State of the garden – January

Daffodil

The mini daffodils are blooming, with the full sized not long behind. In my area they really do well, and require little maintenance except for digging up to divide every few years. Mine need it again, but I’ll wait until after the tops have withered.

My brassicas have not done well this year at all. The bok choy & most of the broccoli bolted, and the poor cabbage has had a time of it. First by caterpillars, then aphids, and now some sort of leaf miner is cutting into them. This may be a “pick your battles” thing, and pretty sure instead of spraying and such I’m just going to skip them next year.

The onions are garlic planted last fall seem to be doing fine. Last October I ordered some starts from Dixondale farms which should be arriving soon. I was looking for Stockton Reds, but they didn’t have any so I got an assortment of three varieties suitable (intermediate day) for my latitude . Of course right after I put in the order, I found some Stockton Red starts at Green Acres Nursery so I bought and put them in. It will be interesting to see which does better come harvest time. I have some in Root Pouch fabric pots, and some in the ground, so will see which does better that way as well. I’m hoping the containers do well since swapping out potting mix would be easier to do proper crop rotation given my limited ground space.

Inside, I have started some pepper plants, and will start some tomatoes in the next couple of months. Pepper plants take a couple weeks to sprout, so I wanted to give them a head start.