Checking in on the Garden After the Big Freeze

The Winter Garden is almost done.  We'll still be harvesting a lot of cabbage, chard, beets, and carrots, but other than that, the focus is on getting the spring garden planned and planted.  We'll show you a few photos of activities in the garden.  First, here is a nice shot of a head of Romanesco Broccoli.

Notice the swirls, spirals, and designs of the Romanesco.  It tastes like a normal broccoli, with a 'nuttier' taste.  We like them!  Along with this Romanesco, we've been picking broccoli florets almost every day and, along with cut up fresh carrots and beets, oven roasting them with oil, minced garlic, salt and pepper.  Delicious!

The carrots, slow to start in the fall, came on like gangbusters.  In fact, they are probably too thick.  They are healthy, however and are producing well.  Some are still small, but we're walking the rows, harvesting those carrots that are ripe.

We wash them up and eat them raw and crisp or oven roast them.  Today, they perfectly accompanied a pot roast for lunch after Morning Services at church.  Each day we need to be very disciplined about picking the ripe ones out so that the smaller ones have room to go ahead and mature.  Anything that we don't eat, we'll blanch and freeze so that we'll stretch the harvest out and eat all year.

One thing I want to show you is not really in the garden, but in our little food forest orchard of blueberries.  Right before the big freeze came, the blueberry bushes were blooming.  Those blooms eventually put on delicious berries.  Except, the freeze finished off the blooms.  See below.  The blooms are brown and dead.  There will be no berries following these blooms.

However, we've been on trails way up the mountain the the Great Smokey Mountain National Park and have feasted on blueberries along the path.  I just knew our blueberries would be okay.  Sure enough, fresh green growth is coming out on the bushes.  

In an even better sign, fresh blooms are filling the bushes where the brown blooms were and there will soon be blueberries.  That's a great sign!

The jury is still out on all of our citrus.  The leaves have all turned brown and died on our navel orange, tangerine, and grapefruit trees.  There is no fresh green growth on any of the trees.  The only positive sign is that if you scratch the tree, there is a layer of green just beneath the bark.  We will keep our eyes on the trees for fresh signs of life.

So hopeful that the dangers of freeze has passed, this afternoon, we transplanted the seedlings of many of the tomatoes we planted back in January.  We planted: Black Krim, Black Vernissage, Big Rainbow, and Pink Brandywine tomatoes.  Each afternoon this week, I will try to put more varieties out in the garden soil.  The warming days should get them growing.

The plants were about six inches tall, but I planted them deep - right up to the base of the bottom leaves.  The buried stem will become part of the root system.  The tomatoes are happy and healthy.  With temperatures reaching the upper 70's all this week, these tomatoes should really begin growing.

With longer days and warmer weather, everything should green up and really start growing.  Can't wait for Spring!