Old Man... Winter? Sorta...

We told you last week about the changing needs of winter gardeners in our little corner of the world.  Since that time, we have eaten too much turkey, and had a borderline frost/freeze. 

It is an exceedingly bittersweet time of year when we finally have a drop in temperature sufficient to keep the tomatoes from ripening on the vine, and worse still, when we get a freeze deep enough (which is to say, any sort of freeze at all) to kill off many of our producing vines.

Some varieties of tomato are hardy enough to take our little snippet of cold air, of course.  We allow volunteers to go crazy in our garden, so we can't tell you for sure which varieties they are -- we just know they aren't the Brandywines you see here all nice and green.

Still, we had some vines make it through, including some volunteers in the potting soil we were using in our little black current experiment.  With a little bit of luck, we might actually manage to get a few more ripe tomatoes later this season.

We had mixed results with basil, as well -- for some reason, our sweet basil did better than many of our exotics -- the thai, for example, and the apple basil both froze to the ground.  Our purple curly-leafed basil plants had some leaves crimple, and others keep going strong.

Evidently, we were just exactly at the threshold temperature for winter mischief.

Still, we know what to do now.  First, we hoe down all the frozen plants (or, better still, get our daughter to do it!); next, we cover the bed with a fresh layer of leaves.

In mid-February, we will add a layer of compost from the chicken coop, and work it in with a pitchfork.  Then, in late February or early March, we will start seeding this bed with new plants.

Sometime next spring, after volunteer basil has started cropping up all over the yard, we will transfer a few of those plants to this bed, and any volunteer tomatoes which choose to join our newly seeded tomatoes will happily join forces to turn this plot into a wild tangle of solanaceous goodness.  We'll probably mulch it, as well, sometime next April or May or so.  And undoubtedly we'll put some sunflowers and nasturtiums on the borders as trap crops.

Much the same treatment will meet our other garden beds, in their own times, and with their own particular combinations of plants.

We could put more seed in the ground now, of course.  Our cabbage, spinach, kale and broccoli all acted as if this week's dip in temperature was manna from heaven, and kale and cabbage can both go into the ground all the way up to the end of December according to the planting calendar available at Producer's Co-op.

And next year at this time, we will be planting more quinoa seeds, as part of a rolling quinoa planting season.

But for now, we are getting ready for the First Annual Brazos Valley Pulletpalooza, and we really feel fairly satisfied with how the garden is growing.  In future years, we have plans to install rebar reinforced PVC hoops over the top of our tender veggies, and cover the contraption with greenhouse plastic prior to our first frost, so as to extend our season.  Today, though, we'll be enjoying the fruits of our present labors, and cleaning up Myrtle's place for next weekend's show-and-tell.

Happy farming!