Around the garden - warm in early December 1. Austrian winter peas germinated like WHOA. They&rs

Around the garden - warm in early December1. Austrian winter peas germinated like WHOA. They’re grown as a cover crop. In various places in the garden they’ve been stomped on and turned and disturbed… they’re surprisingly durable.2. ‘Globe’ Artichoke fresh growth. They can possibly be overwintered here in zone 6. We’ll see if any make it. IME these plants always die back to the base and then start anew. Have grown them for years but still don’t really understand them yet.3. Grafting experiment. When we planted our first grafted fruit trees last winter, we let all branches and bits that normally one would prune off - both above and below the graft line - grow wildly instead. Some of the trees looked a bit wonky, but this meant we could harvest both the root stock and scion and try propagating our own grafted fruit trees with specialty stocks. I think this example here is Colt 1 rootstock with 'Bing’ Cherry on top. This was the only photo that came out clearly, but he cut a 'V’ style graft.In the background you can see our less tasty strawberry patch (the more tasty one is elsewhere) on terraced hugelkultur beds. The blue is the handle of one our tools - we’ve finally gotten around to painting our tools crazy colors so we can find them better.4. Plants in the cold frame recovering nicely after lots of early freezing damage. We even have bugs munching on the brassicas! Lettuces that were sprinkled about are puny but still alive. The beige blobby thing just lower left of center is a large mushroom. Most of the cold frame is actually logs, just topped with soil and mulch. We have lots of mushrooms around helping to break things down. I’ve been pampering this bed by giving it water from our aquarium, and the plants have responded in kind. -- source link

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