Mizuna in Early Spring

Here's the little Mizuna plant that sprouted. You can just see where the center is really growing up, that's where the flower bud popped up.

Ruminations on Overwintering

Today is a damp, drippy day. After feeding the sheep and pigs this morning I needed to water the greenhouse. Its days like this it would be nice to have a retractable roof !! Timmy got busy wapping ice and the remaining snow drifts so I began pulling up the Calendula plants from last year. Maybe there will be less than 50,000 volunteers if I can get some of that old seed out of the garden. Won't I be thrilled with only 25,000 volunteer Calendulas : )

While I pulled plants and scooped up seed on my hands and knees, I couldn't help but notice a little bit of green here and there. Was that one of last years' Chard plants ? Do I see a Celery leaf ? Wow, the Red Orach is already sprouting. Now I wonder about last years' Kale, could it have overwintered ? In the greenhouse, one Mizuna plant popped up when I started watering in early March. Today I saw a flower head on it starting to sprout, so I popped it off and ate it - wow and amazing - that was a great taste of things to come !!

How much do I miss from tilling things up in the Fall ? How much can I learn about early season crops from just letting Winter do its snowy job and cover things to see what comes up. Granted, many of these things will be ready to go to seed if indeed they did make it over the Winter. But that could be a good thing as well. I wonder if any lettuce could overwinter ??????

Yipes, I better get this years' garden planned out before I start imagining next Spring, eh ?