Sunday 5 December 2010

The covers are off (temporarily)

Today most of our snow has melted, so I took a quick look at how the crops underneath the fleece covers have been faring. Actually I was quite pleasantly surprised.

The Celeriac still looks fine, although some of the leaves are very bent with having been weighed-down by snow-laden fleece for several days, and the bulbs are still very small (I don't think they will get any bigger now).




The "Tundra" cabbages are also doing all right, though a few leaves had been broken. Again, they are growing very slowly, which is hardly surprising. I'm not sure that they will ever get round to hearting-up. I may have to use then as "Spring Greens"




The various Endives seem to be unharmed.






It's only the "Webbs Wonderful" lettuces that have been badly affected. Many of the outer leaves were brown and slimy. I decided to harvest immediately whatever was usable, which was only a few inner leaves from each one. I think there were 8 lettuces and this is all I managed to salvage:



Not much of a crop, but still enough for a helping for two people I reckon.

Fortunately the "Fristina" lettuces seem to be a bit hardier, and are still surviving all right.



After the "inspection" I replaced the fleece covers, taking the opportunity to straighten-up the supporting hoops and to re-arrange the fleece to provide maximum protection. Some of the pieces of fleece are looking very ragged now, having been ravaged not only by wildlife, but also the weather!

While I was in the garden I took a couple of other photos, this time not of the edible plants...


This Clematis is looking pretty "browned off"

I loved the contrasting textures, patterns and light effects of this view

They are forecasting very low temperatures in our area over the next few days, so we are not out of trouble just yet.

7 comments:

  1. I was astonished when wallflower seeds germinated; even more astonished then they didn't shrivel under the snow and have emerged from it as fresh as they were when they went under.

    Esther

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  2. Wow, I would have never thought that they would have done so well. Gives me hope for my broccoli and cabbage since the next several nights are supposed to drop into the teens.

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  3. That's fantastic Mark. I am enjoying following your efforts to garden in the snow....not something I wish to emulate however.

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  4. They look fantastic. I envy those celeriac leaves. In Greece we add them to almost all the winter stews and soups. They are the taste of winter. They have a far stronger taste than celery.

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  5. I love how your veg garden looks and so many things seem to have survived. I will have to harvest my bulb fennel as that won't stand another frost like we had here in Italy last Sunday. I love the way the snow reveals visitors to the garden that we didn't know about. Christina

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  6. Upate on the salads mentioned above: the lettuce I had picked successfully feed four last night. We had unexpected visitors because our daugther's central-heating boiler has broken, so she and her family have come to stay with us for a few days...

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  7. Hoping when we visit the plot things are continuing to survive - I suppose the Tundra cabbage is appropriately named!

    Snow is only very slowly disappearing here - it is just SO cold!!

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