Thursday, December 01, 2005

Experimentation

Well I was inspired by the warm weather the past few days to try some experiments. First the artichoke has been a disappointment. It didn’t even get to sending up a stalk. There were just a bunch of spiky leaves. Though they are a perennial, they are not hardy in my zone (5a) but with lots of covering and the luck of a not too cold winter, I might be able to get this one to come back next spring.

The saga of the spinach continues. I HAVE harvested a few leaves this fall, but it has not been a winning fall crop. So I covered it with a little fabric and am hoping that I might over winter them. One bed has 16 plants and the other has four plants. I weeded the beds thoroughly ( weeding felt REALLY good to do after such a long break ) and then put all my leftover spinach seed in where there weren’t any plants. Tune in next March for a full report.

The one other task that I do when the weather softens this time of year is I like to gather pine needles to put in the pathways between the raised beds. I put some down on other pathways this spring and they did a good job of holding down the weeds.

1 comment:

kerry said...

I have some spinach growing along with some lettuce and other greens in a cold frame here in zone 6a. Your spinach should be fine I would think. The hardest thing on the plants are the drying bitter winds. If you can keep them protected from that without keeping out too much light they should make it.