I admit...I have a gambling addiction

No, no not that sort of gambling, although I once did spend five dollars at a casino! My problem is with something far less destructive and with much better odds of winning than that sort of gambling. But, it is something I turn to that gives me comfort when I feel as though life is going to spin out of control. It also has a very grounding effect on me and gives me the illusion that everything is gonna be alright, even if it ain't. Besides, after a couple weeks of beautiful weather near 70 and no freezing nights in the longest range forecast I can find, what is a farm girl supposed to do?

One of the things about having a greenhouse in the south, even a sorry little greenhouse like ours, is that things will live in there all winter long without much care. An extra layer of plastic or a tarp and most cole crops, peas and greens will grow until early spring. They grow VERY slow! So very slow that most everything is still small enough to transplant outside when the weather warms a bit. What this does though is create a conundrum as space is needed for new plantlings and cole crops do not grow well in GH's once the temps go above 50 or so outside. It gets too hot in there for them without running fans. Since we try not to use electricity unless it is needed and because the other plantlings need warmer temps, it means having to gamble or feed all those perfectly good veggie plants to the critters. I simply can't do that so I gamble.

Yesterday I went through all the beds in the GH and took all the baby cabbages out of the table bed. There ended up being 22 cabbage plants in there !! Maybe that's part of the reason they were growing so slow. I then took the turnip greens out and took some to the shack and some to the critters. Next, I sorted through the other greens and moved them to locations outside where I had overwintered greens and filled in any gaps. I then cut two of the three broccoli plants as I harvested the last of their shoots for dinner the other night and pulled the remaining Asian greens. One mess of greens came to the house and others went to critters. I did leave the spinach plants , one broccoli, a cabbage, the weeds (as they are all edible), and much of the lettuce

To replace what I pulled from the GH, I planted a few melon seeds, transplanted a couple zucchini and several cucumbers and brought my onion, tomato, cabbage, leek and bok choy babies down to grow until the real time to plant. I fully intend upon having zucchini and cukes to eat in April and maters in May. The GH is set up so that I can put plastic over the tops of all the beds and create small hoop houses within the GH if need be.




Outside, I cleaned up all the overwintered veggies so they weren't so ugly looking, filled in gaps, planted some potatoes(hot tub), ginger, turnips, peas, spinach, beets, collards, mustard, and carrots. It is still a few weeks early to plant for the cole crop veggies here but I figured that the more we have growing the less we need to depend on others and with the way things are in the world today it is worth the gamble. Everything planted is in areas that we can cover if need be and quite frankly, the few dollars in seeds and plant babies that I have used for my addiction are worth the risk of losing them in the worst case scenario.

Still coming fresh out of the gardens are onions, garlic, turnips, carrots, greens of all sorts, lettuces of many varieties and of course an abundance of edible weeds.