This month the garden has been easy. Winter gardening is different than any other season. There is no blistering heat or swarms of devouring insects. The rainwater doesn't evaporate immediately and those things alone eases the workload tremendously.
A surprise has been the deep red, delicious Merlot lettuce. Two winters ago I gave some seeds to Reese. He planted them in a five-gallon bucket on the back deck at his apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina. They grew through the summer and winter unprotected. He saved seeds and returned them to me.
The seedlings which were removed when thinning the bed were transplanted into the onion bed.
It isn't under a hoop house but both onions and lettuce seem to be surviving fine...so far.
It would be awesome to have a winter garden without the bother of setting up so many hoop houses. Each one requires quite a bit of bending and stooping. Finding the right winter-hardy varieties would be the answer.
It has rained this month, the drought in my neighborhood is over and the thirsty plants have taken advantage of the showers. Many that appeared doomed have magically transformed.
Some of the plants still appear dead even though there is a little bit of life left in the roots.
Others look great and their bitterness has gone! It may have been the cold weather, the shade trees dropping their leaves, the abundance of rain, the extra fertilizer, or any combination of the above. However, after waiting all season, they are edible. They will be chopped down to the ground and canned or dehydrated this week before anything else can go wrong.
I needed a month in the garden where I did nothing, the plants did all the work and it happened!
