Hon Tsai Tai
Posted on 11/15/2013 12:14:17 PM PST by greeneyes
It’s a race to beat the winter weather for us that’s for sure. I also have a bed or two that I just pile high with straw, and leaves and stuff.
About a month before spring planting time, I work it all in, if it hasn’t decomposed enough.
Now the other day, I was reading about raising watermelons. They advised putting down several layers of newspaper in the spring, and at least 3 inches of mulch such as straw.
Then poke a hole in the newspaper to transplant into the soil. Supposed to help keep disease down and help with water retention during our dry months.
Yeah, but at least you don’t get as much as we usually do.
I’ll bet you can just cover up those carrots for a bit in February, and they’ll do just fine.
While I didn’t get to it this year, I usually plant a batch of carrots in the fall, then cover them up with a row cover, and eventually a bunch of straw. Then I have carrots to dig up around March. If I plant them early enough, I can even have some in the winter by just lifting a corner and digging up a few to go in my veggie soup.
What ever works. I have thought about using a small hoop green house with a 100 watt bulb outdoors in the winter too.
What keeps me from it, is my aversion to cold weather. I wouldn’t want to even go outside long enough to turn the light on or off.
It’s great that we have various options to grow our own stuff, I think.
“I’ll bet you can just cover up those carrots for a bit in February, and they’ll do just fine.”
I need to look at the envelope and see when their mature time is. I’ve never grown them so I don’t know. I know I started the seeds in July and planted the plants sometime in mid to late August.
I did get a notebook and a plastic file folder with several divisions in it. I’ve been using a thin paper folder and it’s coming to pieces. I’ll start tomorrow listing seeds I already have to plant, in the new notebook and the ones I ordered are on the way.
No the plant in your pic Hon Tsa Tai has broader leaves but its kind of close in appearance. For now I’m calling the plant I posted the ‘asian lady lettuce’, eheheheh. My little mystery plant out back...
I did get sorta messed up today when my special friend called and said "Happy Valentines Day" because she had sent me something, and I thought maybe I had overslept and missed Dec and Jan. ;)
/johnny
Rip Van /johnny All ya need is a Duck Dynasty beard and voila...
I've got one of those, anyway, this time of year.
/johnny
Hey /j I want to get an early start for the pepper plants—maybe a few ‘maters. Looking to start from seed pots for the spring transplanting. Should the seeds be started in January or about when?
I stagger seed starts so I have batches about 2 weeks apart. Which is good, because I lost one entire batch of 18 tomato plants to a bone-headed move on my part.
I always have to have extras.
/johnny
Yes, the Hill Country got hit with 20s this week. It was early. I got out and picked the garden the day before. I got ONE Cherokee tomato. ONE all season and it had some bug sting it so was gone before I could get it. Still, saved the seeds to crossing fingers those will sprout later. Got a couple pint freezer bags of tomatoes put up and one or two more if they ripen on trays. Brought in all the peppers which will go to the freezer, too. Picked a pot of greens which will be one the table tonight. Didn’t get all the greens because there was a POISON IVY in the middle of them! No, it’s not the same poison whatever that I had a few months ago but it’s in that same bed so it might have come from the same lettuces package, grrr. I’ve never had poison ivy there before this year. I’m surprised I’m not broken out head to toe, whew. Hubby dug it up but broke the root so... There were some carrots nearby so will wait until next week to see if they survived the freeze. I don’t want to go anywhere out there until we get a good rain to maybe wash away any poison ivy residue but the rain chances have been cancelled and hubby put up the hoses for the winter.
Maybe kiddos will be in for the holidays and they can help putting the garden to bed. The utility service tree trimmers were here this week so they stomped all over it. I told them they could go in there but they weren’t careful but maybe that didn’t matter. Ugh, STILL, after 45 years, they didn’t cut the big limb that WILL bring down the lines because it’s laying on them - no that’s the electric line, no that’s the cable line, no that’s the phone line so it’s not our problem. Fine by me when the entire neighborhood goes down and they’ll have more problems than cutting the @#(&$#&@* limb now or decades ago. But I have bigger problems this week. Our water heater blew a fuse and caught the insulation on fire. Thankfully, hubby up at 4 am getting ready to head to the panhandle and was right next to it when it happened. No one has the right size and are telling us the week after Thanksgiving. We finally found one and can get it out here next week. Hubby had already had to delay his trip a day to get his pickup repaired so after this he had to get someone else to go so that’s another thing, blah. With so much crazy stuff, maybe his guardian angel was telling him not to go.
I really had some trouble with organizational stuff for the garden initially. I started out with a composition notebook that I was writing stuff in. Lost it. It hasn’t surfaced yet.
Then I went to 3 ring binder - soon I had several that were full of stuff, that needed to be reorganized, so I did that. Now I can’t really remember which one is which, so I need to put a better index in it, but it’s quicker to just do a web search right now.LOL
Now, I have 2 things that I put into a spread sheet - a seed list and garden plots.
The seed list has a list of the seeds I have, and the year purchased or grown. A list of the seeds to consider purchasing for the next year. All seeds are kept in a coffee can in the back of the refrigerator.
A list of plants grown in each bed for the spring, summer, fall and winter for each year is the other spread sheet.
I had to put these on the computer, because I just kept misplacing them for some reason. Now when they vanish, I don’t have to waste time hunting for them, since I can find them on the computer.
This probably helps to knock a few points off my Blood Pressure by lowering the frustration level.
I just purchased a 5 shelf bookcase that is 6 foot tall. I’ll have it in the kitchen for a few cookbooks, garden books, and canning and preserving books, and first aid books.
That should help me be able to get it all organized and together. Right now it’s just stored wherever I happened to have a little space. It used to be ok, because I usually knew where I decided to stash it. Now I don’t always remember, so the best thing is to put it all together.
I’ll have to totally rearrange my kitchen snack area to make room for the book case. Hoping to get that done this weekend too.
I’ve been known to go out with a jacket and gloves to cover plants at 9 PM to make sure they don’t freeze. I learned from my dad to do everything you can do to save plants.
I lived in St Louis with my daughter for a couple of years and put in 7 flower beds. I had to dig up all the clay , put it in a wheel barrel , then dump it in the woods. I refilled the beds with top soil, sand, and peat moss. The gardens were beautiful. Unfortunately the next year she sold the house and moved to Australia. She lives in Canberra which has a climate similar to Texas. Their front yards are all rose bushes and crushed stones. I’d love to trade my front lawn in for crushed stone. It would certainly save on water in this drought.
Mmmmmm— needing a DayTimer planner for the garden and all things related. Who knew? Learnin’ me sumptin’ new every day from the wizened guru’s right here-ya on the G-thread.
Does anyone know anything about spiders? I had a teeny little one that was smaller than a sugar ant and brown. I think that was what bit me. A horrid puss pocket pop up quickly and then my whole calf got all swollen and red. My leg is still tight feeling and red but I think I got all the ick out of the hole it left.
Well, I was out on the back patio with a flashlight covering stuff up for our first freeze a few weeks back, so I do it when I have to.
However, If I use row covers, then I won’t have to do anything for a while. If the sun comes out and it warms up, I can uncover them, but they get enough sunshine, air, and rain to save me a lot of effort.
Then, if the forecast get worse and snow is expected I’ll add a layer or two of something like straw or blankets. Then when it warms up, I just roll the row cover up with all the stuff still on it. Then unroll it before sundown.
Overall, though most days, I can just forget it and hibernate indoors where it is warm. I did mention that I like the lazy way of doing stuff on one of the other threads.LOL
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