Commentor JeffG166:
Next year’s spring garden. There are foxgloves, poppies and coreopsis plants started in late summer.
Tonight it’s to be 22°F. They should droop to the ground but rebound with every day that is mild.
The chicken wire over them is to keep the squirrels out.
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For Forrest Carlson and Brett Beardmore, fulfilling the dream of having their own business means growing enough to feed about 20 families directly. The small community farm just north of Denver looks nothing like most of agricultural America. pic.twitter.com/PEmrD3EHIq
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 1, 2022
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So… if you want Sunday photos, find some and send them to me!
What’s going on in your gardens (planning / indoor / tropical), this week?
OzarkHillbilly
Prepping for Spring? Hahahahahahahaha… Shit, I’m still not done cleaning up after last year.
Jeffg166
@OzarkHillbilly: Neither am I. I will get out when I have the energy all winter long when there is a mild period to do the fall clean up. I might be done by spring.
StringOnAStick
My newly created landscape is under a foot of snow that was heavy enough to collapse the ornamental grasses and the other perennials I left standing over winter as habitat for beneficial insects and bird food I am excited to see it enter its second year, though for many plants at least 3 seasons are required to reach final size and much longer for the shrubs.
We’ve just returned from a trip so it’s time to fire up the grow lights and see if producing salad greens this way is possible. I used the lights to start about 1/3 of the perennial flowers now out in the landscape, so I think salad veg is probably not a bridge too far; it’s time to find out!
Kristine
Highs in the mid-20s here in NE Illinois, set to plummet into the teens and even the single digits around Christmas before edging back up.
The yard is on its own until spring. The ground is pretty bare–the storm that passed through a few days ago hit here as rain, and the dusting that followed is spotty. It looks like the birds have stripped most all the seeds from the Sweet Joe Pye Weed and goldenrod, and the squirrels took care of the tiny crabapples on the Louisa and prairiefire. I’ve brought the gerberas and mini roses indoors for the duration. I’m currently having the kitchen and bathroom refurbished and don’t have much focus for anything else.
Betty Cracker
The mister is sad about our banana trees because we’re supposed to get a hard freeze over Christmas. They’ll come back, but they do get whacked in a freeze and have to be cut to the ground.
Geminid
The small Denver area farm is part of a greater trend. These used to be called “truck farms” because the farmers would haul their produce to nearby cities. This was before the more modern supply chain was established, enabling supermarkets to stock vegetables produced on huge, distant farms.
Now thes smaller, local supply chains are coming back. There is a demand for this locally grown food, and an increasing amount of willing suppliers. There is still not much profit to be made, and some of the growers must work outside jobs to make ends meet. But this has been the case for decades with a lot of people tending smaller farms.
My friend Debbie and I talked about this some on a recent road trip. We both saw the “back to the land” movement in the 1970s. We see a similar movement today. It’s been going on for the past few years, and the pandemic accelerated it.
One factor is that employment conditions have changed. Now more jobs are portable, so someone who had to work in say, Brooklyn might now be able to work from a home in the countryside upstate.
I see people like this moving to my area and a good portion of them set up in the country. This area also attracts portable wealth and there is more of that now. Between inherited wealth and the ability of some people to make a a small fortune by age forty by age 40 or so, more people retire early. Some of these will find running a 10 acre blueberry farm or a 25 acre Alpaca ranch a fullfilling second career.
People will still crave community and culture, but they will be bringing their own, and their friends and colleagues may make the same move and bring more. Once this is added to (and hopefully mixed with) the local culture, some sleepy towns and small cities could become jumping places, with brewpubs and various vegetable and music festivals added to the sports bars and volunteer fire department chicken dinners.
I see this process happening around my rural area. It was a magnet for homesteaders and “intentional communities” in the 1970s. Now a comparable set of people from newer generations is arriving. This is helped by a newer paradigm of portable jobs and portable wealth. The biggest challenge for people going “back to the land” in earlier decades was always the scarcity of economic opportunity for homesteaders and their children. That dynamic is very different now and I think the impact on population movement will be sustained.
As far as what’s going on in my garden goes, I’d say “nuttin’.” My landlord’s partner gave me three Burr Oak acorns she had found on a trip. They look kind of cool, with a crosshatched cap that covers half the nut. I may pull them out of my car, admire them and think about how I will plant them later on this winter.
Doc H
A nice companion to Sunday garden chat is the #FlowerReport hashtag on the federated hairy proboscidean websites. Here’s my contribution.
OzarkHillbilly
@Jeffg166: It’s gonna be a while longer for me, due to “shit happens.”
OzarkHillbilly
@StringOnAStick: I finally put up a greenhouse. A few weeks back I planted a bunch of salad greens (and reds) seeds in the planters. I had just about given up on them germinating and was going to do it on a germinating mat under the lights and then transplant. Went out to do exactly that yesterday when what do I see?
Spinach coming up, as well as mesculin and a lettuce I can’t remember which it was. So now I am wondering if I should be patient with the rest or just go ahead and do some starters. Probably the latter and if nothing else is up when they get going, I’ll just transplant them.
OzarkHillbilly
Rural broadband will do a lot to accelerate this trend.
MomSense
Well it’s brighter today after the heavens dropped a frozen mashed potato quikrete mix the last two days.
Hopefully next garden season will be better.
oldgold
Not much going on in my garden, West of Eden, located in the outer rim of the Hardy Twilight Zone, except for this.
In the southeast corner of West of Eden there are two columns of stone piled 3 feet high and 6 inches apart. One column of stone is named Hope. The other is named Grace. The narrow slit between them is called Courage.
In the northeast corner of the garden there is an old oak tree stump 24 inches in diameter. It is named Trepidation
On December 20 at the crack of noon, I will light the residue of last summer’s vegetative growth – mostly weeds. This heap will not blaze, but glows and smolders for days. This fire is called the Future
In the pre-dawn hours on the day Old Sol sits on top of the Tropic of Capricorn, I will sit naked on Trepidation, covered in bear grease, face striped in verdant green paint, billy goat horns strapped to my forehead, chewing on a spear of West of Eden raised horse radish, humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic, peering through the glowing embers and smoke of the Future at the two phallic columns of stone – Hope and Grace.
Then, a golden shaft of light will shine brilliantly through Courage.
I will smile and with rest of humanity soldier on into the new year.
Miss Bianca
@oldgold: Umm…right on. I think.
StringOnAStick
@OzarkHillbilly: In the summer we grow our lettuce/greens in the large self watering planters that were my sum total of veggie gardening at our old house in CO. Now that we live in the “other CO” (Central Oregon) I have actual soil and garden space, but the best luck with lettuce/greens is still these pots. I dragged them into the garage so they could dry out, but the parsley and mesclun leftovers are still growing, though slowly. Our garage is south facing with a line of windows and it is actually pretty bright in there plus the door is insulated, so I think I will plant some spinach seeds and see what happens. The geranium I was gifted is on a shelf in there that gets excellent sun, so it has not gone dormant in the least. I’m thinking the “garage plants” are telling me something.
Between the light in the garage and the grow lights inside, I should be able to propagate something!