Frosty, til the season's end!

I'm beginning to think that building a greenhouse to grow my veggies in may not only be fun, but may be necessary to garden here anymore. Two years of crop ruining cold spells was punctuated this weekend with another brief chill that brought lows in the 30's and frost on the rooftops. Luckily, I have no cold sensitive crops in the ground right now.

Despite the brief chill, the garden continues to do well with the warm afternoons and the more than 1 inch of rain that fell last week. Our green cabbage is nearly ready for some good St. Patrick's day corned beef. Blueberries are starting to "blue up" and the buckwheat patch is starting to flower.

On the west side of the garden, a fresh covering of ground up oak leaves surrounds the watermelon seedlings and cotton plants. Unlike everyone who lives in the northern climates and has to rake up leaves in the fall, we do our raking in the spring when the new leaves push the old ones off. Our oak leaves are fairly tough and it usually takes a couple grindings with the mower to get them nice and fine and easily decomposable in the garden.

Our sweet potato bare roots will be coming in another month or so and we will hopefully be getting more blueberry plants when the u-pick season arrives at our favorite blueberry grower.