The winter garden

It was 10 degrees F outdoors this morning. With a light snowfall overnight.

But the sunlight is getting stronger and lasting longer each day. The plants in the hoophouse should be showing signs of spring growth soon. The soil temperatures in the beds have been above freezing all winter long.

It’s barely visible, but there is kale in the foreground and the background of the photo above. It looks really sad but I suspect it’s still alive. There are four rows scratched into the middle of the front bed where I recently took out the dead arugula and planted some spinach seeds. We can never get enough spinach.

I think there is some claytonia in all the beds. The way this plant grows in the winter is phenomenal. There is no stopping it. We changed out all the soil in these beds last summer, and it still popped up from self-seeding. It’s edible but the leaves are so small. It’s hard to pick a bowl of it, so we mostly eat it as a snack while in the hoophouse. When spring hits, it will grow much bigger and get little white flowers. It apparently produces lots of seeds although I’ve never noticed them. This year I’ll look for them.

This escarole should survive until spring. There are a few of them. They had larger leaves that just melted in the cold temperatures, but recently they’ve shown a little fresh growth.

It gets above 80 degrees F in there when the sun is shining. Sam takes care of monitoring heat and light in there in the winter. He loves measuring things. I take care of the planting and harvesting once things start to grow. I usually set up a seed starting table in here some time in March.