Garden Update: Slow but Steady

This is what the garden bed that I planted currently looks like. There are many more plants up than jars, but these were all the unused jars that I had, so I randomly chose plants to protect. The jars work like mini-greenhouses, which I found out last summer when I put a jar on top of a basil plant hoping to protect it from the squirrels that were eating it, and I baked it to death. So, the moral is: Jars in summer not a good idea. Jars in "winter"a very good idea.

I have found that while we are lucky here in California to be able to grow pretty much year round, the little plants do grow more slowly in the cold weather. The jars really help to protect the baby plants when the temperatures dip down into the 30s or 40s.

I saw another blog post about covering plants with jars in the winter at The Prudent Homemaker's site. She has great photographic evidence of the effect the jars have.

Some Ruben's Red lettuce seedlings.

These are Purple Dragon carrots that have not been thinned yet. Always wait until the true leaves appear before you start thinning.

Sugar Snap Peas. Many of these seeds did not germinate. I have a feeling they were stolen and eaten by critters.

These are spinach plants. You can see that their true leaves are starting to appear in the middle there.

And below, here are rainbow chard babies. Chard may be one of the easiest things to grow. 

These are my new seeds that came in the mail last week. I was out of peas and needed beans for spring planting, but I also wanted to try growing some new things.

Today I went out, and following the Square Foot Gardening guidelines I replanted seeds in each square where seeds either didn't germinate, or where the seedling was eaten. This keeps things looking neat and even, but with a few weeks' lag in the growing, it staggers the harvest as well. I hope to go out tomorrow and plant more peas, the parsnips, turnips, kale, and beets.