Weekly Garden Thread - December 24-30, 2022 [The Holly & The Ivy Edition]

December 24, 2022 | Diana in WI/Greeneyes in Memoriam

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Diana and everyone else on this thread!May you have A Merry and blessed Christmas!

(Ramsau Church, Bavaria, Germany)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Beautiful! Any time I see pictures of Germany (I've only been there once) I see why my ancestors settled in Wisconsin. It's every bit as beautiful - especially in the snow. Germantown, WI, below:

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Looks like we're coming out of our Canadian/Polar FUNK and are heading for warmer weather. It's going to be a muddy mess - but on the Bright Side you don't have to shovel rain. Merry Christmas to ME!

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Diana and Everyone! I hope you all had a blessed Christmas!

Church, childhood memories of Christmas! Mystery of the Nativity, Mary and Joseph and Birth in the darkness, and Bach, Christmas hymns, Sweden, Germany!

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Looking forward to 40s and 50s!

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

My December 26 shadow and my December Snow Garden! (I look like a Mao Statute!)

Snow on Tarp on my cabbage patch!

Tarp removed. insulating wrap on top of 2 or 3 layers of gardening fabric.

12/26/2022 Chinese Golden Beauty Cabbage chilling under wraps!

Chinese Golden Beauty Cabbage--Picture taken one month earlier.....11/26/2022

It is possible to do this sort of thing, but it grows very slowly and your yield is much smaller. Beats sprouts for vitamins.

[Augie]

Good work. Anything fresh and green in the winter time is a good thing.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Augie, Thanks! The Kaitlin cabbage are still out there and I need to uncover them.

I used heater cables. My father, who like to experiment with things, used an old way of growing in late winter. He dig a pit on the south side of the implement shed and filled it with horse or cow manure. He put a cold frame around it and filled it with 12" of topsoil. He used some old windows to cover the coldframe and was able to grow lettuce in winter. He only did this two years because Farmer who provided the manure saw the results and decided to keep it for his own use!

Interesting picture of Farmers near Paris Cloche growing lettuce in winter. Rows of manure covered with soil. Lettuce planted, covered in a Cloche jar. Every night they rolled coverings over the cloche. (Shows gardener with a roll of the covering...straw or bundles of sticks.)

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

68 Degrees today! Pulled all the covers off! (I note there is some insect damage to the Chinese Cabbage. ) Looks like good weather for most of the week. I will keep growing as long as Winter does not come back!