Jack frost paid us a visit this morning. It’s very difficult to capture that in pictures, but close-up shots are kind of neat.

catnip

willow

maple

That’s Minnesota in March for you!

We took advantage of the nice 25ºF weather last weekend and brought Puck out for a lot of long walks. Apparently, my legs aren’t used to that kind of exercise yet, and I now have a stress fracture in my right leg. There isn’t much that can be done about it, except for staying off of it and walking lightly for 4 weeks. Fortunately I spend 10 hours at a desk every day anyway, so that shouldn’t be too hard.

It was a chilly 10 below when I woke up this morning, with wind chills well below that. Bitter cold, but a heat wave compared to the -27ºF air temps we had a few weeks ago. The forecast is suggesting that we may see 40 by the weekend though! Unfortunately, I won’t be able to enjoy it with this silly new leg injury.

I wanted to share a couple of summer photos from our garden two summers ago. It always warms me up to look at pictures of sunflowers. Enjoy!

And our random two-headed Skyscraper sunflower, which was kind of neat:

I used up the last of our red cabbage and onions the other week. We still have nearly an entire crisper drawer in the fridge full of carrots, which are surprisingly still crispy – and delicious! We have a grocery bag of them in the garage too – since they are frozen they aren’t good for eating raw, but they do work well in soups. We need to figure out a better storage method for carrots this year. We do have a second refrigerator in the garage, but I don’t know if we’ll have enough extra food to justify turning it on.

We still have quite a few potatoes, but even keeping them covered in the cool crawl space didn’t prevent them from sprouting. Chris is planning on planting them this year, so they won’t be wasted.

A delicious way to enjoy fresh grown food in the winter: sprouts!

I received two of these 8×10 Sproutmaster Trays for Christmas this year. They are stackable, and each come with a divider – so with the two trays, we can sprout up to 4 different kinds of sprouts at once! Or you can stagger start dates and always have a fresh supply. They store really well in the refrigerator too.

This weekend, we stopped by Fresh & Natural Foods, and I saw these dried sprouted mung beans sold in the snack aisle. I think we’ll have to take out the dehydrator soon to give that a try!

When I look out my office window, the first thing I see is a 2′ mound of snow, sparking from the fresh flakes that fell yesterday. But the seed catalogs have been coming in (we left for a week over the holidays, and came home to at least 10 new garden catalogs!), so we’ve been spending a lot of time talking about this year’s garden plans.

One of the things I love to do every winter is draw out my garden. You can click here to view the full sheet as a PDF, with some of the varieties I’m thinking about.

I want to expand my perennial herb beds, stretching them across two rows on either side of the arbor. I have catnip, sage, thyme, and chives in them right now. I also planted a lot of daisies in the beds last year, which I am planning to transplant this spring to the ends of each of the rows.

My aunt gave me a butterfly house for Christmas this year, so I am thinking of adding some butterfly-attracting perennials to the center of my garden, on either side of the main path. Or, I may put the house out by the fruit trees, since Chris has plans for adding some native plants to the “apple guild”.

As great as it would be to have a nice, long growing season … I wouldn’t have it any other way!

The 2011 Seed and Fruit catalogs are already rolling in, and Chris picked up a stack of gardening books from the book store the other day. Winter is a great season for gardeners. It gives us time to think about previous years, and dream about the new things we want to try in the spring. (Artichokes, perhaps? We read a very interesting article in one of Chris’s books about growing artichokes in cold climates).

One of the things that I’ve been researching is the best – and quickest – way to make our fence green. We put up a functional, but not terribly pretty, chain link fence closing in an entire acre of land. I think we are going to break down and buy 100 second year grape vines (wine, table, and cooking/jelly varieties) to plant along the 180-foot stretch of fence across our front yard in the spring. There is a Vineyard in Lake City, Minnesota that looks like it has quality plants at a pretty good price. According to one of the gardening books that Chris got, “grapes thrive in less than adequate conditions” – so with any luck, in 2012 we will see a small crop and a green fence filling in.

These are two terrific plants that can handle a hard freeze and 4″ of snow.

These pictures were taken last week, before we had finished clearing out the garden. This morning we woke up to a white yard. I picked the Brussels sprouts last night, and Chris was just outside in the snow picking the collards before they disappeared into the winter. He also picked the greens from his sprouting broccoli, which taste pretty similar to collards. I think we have enough greens to last us until spring!

Sounds good to me:

“I don’t have time to garden well. I garden anyway.

Gardening is one of those activities like caring for children or learning about the past that rewards you for every little effort, no matter how small. It’s an infinite game.”

You can’t lose or fail is what I’ll keep telling myself.

So my plans for experimenting with cold frames in the cold fell through, but I got a job doing research for a winter CSA on campus. I’ve also been trying out sprouting stuff lately. No pictures right now, but so far I’ve sprouted peanuts, lentils, garbanzo beans and the green alfalfa type sprouts you can buy at the grocery store (see www.sproutpeople.com). Its been fun and delicious though Jessi is allergic to many raw foods. Earlier tonight I planted some lettuce in a green planter we used for herbs last year. We’ll see if I can get lettuce to grow amongst the papayas. I want to get an earlier start on the garden this year and maybe have some stuff (lettuce, radishes, carrots, etc) ready for eating on my graduation party!

In my research for my on campus job I’ve found a lot of info on organic gardening including this website with lots of old, free books. I’ve been reading An Agricultural Testament by Albert Howard and Weeds: Guardians of the Soil by Joseph A. Cocannouer. Both are great, but I especially like the latter because he is advocating weeds.