Urban Homesteading January In The Garden…..
Thanks to Coffee For Roses for allowing this flow chart to be shared.
This is the month that comes too quickly, but is your chance on the dry days to get out and get work done. Cleaning, fixing stuff broken or blown down by the fall and early winter storms, and in our case…picking up the hundreds of pine cones that the county owned trees on the backside of our fence drop. I was able to convince the boys to help me (it cost me) pick them up. Worth every dollar of bribery so I wasn’t stooped over.
The wild rabbits are back, leaving piles of tiny calling cards. Their poopies are tiny!
I had left some carrots to winter over, that were early fall planting. The rabbits ate the tops right off, but not the carrots. So we dug them out and enjoyed them.
And oh those rabbits. It’s a good thing they are cute. They also munched happily on my Swiss Chard I was wintering over.
We had a short week of sunny weather early in the month, so I got to work. One job was to raise up the height of my tomato bed. I added another level. I might go up another. Not sure though. Love not having to stoop over as much. I had to tear out the strawberries that were growing in the pockets, I will pot some new varieties this spring, that I am going to grow from seed.
In the 3rd week we had a couple of sunny (and again warm) days. We condensed down a few beds I wasn’t happy with, so I recycled the soil in them, adding them to other beds. Free is always good! I left enough room to add in compost for the tomatoes in spring.
With a couple of days work done, the garden is cleaner, tidier and the beds higher. Not looking forward to adding more soil, but my back will just have to do that in the coming weeks. I took out 3 small beds below and I like that it isn’t as cluttered. One thing that was a pain last year was I couldn’t get back to the fence area easily, especially with a hose or cart. Now I can. And those beds never got enough sun either. One bed had red raspberries, I moved them into 3 of the large green pots, where they can continue to grow. The other beds had never been permanent ones, so no loss. And the stones? I just use them to make new or higher beds. No waste!
Walker was also busy at work. He has decided to claim one of the lower beds for himself and was working on tilling it. The tiny bed in front of the tree in the photo, that one is also one of his beds. It has a blueberry bush only he gets to harvest 😉 This coming year I want to make wooden signs with his name on it 🙂
The garden needed color, so I “planted” a few of my cheery fake flowers early.
End of January and the crabapples still hold on, though they are shriveling and some peeling. By now the birds have no interest 😉 But it gives color to the dark, shady side of the yard.
And you know spring is nearly here…when in the store:
Oh the colors!
February is here. Soon I need to start sowing my seeds. But till then…more cleaning. More dreaming. More planning.
Now to convince Kirk to build me a potting table like this 😉