Winter...

...has closed in on us.  Almost Christmas and we've come through quite a cold spell.  We had roughly a week where the thermometer never even made it close to going above zero let alone getting up to the freezing mark.  I was very glad the only critters I have at the moment are the chickens, dogs, and a cat. It has been tough enough keeping their water thawed. At least our incredibly cold temperatures seem to have broken and now we are just getting cold at night.

I figure my root crops that I left in the ground are goners. We had such hard freezes for so many days in a row that there is no way the veggies made it.  Especially since I hadn't mulched them. Oops. Such as life. Now I'll have to buy taters and carrots.  My onion stash is holding up okay.  I should be alright through Christmas.  I've had some losses due to improper curing.  I think I rushed some of the harvests into storage.  I seem to remember we had a couple of storms that rushed me a bit.  I'll have to be more careful next year.  I'll also be planting about double the number of onion sets.  I did 200 this year.  I have garlic in too.  I hope it does well in spite of being frozen solid for a week.

I have four new beds dug and two more to dig for the spring planting.  I think I'll have enough tomato cages.  I need to be better about actually pruning them.  I had a little trouble with blossom end rot in a few of the plants this year.  Next year I'll be trying a pile of tomato seeds I got from my mother-in-law.  They are from an exotic seed company in Germany.  I will probably still add a couple of my favorites into the mix as well as the new ones.  The Beefsteaks seemed to do really well here last summer and the Super Marmandes did alright.  The Brandywines were okay but the bugs got them in a hurry and the Amish Paste were the ones with the blossom rot.  I'll change where the tomatoes are going and I'll make sure there is plenty of mulch and compost there.  I may even throw a Tums in when I transplant them to make sure there is calcium.  We'll see if I remember.

I'll be interested to see if the grapes fair okay over the winter.  I mulched like crazy knowing they are on the north side of a fence and the snow builds there and melts very slowly.  Hopefully the snow will actually help insulate them to an extent.  In addition to the grapes I am hoping to get a small orchard planted next spring. We go through so many apples that we are going to need to grow our own.  And I want to try pears and some plums for a little variety.

There has been talk from my son of possibly wanting to do a market garden too.  I may plant enough of a few things that he could bring some to the farmer's market with me on occasion.  We'll see though.  I'm hoping I start seeing seed catalogs here soon.  I think I'm finally ready to start really thinking about the garden again now that I've had a break.  During harvest I was very ready to be done.  That is something I like about the garden.  Just when you are about ready to go bonkers from too much of one thing the season changes and you move on.

Let's see, what else?  In the back of my mind I keep thinking that I may want to try supplying a new grocery store with herbs.  Or I might take herbs to market.  I haven't decided yet.  I do know that I need to be better about cutting and drying for myself next year.  I never did get my parsley put up so I'm almost out.  Dang!  I'll have to make sure to stay on top of that stuff and get a dehydrator sometime in the next six months or so.

I'm off to work on that never ending to-do list since Christmas is barreling toward us and picking up speed.