I finished adding dirt to my second hugelkultur garden, and finally knocked down the rest of the dirt pile from last year. I still don’t have enough to cover all of the areas I want to turn into gardens, but it’ll be fine for now. Once the general garden footprint was done, I actually took out paper and a pen to sketch them out and create somewhat of a plan. I’m not good about putting together a precise map because, in my experience, it never works. But I need to have a general idea of where I’m going to plant everything on my extensive list. I still don’t know if it’s all going to fit, but we’ll give it a try.

Since the soil temperature was over 50 degrees F it was time to plant potatoes and a few other veggies. I planted potatoes at my Electric City Conservatory community garden plot, plus added a couple of rows here at home. The few extra potatoes I had went into the hugelkultur beds. It’s good to mix the varieties on the bed to have a true polyculture environment. It’ll also be a good experiment.

I planted the broccoli and 3 of the ‘Kaitlin’ cabbage plants (these are a type used for sauerkraut), and then covered them with the floating row cover. Cabbage and broccoli are both pretty hardy and will withstand below freezing temperatures, but the row cover protects them from the wind as much as anything. Little seedlings take a beating when the wind is howling around 45 mph.(And it looks like our cat Josephus appreciates the protection, too.) 

We ran out of onions last year, so I’m determined to plant more. My favorite variety is ‘Copra.’ It’s a yellow onion that reaches 3-4 inches in diameter, and is a champion when it comes to long term storage. During normal years, we’re still eating last year’s onions in May. I started the ‘Copra’ seed in February and early March, and the boys helped me plant a bed with roughly 160 plants. I would’ve liked to cover this bed, too, but didn’t have enough floating row cover because the mice chewed them to pieces in the garden shed.  I wasn’t happy. (The other pieces are being used in the greenhouse.) The row cover also helps retain moisture since the wind sucks every bit of moisture out of the soil. Once more arrives, I’ll cut off a piece and pull it over the onions to give the poor things a little protection.

The boys planted a few things in their garden beds. They used the beet seed tape my friend Nancy sent to us, and thought that was pretty neat. They also planted the ‘Ogalla’ strawberries I purchased from Bundi Gardens. It’s a Zone 3 strawberry so I want to give it a try. Sam seeded ‘New Red Fire’ lettuce, ‘Yaya’ carrots and ‘Neon’ Swiss chard from Renee’s Garden Seeds. John put in ‘Yellowstone’ carrots, watermelon radishes and buttercrunch lettuce. Once again, the wind proves to be a challenge because it dries out the seed bed badly, but they should do okay. 

There’s a whole lot we need to do as the days grow more mild, but it was good to start the season by putting a few things in the ground this weekend.

I need to look back at pictures, but I’m kind of surprised the golden currants and lilacs are starting to bud out. The currants typically bloom by the first part of May, although if the weather continues like this I bet it will be by the end of the month. Crocus are blooming. And the daffodils and tulips are about 4 inches high. The alliums have reseeded all over the place, which is fine because I can share them with friends. It does look like spring is here to stay! (Although I hate to say it out loud.)

This morning was fairly calm so we cleaned up a few more of the raspberry cane and sunflower piles. Afterwards, I transplanted several flats of basil and peppers, then grafted a few more tomatoes. Sam came out and decided to practice his violin in the greenhouse. He definitely appreciates the warm weather as much as I do. And it was very nice to do our daily reading outside on the blanket. Please, please let this weather stay!

They were thrilled. Play in the water and earn a dollar? Genius. I filled the tub with warm water, added a bit of Dawn dishwashing detergent and a healthy dose of white vinegar. Then the went at it with their rags cleaning out the potting soil still clinging to some of them, and finally rinsing them out. I can’t say they were neat about the whole thing, but that doesn’t matter as long as they were enjoying it, not killing each other and cleaning those containers for me. If they keep up doing such a good job they’re going to be flush in cash, and I’ll be happy not to have to wash them as I need them.

When I first start plants most of them spend time in the windows. If I’m on the ball I’ll have them in the eastern windows, then move south and finally to the west side of the house. This year I’m far from being on top of things so I’ve started taking them out to the greenhouse earlier than normal. When it’s sunny, the temp climbs well above 80 degrees F, and it’s a little piece of heaven.

I pulled out the heat mat a little earlier this year, as well, in order to encourage a whole batch of ‘Maxifort’ seedlings to grow large enough to graft this Saturday. I’m holding an informal class for the Level 2 and 3 Master Gardeners so they can see how to make their own grafted varieties. It’ll be a very quick “snip and clip” type event. A week from Saturday (March 23) I’m teaching a more involved class for River City Harvest in order to share the knowledge. I’ve grafted tomatoes for years, and am pleased with the results. The plants are bigger, healthier and produce a lot more fruit. We need all the help we can get in Great Falls so I’m convinced grafting is the way to go.

I also wrote a profile on Paul Wheaton. Paul came to Great Falls last spring to present his ideas to our community garden group. It was a wild evening, complete with a power outage at the library that left us in the dark, but I think many of our gardeners walked away with a new way of looking at how we’re growing things. We’re even talking about creating hugelkultur beds at our Park Place garden with leftover logs we have from our bench building project. Paul was pleased with the article, and posted it on his site for discussion.

The last piece in this issue was on a redneck geotherm system put in by  friends of mine in Belt. Geothermal heating and cooling is such a fantastic concept, but the cost is extraordinary. Logan and Jenni put in a simple system that doesn’t cost tens of thousands of dsiteollars, but does a great job heating/cooling their large shop. I’m always amazed at their innovation, and they never fail to put my mind through a series of mental gymnastics understanding how he put together something. It’s easy for Logan, but I need to draw stuff out!  But once I understand how it works, it’s even more amazing.

This year I was a little more burned out than normal by the end of the season after dealing with a terribly dry summer and a challenging situation in the community gardens. Basically, it was no fun and I was almost happy to see the season end. I didn’t do too much in the cold frame except to dump a few gallons of water on the existing rosemary, chard and the spinach that germinated in the fall. When we had a nasty snowstorm at the beginning of November I plugged in the cold frame since the temperatures were supposed to dip below zero degrees F. All was fine until the plugged pulled out of the socket. It went dark, and I figured the plants were done for the season. Imagine my surprise when they were fine. Even though it went below zero, there was snow on top of the cold frame, and everything came through without blemish.

We’ve had more inclement weather since then, but when the forecast called for temps of -13 degrees F. Grant wanted to use the extension cord for the heating cable on the beehives. It was a very difficult year for the bees so we want to do whatever we can to help them come through the winter in good condition. I thought for sure the cold, particularly since it didn’t have the snow cover, would end the cold frame garden. I took a peek again this weekend, and I’m shocked that it’s actually doing okay. The chard is a little wilty, but the rosemary and spinach look the same.

So what I’m going to do is just leave it. I want to see what the limitations are of this type of cold frame. It has insulated walls, and is buried in the ground, but other than that it’s just like any other cold frame. Maybe the insulation is enough to keep greens going throughout the winter. I want to find out. I know there will be plenty of cold weather to test the limits and see what I can grow without an addtional heat source. Let the experiment begin!

I found a terrific looking syrup on Frugally Sustainable  (I love her site!) to give the body an extra boost to fight those cold bugs. I made a batch at night so it was ready to go the next morning. Sweetened with plenty of honey, which has its own benefits, they don’t hesitate at all in taking it.

Here’s how you do it:

1 oz. of dried licorice root

1 oz. of dried Echinacea root (I used Angustafolia)

Grated ginger to taste ( I used a couple of tablespoons for this first try, but you can use more if you like it.)

1 quart water

1 cup honey or maple syrup

Measure and add the licorice root, Echinacea and ginger to the water in a heavy bottomed pot on the stove.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until it reduces to roughly a pint of liquid.

Strain through a sieve and cheesecloth.

Add the honey. Turn the heat on very low and stir until it’s dissolved into the decoction. Don’t heat it up too high, or you’ll kill the beneficial components of the honey.

Pour it in a jar and store in the fridge for up to a week. I gave the boys a teaspoon every hour or so (as in, when I remembered). Like I said, they have no problem taking it, which is half the battle. I wouldn’t give it to babies (under 2 years old), though, because of the risk of botulism in the honey. The worst symptoms of the cold only lasted a day, and they seem to be rapidly improving, so I’m pretty pleased.

January first is traditionally the day I reorganize. Today I dumped out all my seeds, and moved them to a larger bin. It’s always a lot of fun to go through the packets, and today Sam and John gave me a hand. Sorting seeds is a great way to start the year since there’s nothing but hope and positive energy in them. Everything is possible.

And, as always, I have grand plans for the garden. I’m going to graft tomatoes again, so I need to order more ‘Maxifort’ seeds for the rootstock. Plus, I might teach a class for River City Harvest on tomato grafting, and need to see about ordering rootstock seed for that, as well. At roughly $20 for 50 seeds, you don’t want to buy them unless you have to. There are lots of pepper seeds in the bucket, yet I know I need to order a pepper a woman told me about that tastes as good as ‘Carmen,’ but is open pollinated. (As soon as I go through my notes to figure out which one it is!) Overall, I won’t have to order much more. Undoubtedly there will be new varieties that need to be tried, but the spring line up is looking pretty good.

I hope all of you had an equally enjoyable first day of the new year. May everyone have a joy-filled and blessed 2013!

By Friday it was horrific. Constant snow and howling winds made it a white nightmare. Of course, we had plenty to do indoors. There’s always school work with the boys, plus Sam had to catch up on his violin lessons. I have a whole list of article assignments staring at me, and I haven’t even started my canning projects for the year. Thankfully, for the 5 days that we didn’t leave the drive I managed to catch up on a few of those items. (Although, I seriously could not go anywhere for months at a time and not run out of things to do.

The temperatures started climbing again on Monday, and gradually thawed out some of the snow drifts. It didn’t mean the roads were much better. Yesterday several trucks and a limo were in the ditch near our place; it can be fine in town and it’s a veritable frozen hell up here near our neighborhood. We pushed into town to make it to Sam’s violin lesson, but it was a fight.

The one good thing about the storm (since I’m trying to look on the bright side) is it tested out the season extending techniques I use. I already know the winter cold frame does wonders even though it’s only heated with a 100 watt halogen light bulb. It’ll withstand -20 degree F temps with no problem. But the heavy snow actually unplugged the extension cord. I thought the bulb burned out, but wasn’t about to open up the lid since it was buried in snow. I figured if the rosemary, chard and spinach lived that was great. If not, oh well. Our high on Saturday was 9 degrees F, and it bottomed out at -4 degrees F that night. I didn’t hold out much hope, particularly for the rosemary. So, I was pretty tickled when I finally lifted the lid this afternoon to find everything in superb shape. There’s no damage whatsoever so we will have fresh rosemary for the Thanksgiving turkey.

I was even more excited about the greens under the floating row cover. I really thought that would be toast because of the cold temperatures, but there must have been just enough snow to insulate them, plus I do think the warmer ground at this time of the year certainly helps. The radishes were hit hard, but the spinach and cilantro looked perfect. To have fresh cilantro in the middle of November is a thing of beauty!

Indigo Rose tomato – This is a super deep purple tomato developed by Oregon State University. It’s small, but prolific. At least that’s how it grew for me on the ‘Maxifort’ rootstock I used for grafting it. (If anyone grew it on a non-grafted plant, I’d love to hear about its growing tendencies.) The plants were absolutely loaded with the small fruit. Initially the tomatoes are purple on the top and green out of the sunlight. They’re ripe once they turn an orange-red. It’s odd that the purple completely disappears. The flavor is questionable. I don’t like tomatoes so I’m not a good judge, but many of my friends gave input. My friend Nancy in Iowa called when she tried hers for the very first bite. She was less than enthused. It  a mild tomato without much of the acidy bite of regular tomatoes. This will mean I’ll definitely have to add lemon juice to my sauce to ensure proper acid levels when I can them. The great boon of the ‘Indigo Rose’ tomatoes is the high anthocyanin levels, which are highly beneficial. Because of this I’ll grow them again next year.

Deadon cabbage – This was another vegetable that caught my eye because of its looks. I like cabbage a lot anyway, and when I saw this purple tinged savoy cabbage I wanted to give it a try. It was a nice plant, and very healthy, but overall I wasn’t impressed. I didn’t think the texture or the flavor of Deadon was very good. Unless something else catches my eye, I’ll most like fall back on the ‘Krautman’ cabbage from Pinetree Seeds this year.

Amana Orange tomato – My friend Nancy sent me seeds last year because they’re her favorite.  I must say, I wasn’t impressed with the plants from the beginning. They looked scrawny and sickly. Even when I grafted them, they didn’t thrive. The leaves were brown and crinkled, and the plants seem to struggle to stay alive. But I left them. The resulting tomatoes were excellent. They were huge, orange and really, really good. Even I liked them sauteed with other veggies to make a delicious sauce. They do tend to split easily, but I’ll definitely add these to the list in the spring. The flavor is worth it.

Flowering Sprouts – I’m a big fan of Brussels sprouts and kale so when Johnny’s Seeds had a combination of both in one plant, I had to try it. Plus, it was so pretty! The good news is the plants are vigorous standing over 3-ft tall, and grew exceptionally well despite the hot summer. Plus, they’re really eye catching and pretty with their purple leaves. The bad news is they really haven’t produced much. The sprouts are tiny… less than the size of a dime in diameter. I know they’re supposed to be bigger, but I’m not sure what happened. I might try them again in 2013 if I have seeds left, but I don’t think I’ll spend the money on another packet.

Raspberry Sorbet zinnia – This is going to be a regular in the garden because they were absolutely gorgeous. Even though I don’t typically plant a lot of flowers since I want things I can eat, I got these seeds from Renee’s Garden this spring because the description caught my attention. (Plus, flowers are good for pollination.)  They didn’t disappoint. The plants grew well and produced flowers from late summer until a heavy freeze. The bright magenta pink flowers really stood out. Raspberry Sorbet is on the list from now on.

These are just a few of the news varieties I tried this year. It’s nice to add the successes to the “must-grow” list for 2013, and be able to share what didn’t work for me this season. It’ll help when I’m drooling over the pretty photos this winter adding to my list.