Is Winter Really Over?

I actually got hot outside today while I was pruning the apple trees. It was 62 degrees and the snow is just about melted! Could winter be over? I don't think I can believe that since we have had record amounts of snow this year.

Here in Kentucky we didn't get near the snowfall that the east cost got, but we did get 27" in February and more that a foot of it all at once. It was hard to keep it off of the greenhouse.

My daughters favorite thing about having a greenhouse this winter was that when we were playing in the snow, we could go in there to warm up. It was also a great place to keep the sleds!

The only thing we could do in the garden was go sledding.

That picture was taken during one of our smaller snowfalls. Most of the time the garden beds have looked like this:

There was a lot more snow than we are used to. Even playing in it got us much more tired than usual.

It was our first winter as chicken owners. I learned that chickens do not like snow!

During the last snow, about eight inches blew into their pen and the girls refused to leave the coop. When they would jump down into the snow, they would squawk and flap around like they were being attacked! I actually had to shovel out the snow, put new wood chips down, and bait them out with lettuce from the greenhouse.

They still spent most of their time inside, but at least now they would come out to eat and drink. That's also about the time they start laying more eggs again. Now that it has been warmer, there are some days that every hen lays. Soon I will be able to let them back out in their grazing pen.

There will be a lot going on in the garden pretty soon too. I do have some early tomatoes and lettuce started and have much to share with you.

Most of the winter I have been writing pages for my new gardendesk.com site (as opposed to this blog). Now I plan to turn my attention back to blogging, so stay tuned here.

In the meantime, check out one of my new pages. The ones I have done are Seed Starting, Beneficial Insects, Composting, Garden Bargains and Tomatoes! I hope to write more as well - Spring can be very busy and exciting.

So what do you think? Is Winter almost over?

Unusual Weather, Unusual Harvest

In most years, we are blessed with a bountiful harvest. Usually by now we have an overabundance of cucumbers and tomatoes, along with beans and potatoes. In past years we haven't done well with Bell Peppers and have had trouble getting our onions to grow very large.

This year is very unusual. The main season tomatoes are very late and we have only had a few good cucumbers. On the other hand, our Bell peppers and onions have been amazing!

We have well over 100 large onion bulbs drying right now.

To grow large onion bulbs you need many growing days of warm but not "hot" temperatures. Usually here in Northern Kentucky,our weather is not condusive to growing large onions because we typically go quickly from a cold Spring to a hot summer. This year has not been typical. Our Summer has been unusually cool. July 2009 is now officially the coldest July ever recorded! Our "normal" average high temperature for July is 85 degrees. This year's average was 69 degrees. That kind of weather is not great for growing tomatoes, but oh how the onions love it!

And of course we love the onions! I guess in a way the vegetable garden is like the stock market - it pays to diversify.

The other vegetable that has been unusually great this year are the Capsicums. The weather explanation doesn't fit here at all. I do have a theory about why we have harvested about 75 large peppers from one 4'x12' bed. I will share that theory and some pepper pictures in my next post.

Happy Gardening,

- Marc

Frost is a real Danger for Tomatoes and Peppers

Here in Northern Kentucky, most people believe that everything should have been planted in the vegetable garden already. Most people plant on the first nice day in May and believe that planting on Mother's Day is definitely safe. Most of the time this is true but the official average last frost date in my area is May 15th.

It is now past May 15th so it really should be okay now, right? You would think so, but the May 15th date is an average of the last 50 years or so. If you remember from Math class how to find the average, that means that sometimes the last frost is after the average date. That is what almost occurred last night. The weather forecast called for a frost advisory, and since frost is deadly for tomatoes and peppers, I had to protect them. 

It was easy to cover the beds that I used last Fall as my stoop houses because they were already equipped with a place to add hoops. I then just covered the hoops with plastic. The main tomato bed that I have planted was not used last year for hoops so I had to do something different.

I simply pounded some scrap lumber in the ground as end posts and attached a cross beam.

 

Then I draped a piece of plastic sheeting over the beam to make a quick tee-pee over the tomato plants. The only thing you have to be sure of with this method is that the plastic is not touching the plants. The frost and cold can go right through to the plant leaves if they are up against the plastic.

The temperature in the garden got down to 35 degrees, only 3 degrees above freezing! I don't think we actually had a frost, but I was still glad to protect these heat-loving plants. They seemed to make it through the night okay.

 

I only have about 15 of my 75 tomato plants in the garden so far, so it wasn't hard to cover them all. I'm glad I still have the others inside the greenhouse because the weather this spring has been cold and rainy. I will not be getting ripe tomatoes by June 5th like last year. At this point, having ripe tomatoes by July 4th sounds good.

Oh well, I just hope that we don't have any more 35 degree nights at least until October.

Greenhouse Snow and Ice Removal

Over the past two days the weather here in Kentucky has been crazy. We received 6 inches of snow, then a half inch of ice and then 5 more inches of snow!

We don't usually get so much snow and ice so we wanted to make sure the greenhouse was okay. Ever since we saw on Throwback At Trapper Creek how snow can collapse a greenhouse structure, we have wondered how our new greenhouse would hold up. There is nothing growing in it yet, and the vents (windows) are still opened to allow the wind to flow through. Unfortunately that means there is no heat being generated to help melt the snow cover.

After the first 6 inches of snow, we could already see that the plastic was beginning to buckle under the weight.

So we decided to knock the snow off and the whole family pitched in.

Overnight the snow turned to freezing rain and ice. In the morning, the hoop house was covered in a half inch sheet of ice.

Again I had to use the broom to clean off the plastic. Removing the ice was easier because in broke into big pieces and slid right off.

Just about the time I finished with the ice, the snow picked up again at the rate of 2 inches per hour! When it finally stopped we visited the greenhouse a third time. By now the pile of snow and ice was getting pretty large. Luckily I had plenty of help clearing it away...

... as well as removing the rest of the ice.

After the work was done, there was plenty of time for fun!

Is it Spring yet?

As dry as it gets!

We still have not had rain. This is the driest June ever for my garden. There are places in the yard that have such big cracks that you could almost turn your ankle stepping in them.

For visual reference, here is a picture of my daughter's foot by the cracks:

She tried to fill in the crack with water from the hose, but any water she put in it just disappeared far into the ground.

I have been keeping up with watering everything pretty well until this weekend. Everything got really dry since I wasn't home at all from Wednesday until Sunday because I was spending nearly every waking moment with my Dad at the hospital.

He is still hanging in there but we are taking it day by day. Thank you to all who wished him well.

Today I took the day off and stayed home. I was able to catch up on the watering enough for everything to still stay living. The vegetables look pretty good but some of the flowers got pretty crunchy. Despite the heat, we are still getting good tasting lettuce from the garden. Today we ate huge chef salads with our lettuce, a hot wax pepper, and a few more tomatoes from the garden. The first ripe tomato was eaten on sandwiches on Father's Day. It was soooo good.

I sure hope it rains soon, so the rest of the tomatoes and other veggies can keep growing well.