Winter Gardening

Chives, lettuce and garlic are up in the garden, beckoning my presence.

On yesterday’s last day of winter I spent a couple of hours burying four large plastic tubs for an experiment in carrot growing. 18-inches deep, I filled them with compost. After settling overnight, they will be re-filled and planted with four varieties of carrot seeds from Johnny’s Selected Seeds: Yaya F1 OG (hybrid early carrots) Bolero F1 (hybrid storage carrots); Purple 68 F1 (hybrid specialty carrots); and Laguna F1 OG (hybrid main crop carrots).

I have enough seeds to plant a spring and fall crop.

Anyone who has planted carrots is familiar with the main challenge: providing deep, loose soil for the roots to grow. Last year’s crop was a moderate success in the ground, but I didn’t dig the bed deep and it showed. Over the winter I read about growing carrots in containers. Since I had the tubs, there wasn’t much additional work to cut drainage holes and place them in line 10-12 inches deep.

With rainfall, the new soil may settle. Judging from the locust tree roots I cut to make the holes, there is plenty of soil moisture, although a higher percentage of clay a foot deep. It’s an experiment. We’ll see how it goes.

Today’s garden task is to consolidate and blend the remaining compost. There are two bins and a pile of decomposed apple pomace and horse manure. There is plenty to build soil in most of the garden plots.