PLANTING ONIONS AND LEEKS AND LOOKING FORWARD TO SPRING

Planting onion starts

What a lovely afternoon in the garden!  Temperatures in the upper 50s, sunny and calm.  The ground was still wet from this past weekend's rains.  Our Dixondale Farms delivery came this week so we planted Walla Walla, Red River, and Highlander brown onions as well as leeks.  They might be just a bit crowded but we figure we can harvest some small ones early and let the rest grow bigger.  This is happening just in time as we just cooked up our last onions from the Fall harvest.  The garlic is growing slowly but still looks good.  Still no sign of life from the shallots we planted last Fall.

                      

 So nice to be working in the garden in T-shirts in January!

Xena helping out!

Left to right, Leeks, Highlander, Red River and Walla Walla onions, shallots and garlic!

We opened up our two covered beds today to water and inspect them.  The kale has been getting chomped since we planted it, however half of them look like they are finally rallying.  The other half still look just devoured.  The lettuces, arugula and mizuna are doing pretty well.  The chard and head lettuce (two end crops) are looking pretty frost damaged but seem to be rallying.  I think next year we need to secure the ends better (they blew open a few times during some cold WINDY storms) and we might want to add some christmas lights for heat.  The bok choi carrots, green onions and beets are still doing well.  The latest beet starts we planted late last fall are so so but I think they will come around.

Bed Number one - Bok choi beets, onions and carrots

Two more daffodils have sprouted in the pots around the yew trees out front!  Very exciting.  We should have flowers in no time.  Unfortunately we have about a hundred more bulbs in the garage.  We bought these in the fall and never had a chance to plant them.  This same thing happened last year and the bulbs we planted in January did okay so maybe we'll just have to plant this weekend.

Finally,  the lilacs are beginning to bud as are some of the fruit trees!  Pretty exciting but a bit early for the fruit trees as we were planning to prune and spray them this weekend!  I have dug a hole for one of the cherry trees which we plan to transplant.  Still working on the placement of the other!