{In the garden} January

The garden is kind of quiet right now in January.  But it won’t be quiet for much longer!  However dull it is right now in the garden, I like having these monthly updates on the blog.  Just the other day, I was blown away by the beauty of the summer garden while looking back at my blog posts.  It gives me hope and motivates me to work out there right now while it is so blah!

We’ve had some warm temperatures lately and my little garden has been calling me out to work.  So when the kids need a break during the school day, we head outside and I work on pulling the weeds.

So what is in the garden right now?

 Weeding the mustard greens

Not much.  Some mustard greens that are finally growing well because I’ve been thinning them and giving the extras to the chickens.  There are also a few carrots.  I spotted a few turnips that are trying to grow.  And there is some kind of volunteer plant growing in some of the boxes.  I’ll have to wait and see what that is!

The front of the garden looks very different because we moved all of the raspberries and blackberries out of the front boxes and to a different location.  I was very saddened today as I counted five whole strawberry plants that survived this past summer’s drought.  That’s five whole strawberry plants out of about 30.  The remaining strawberries will be relocated and we will plant new strawberry plants.  Such is the life of a gardener!

I still have not decided what to put in place of the berry plants.  More herbs?  Definitely.  Lots of flowers?  Good possibility.  We know that all of the wildflowers will pop up in that area too. 

 The City Chicks love the weeds from the garden

We will soon be making some changes to our garden area too.  Some of the things about to happen are:

• a new privacy fence on the east side
• new garden boxes on the south and east sides
• replanting of fruit trees (we planted them too closely…hope we don’t hurt them when we do this)
• more composted dirt for the garden boxes
• making some of the beds taller especially for the root vegetables  (may have to do this in stages for now)
• cleaning grass out of garden boxes before adding the new composted dirt (in progress)
• build a trellis for recently moved berries and a trellis for the grapes
• extend the run on the chicken house, repaint the chicken coop, build a few things that are needed around the coop (ok, so the chickens are not technically part of the garden but they do contribute to the garden)
• build a new compost area for chicken coop compost
• add a new kitchen scrap composter
• buy a grow light so we can start seeds

 

A lot of work in the garden right now is planning.  I’m planning to use heirloom seeds this year.  I had no idea how many heirloom tomatoes there are!  The other night I spent a few hours reading through the heirloom tomato descriptions as I searched for tomatoes that would work well during our extremely hot summers.  (Last summer, it got so hot that the tomatoes just quit producing right at the peak time.) 

 an extremely rough draft drawn while the kids were at swim practice

I have a lot of plans in my head for now…like the shade garden I want to add to the ugly spot of the garden…and the plants that I want to plant around the chicken coop to make it blend in to the garden surroundings…and new veggies to try this year.  Will I get it all done this year?  Probably not but I still like to dream of what I envision for our little city “farm”. 

Need some gardening inspiration?  Check out these links:

Baker Creek Heirloom Catalog

Path to Freedom (my first encounters with an urban homestead began with this site many moons ago)

An Oregon Cottage (great organic gardening info, also the home of Tuesday Garden party which starts back up in March)

Traveling Memories (Shannon has great gardening posts.  Check out what she is doing in her garden right now.  Here are links to some of her helpful gardening posts.)

My Square Foot Garden

If you have a favorite place to visit for gardening inspiration, I’d love to hear it!