On the December 1st I harvested the pictured lettuce from the garden. This was not a cold frame crop but out in the main garden - unprotected. The plants were transplanted in the early fall and did well in this warm fall, even with a few light frosts. However, since then we have had cold freezing weather enough to make digging carrots hard and putting an end to most plants. The little white zinnia pictured I can call the last flower of this season even as ragged as it looks the plant was still blooming the first of December. Now with the ground frozen, winter has officially arrived and the garden is down to its last crop - the parsnips that are waiting for the last day of this month for a harvest. Hopefully we will get some insulating snow so that I will be able to dig one on December 31st, 2009 and follow our tradition here in the garden.
Only a few more catalogs have arrived so I don't have enough to really start to plan for next year's garden but as soon as I get them all, I will start. When we had our garden salad this week, we had some store bought sunflower sprouts. I usually have a jar of sprouts going most of the winter but I want to try the sunflowers and as I do the sprout research if I find some good info I will pass that on.
We hope for few more postings this year and look forward to the last one this month as I would like to do a "looking back in pictures" kind of post.
Happy Gardening
Hi Sowbug,
ReplyDeleteI just saw your question on sesame. I get my seed from the Sand Hill Preservation Center 1878 230th St. Calamus, Iowa 52729. They are a heritage and seed saving concern and have great breeds of chickens too. I had to plant sesame twice this past season as my first planting did not grow(too cool). I plant in the warmest spot I have, a south facing bed next to my house that is hot during the summer. I make sure to let the sesame plants grow as long as possible and after cutting the mature plant finish the harvest off in the greenhouse for drying purposes. The crop this year was small but GOOD in the bread. The plants themselves are quite tall so plan for that (3-4 ft) We always try to experiment with some new seed every year. For several years it was cotton from Sand Hill. A very interesting crop too.
Happy Gardening