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My garden calendar says that today is the time to seed a variety of vegetables indoors, for transplant later into the garden.  Hmmm – that doesn’t seem right, since we just had 18″ of snow, and more is forecast.  Oh well, what the hell.  Seeded the following in a flat, on a heating pad –

Early cabbage
Early red cabbage
Flat leaf parsley
Black Tuscan Kale
Romaine Lettuce
Early globe onions
Bunching Onions
Leeks
Red Sail Lettuce

Growing vegetables in nutrient-poor mountain clay soil would be impossible without loads of well-rotted horse manure.  If you want to learn more about the source of this manure, read my wife’s memoir about life on High & Dry Farm, Horses Never Lie About Love, recently published by Simon and Schuster.

Thanks to a mild winter, we are at the end of December and my garden is still full of happy vegetables. Kale, chard, cabbage, leeks, turnips, parsley and lettuce all look terrific. 

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These short, dark, cool, damp days are not friendly to most vegetables, but greens of every sort thrive. These lettuces could not be happier, or sweeter…

and this savoy cabbage, despite the perforations attesting to the insecticide free environment, is as healthy as can be.

The days are getting short and dark, but my pepper crop, warmed by black plastic, remains happy.  If I could grow only one pepper variety, it would be an Italian frying pepper, such as Maroni Rossi.
Sauteed in olive oil, with garlic and a few thin slices of onion, these make an amazing side dish, or a condiment for sandwiches.

  I have harvested the last of the tomatoes.  This year’s crop was disappointing, as the long cool, wet spring allowed blight to get a foothold, and most of the plants succumbed just as they were nearing their most productive stage of growth. I finally got around to cleaning the grasses and other weeds out of my raspberries, the the effect was amazing.  The productivity of the fall crop of berries from plants increased hugely compared to last year.  I harvested about a pint of berries every day from August 1 until October 1.  Even now, a few berries remain, like the beauty shown here, but not enough to bother with.  I will surely miss the berries on my breakfast cereal, until the berries return next June.

The cold wet April was followed by cold wet May, cold wet June and cold wet July. We have been breaking all records for lousy weather – the average daily high for the last 4 months has averaged about 4 degrees below normal. Only 5 days have exceeded 70 degrees during the month of July and sunny days have been few and far between. Needless to say, it has been a struggle to grow anything that requires warm temperatures. Seeds for corn and early plantings of beans, carrots, etc. just rotted in the ground. Tomatoes, peppers and eggplant would have been a complete failure if I were not using black plastic ground covers and clear poly covered hoop houses.  Here is what my tomatoes looked like in June.

We are slogging through the wettest Spring we have experienced in 25 years at High & Dry Farm.  We have had measurable rain every day for the last month, and we have had multiple days with daily rainfall in the range of 4 to 12 inches.  Work in the garden is way behind!

The average daily temperatures have been about 5 degrees below normal, so even the seedlings in my greenhouse are showing very little progress.

My gamble sowing some veg plants this early in the season fared badly.  My plants germinated promptly and I moved them to the greenhouse.  The temperature promptly plummeted.  The temperatures last week hit all-time record lows, with night-time temperatures around 10 degrees.  It was a bit warmer than that in the greenhouse, but my cabbage and lettuce seedlings died.  Pea seedlings are iffy, while it looks like broccoli, broccoli-raab and cauliflower seedlings survived OK.  We presently have about 6 inches of snow on the ground, and more snow mixed with rain is forecast for the next week.  Bleah!  Oh well, throwing caution to the wind, I am replanting everything.