| APRIL 5, 2014 -- Our February 13th meeting was cancelled because of a snow storm.
On February 27th, a program on winter gardening was presented by local gardener Dick Conrad of Wallingford. You might have read an article on Dick’s winter gardening in the Hartford Courant in the Living Section of the Hartford Courant on January 21. So you say you can’t grow a garden in the middle of the winter! But apparently you can. Dick started to notice after many years of gardening that some of the vegetables that he had grown, some would survive through the winter, especially when there was mild winter. This was especially true for carrots and potatoes. Carrots that stayed in the ground through the winter got especially sweeter. This is also true of kale. It turns out there are a lot of vegetables you can either winter over in the ground and/or will continue to grow through the winter. Examples are leeks, kale, carrots, asparagus and garlic. The key in keeping a winter garden is plenty of mulch. Dick in the fall grabs all the discarded leaf bags that his neighbors leave on the side of the curb and takes them back to his garden and dumps them around his plants. All these leaves help to protect the plants and importantly keep the ground from getting frozen. In the middle of the winter if he needs some vegetables all he has to do is shovel back some of the leaves and start digging them up because the ground isn’t frozen. Though he did advise, before you dump leaves around your plants is to stake off where your vegetables are located. This is so that when there is a pile a snow on your garden everything looks different, so you might not find them. It also helps to locate where your digging started and ended from the last time you were out in your garden. Another plus there are no bugs and most animals seem not to bother a winter garden. So this year think about a winter garden. Winter gardening tips can by found by searching “johnseeds & overwintering”. E-mail me at daninnguilford@earthlink.net for a copy of winter gardening links.
Apr. 10: “CWA” program. Janet B. Haller will be presenting the program.
Apr. 24: “Earth Day”. A program on recycling in the town of Wallingford will be presented by Doreen Zaback, the town’s solid waste expert and town planner, Don Roe. |
