Sunny and cold

The wild weather gave way to mostly sunny skies and cold temperatures. There was a fairly heavy frost overnight. We took the Agribon row cover off the plants to let them soak up some sun. The lettuce we ate for lunch was perfect!

I decided that it was a waste of water to keep the few broccoli plants alive, so I harvested the little shoots that were there and pulled the rest of the plants up. I think they would have continued to put out some small side shoots, but it didn't seem worth it to maintain these big stalks and leaves. We will have a mini-side of broccoli tonight with our green soup (that was in the freezer but made originally from our own greens and Outer Aisle potatoes).

When I went into our little greenhouse to check on the seedlings (no true leaves yet), it was 92 degrees in there! It probably didn't get much into the 50's outside the greenhouse today.

I checked our baby fruit trees. The plum has lots of sweet little white blossoms and tiny green leaves. The peach trees have fat pink buds. The cherry will be the last to bloom, I think. The older tree, the mini nectarine, will bloom any day; the buds are just ready to pop. We're thinking of extending our hillside fencing so that we can plant more fruit trees and keep them safe from the deer. We'd also like to get a few goats to keep the hillside ground clear, but then we'd also have to put little fences around every fruit tree to protect them from the goats. The critter/plant balance can be tricky!

I'm not sure our cabbage plants will ever form actual good heads. I think we definitely need to be better about feeding the plants that need more nutrients. We can pretty much neglect the lettuce and kale, but we forget that some crops could use some periodic side-dressing with compost.

The transplated rose is not looking so good. The leaves are droopy and getting rusty spots - have to go look those up. We decided to cut it way back, leaving the parts that look the healthiest. The lilac seems to be totally enjoying its new home - covered with buds!

And there seem to be fewer aphids. I don't know whether to credit the banana peels or the cold weather!