Saturday, January 3, 2015

Winemaking and seeds

Happy New Year! Apologies for the long silence--we've been busy enjoying winter sports, making some wine and just generally ignoring everything gardening related ( a bit of burn out after apple and tomato season).


Tonight, though, Jess and I moved a batch of Malbec from the primary to a carboy and started chatting ("keep stirring!") about the garden for next year. Santa brought Jess some seeds for her stocking and she has some ideas of her own.

In the "more" category are carrots, golden beets and tomatoes. The tomato mill I got for my birthday made making pizza sauce a snap and we're almost out. We're also hopeful to get a decent crop of zucchini this year and I'm hopeful for some pumpkins out front. I'd also like to grow a few more green beans and more shell peas--although we may freshen our seed stock here.


In the "less" category, fall Russian blue potatoes, swiss chard and white onions. We'll replace them with more yellow storage onions and another batch of walla-walla onions (which were amazing while they lasted). Also, slightly fewer scarlet runner beans are the plan.

We still have a few onions, lots of garlic and a bunch of potatoes so I think we're in good shape. I also seem to have over-estinated the amount of apple sauce and crab apple jelly we're using--although we're a long we from new preserves so I guess we'll see!

I'm keen to see if I can coach a seed crop out of the carrots and beets we're over wintering in the basement. On my list of chores is hunting up the grow lights for tomato seedlings this spring. And perhaps we'll also grow our own bedding plants.