Far Reaches Farm

Tuesday December 8th and its 4 am and 19 degrees.  Heaters in the greenhouses all working.  Back to bed.  It is a 2 dog night and luckily we have two warm and snuggly Mexican dogs.

Thursday night at 8pm.  Enough cold already!  Last night was the coldest yet at 16 and tonight should be a balmy 20 or so.  Tired of checking the heaters.  Eric Clapton runs through my head - "I don't like, I don't like I don't like - propane".  Actually I love it as it is saving the family bacon.  Looking at our formerly beautiful Melianthus major in the garden, we are thinking of naming it 'Limp Noodle'.  It will regrow from the base - sure it will.

December 22 and everything is thawed out and we can assess what did well and what didn't.  Very few surprises.  Our "panic planting" outside our shade garden 2 days before the Jeffrerson Land Trust party here in August showed the most damage which reinforces the credo of not fertilizing late in the growing season.  It was the manure mulch that did it and plants desperate to get out of their pots and the exuberant soft growth they carried into winter.  The ironclad Grevillea victoriae is dead.  Buddleja coriacea is toast.  Not really a bad toll considering all the other goodies in the same beds which came through fine and we do have backups to replant.

The worst thing about the postfreeze inspection is finding those plants you forgot to bring in the greenhouse or at least cover.  Every year there is always a key plant, a treasured item of slow production and high value that turns to mush and this year is no exception.  Why we didn't bring in the 7 flats of 4" Trillium kurabayashi seedlings is a mystery for the ages.  Beautiful little 3 year olds.  They would have just about paid for a new greenhouse that would have saved them.  The only good thing about such losses is it usually spurs us on to taking action that ensures this won't happen again.  At least with that particular genus.  So no more Trillium seedlings in pots as we visualize in-ground Trillium growing beds.  One of the new projects for 2010  We're not giving up on the idea of a new greenhouse either as we want to avoid whatever the Trillium disaster of next winter might be.  This really is farming.