.

office nasturtiums. leggy and round!

Fire Spinning

Crop Plans

Going through our seed collections. Finally, a large garden to plant them all in! We will have an abundance of seeds of tomatoes, cucumbers, fennel, corn, eggplant, basil, parsley, watercress, dill, oregano, catnip, thyme, echinacea, chiles, sweet peppers, sage, carrots, beans, peas, broccoli, kale, and amaranth. As long as the number of seeds will reflect how well they will grow on the roof :)

Still looking for a choice few others, like red and golden beets, various lettuces, and spinach. Chives, cilantro, ceremonial tobacco, yarrow, and mugwort are less of a priority, but would be great! So, Ill keep planning in the meantime- thinking of sweet green growing things and the scent of wet earth.

ahhh.

Winter = warm hole-ing up with cats.

It's cold. Feet of snow cover the ground. It is 11 degrees today. All I want to do is hole up with my cats and clean and sew and cook hearty soups and stews. (Which is what I do on my days off, consequently.)

Edible Alchemy Formulae Ed # 14

Click on either of these images to see a larger, readable version. I put out an edition with every co-op box, so look for updates!

Planted

The starts are taking wonderfully. ! It's been a really warm November for them to establish well. Soon, we'll be eating as many greens as we can stuff inside our bellies :)



The hoop houses look great, and continue to hold in the heat and moisture much more than we thought (I always have this weird feeling that they won't work... but they do!). My first foray with winter growing is proving to be complicated in construction- but easy. Plants persevere wonderfully in the strangest of conditions, slowly growing continuously and finding a way to make it work.

We move into Eco officially on Dec 1; The rooftop garden will essentially be our back yard. It's the 6th time I've moved since May of 2008. I hope that it's the last move for a while.