Mississippi River

The river is frozen now. It must have happened last week because there's snow on the ice and it hasn't snowed since 11/25.

Fall Clings On

The berries on these trees by my house turned from red to orange after the frost.

Today it is raining, a steady soaking rain. Patches of snow hang on, remaining only where the snow was piled in heaps. Tonight the rain will turn to freezing rain, then snow, and winter will have its way again.

Some, but not all of the radishes in the greenhouse froze. I picked the frozen ones. They are surprisingly sweet.

The artichokes, I fear, are dead. But I don't know. The one outside is buried under a small pile of hay. The one inside is in the greenhouse where the soil hasn't frozen yet. The leaves look a little worse for the wear, but I can't tell if it's dead or not. I think I'd better mulch them both some more. But I don't know where to get mulch this time of year. The hardware stores have transitioned to rock salt and Christmas wreathes.

Fall has become Winter

On Thursday, I ate my lunch outside, comfortable without a coat. On Saturday, it snowed nine inches and highs are in the 30s. I'm glad I got that garlic in the ground!

Frost

Our first frost was October 29th. It was the latest first frost in 47 years.

4:15pm today.

We turned the clocks back yesterday and the days have become short. But today I was out in the garden in a long sleeved shirt and cotton pants and was plenty comfortable.

Kale

Garlic In

I finally got the garlic planted. It's in the dark (watered) area above.

-I planted all of the cloves ~3" deep.

-I tried to line up all of the cloves in the same direction. The concave side points south.

-There are three rows (oriented the long way, north to south).

-Each row has eleven cloves in it, one of each variety:

From our garden this year:

1. Polish softneck

2. Italian late

3. Unknown hardneck

4. Inchelium red

5. Music

6. Big Unknown

From Territorial Seed Co:

7. Music - huge cloves

8. Polish softneck

9. Chinese pink

From Jung Seed Co:

10. Siberian

11. Inchelium red - moldy smell

I put some of the leftover garlic in the plot kitty-corner to mine. In that plot, the garlic is on the western side of the garden. There are seven rows (oriented north to south), each with ten cloves (one of each variety, except "big unknown"). I had only two "big unknown" cloves so I planted them at the south end of the plot. The concave side of the cloves is oriented east.

Beautiful November

The garden is remarkably green due to warm fall temps and a week of rain. Not bad for November!

Looking south.

The frost has not killed the artichokes. This onion is a survivor. This is the second time this year that it has sprouted. And it was a volunteer from last year.

Fall crocuses in full bloom.

Ornamental kale.

Dan and I worked the soil a little last weekend. We added organic blood meal and topsoil. We weren't really sure what amendments we needed to make, but figured that, after a couple of years of tomatoes, it probably needed at least some nitrogen.

Before.

After.