January Gardening. Winter Seed Planting. 1.28.14

Winter Garden Bed

Planted, watered, covered, clipped.

I'm off this week for vacation.  A chance to give in to fatigue and just let it go, sleep like the dead, rest.

I uncovered the one bed that I had ready for winter gardening.  At the far end are small (less than 1 inch tall) onion plants.  Those are from Waking Onion topsets I planted ?1 month ago?.  Some were pulled out of the ground.  I don't know by what.  A couple have been chewed off.

I prepped the soil with a garden rake.  A few minutes effort.  The soil is not fluffy, but not hard either.  Not soggy, really pretty nice.

I planted seed for turnips, radishes, chinese cabbage, mesclun, spinach.  And more perennial onion sets, small.  I found those in the garage.

Spread around a dried blood - hot pepper concoction from Fred Meyer.  That was on sale.  Should deter some pests - rabbits, deer.  It was a small creature that ate the onions, I maybe a vole or slug.  If I remember, tomorrow I'll get mouse traps and spread slug bait.

Lightly covered the seeds and sets.  Watered them in.   The idea of the row cover is to let water in, but restrict air movement.  I don't know if it works.  Might change to polyethylene sheet, and accept that I have to water it myself.

The seeds were old.  1 to 4 years.  Mesclun was 4 years old.  If they don't grow, not a  big loss.  Should either plant or discard them, so I planted them.

The clips are clothes pins from Fred Meyer too.  They were about $1.99 for 25.  Compared to maybe $6 for a few purpose-made row cover clips.  I think they work better.  Wood clothes pins don't work.  They rot and fall apart.