New Year and New Garden.

Now that I have started some seeds: celeriac, ground cherries, peppers, leeks and red onions, and the sun is showing it's strength, it's really starting to feel like spring. The promise of spring and the start of a new gardening season is beyond exciting for me. I've been thinking through all the winter months about how I'll improve my garden for this coming gardening season, what I'll do differently and what I will and won't grow. 

The following is a list of my plans for the new garden season:

1. Build a greenhouse. This is our top priority, I need this so badly for several reasons. I really need the spot for hardening off plants in the spring as taking little pots in and out day after day is just asking for disaster. It works, and it's a lot of work so it will be so much easier when I don't have to worry about wind, breakage from moving or leaving things out where my hens may be able to eat them. 

We also need the greenhouse for growing lots more food! I will still use my cold frames once we have the greenhouse built because I will stuff them with greens for the fall and winter months, as well as early spring. With the greenhouse I'll be able to grow much more greens and other cold tolerant veggies. 

The other reason I can't wait to have a greenhouse is to grow my tomatoes in an environment where I can totally control their irrigation. Often here our tomatoes grow extremely well and form lovely tomatoes that coincide with really heavy rains coming into the fall months. Inconsistent moisture is not a friend of the tomatoes at any time of the growing season and the heavy rains in the fall can be the worst. The heavy rains cause the perfect fruit to swell and split. This did not happen last year, although it did the year before. I often try to cover the plants if we're getting downpours around this time to control the moisture but sometimes even that doesn't work. Inconsistent moisture as they grow can result in a calcium deficiency and contributes to disease. I'll likely use my greenhouse to grow tomatoes as well as melons and someday, as I've decided not to grow them this year, artichokes.   

2. Grow more food right now! I'm running out of food really quickly this year. I have several red onions, random greens in the cold frame (that I'd like to leave be for spring greens), frozen tomatoes and peppers, some carrots in the ground, blueberries, cranberries and that's it! We had similar circumstances last year right around this time. March is the month that we run out of food. I started some lettuce in a shallow pot for growing in my sunniest window and instead of taking herbs indoors in the fall months, when they often fail, I start herbs indoors this time of year. I have basil, thyme and cilantro all growing on my kitchen table. They get plenty of sun these days and you don't have to worry about taking bugs into your home, which seems to happen to me every time I take an outdoor plant in for the winter. 

I started new kale transplants to put in the cold frame ASAP and will be starting broccoli indoors for an early spring crop. 

3. Grow more storage veggies. We ate our last squash in February, along with our last celeriac and last rutabaga. This year I plan on growing more squash, and different varieties, as well as more celeriac, one of our new favorite veggies. The celeriac, which is basically celery root, can be left in the ground, covered with straw and dug up when desired just like carrots. It's delicious, nutritious and can be mashed up just like potatoes. 

As for the squash, we rely really heavily on them as a storage crop. When cured properly undamaged squash will last forever!

4. Adding new perennial crops. I'm getting another black currant bush, another blueberry bush and a gooseberry bush. I'll take any berry bush I can get! I'll be adding these to my collection of three blueberry bushes, one black currant bush, three haskap bushes, three cherry bushes, two cranberry bushes, over one hundred strawberry plants, three grape vines (plus four grape vines I rooted indoors and will be planting out) raspberry canes and many, many asparagus plants. Anything that comes back year after year is fantastic. We're also hoping to plant some apple trees to feed our cider making addiction. 

No major changes this year, with the exception of the greenhouse that will be life changing, just the same optimistic attitude that I'm going to grow as much as I possibly can for the entire year. I would love to not run out of food in March, however until I start gardening on much more land than my one acre offers, I'm really not sure if it's possible. Who knows what the gardening season will bring this year, what challenges we may be up against or what luck we may have. It all depends on a lot of things, mainly all weather related and there's simply no controlling that.