When the Weather Outside is Frightful...
We busily plan for the next growing season to be more delightful!
by Tony Minnick
Oftentimes, friends of CCUA’s Urban Farm are perplexed in pondering, “What might farmers possibly have going on to fill their winter work weeks when the weather’s oh-so cold and the soil’s oh-so frozen solid?” To which I’ve often got a lot of answers to respond with, even if they’re relayed from the toasty, temperature-controlled confines of a farmer’s winter office. While the occasional opportunities present themselves to vacation, to spend more time with family and friends, and to throw on the ice skates for a little, all-too-rare Stephens Lake Park session, these winter weeks are more so filled with seed spreadsheet creation than surfing! We’re busily hunkered down, and we’re organizing, tidying, fixing the broken, and meeting together in discussion of this season’s successes and our next season’s expected improvements - and it’s fun!
Winter presented itself with killing frosts in the transition from October to November this fall, marking the end of annual plants’ cycles and the beginning of downtime dormancy for perennials (it becomes a great time to prune them!). Zinnias and marigolds could be seen shriveling to all but seeds, while perennial blackberries and asparagus browned out above ground, sending their shoot energies back down to become root energies. Annual-plant survivors include only the few, most-hardy veggies. At the Urban Farm these are Winter Bloomsdale Spinach and Evergreen Hardy White Green Onions. True to their titles, these tough cookies are planted as transplants each fall, ideally by mid-September, and overwinter through the sleet and snow with minimal season extension support to become our first harvests of spring. They offer welcome mid-Winter relief from office work and screen-staring, with the need for occasional weeding and the maintenance of floating row covers we use for added warmth and protection.
With the verdant abundance of summer growth comes a never-ending list of laborious tasks in maintaining vegetables’ health and beauty, and there’s much less time to get into the nitty gritty planning of crop rotations, seed and transplant quantities, harvest dates, and delivery dates. It is in taking caring of these tasks that we replace the winter doldrums with winter productivity. What crop varieties proved most successful last season? And in which succession of crops per grow space did we see highest yields, least pests, quickest crops to harvest? As urban gardeners, limited space meets limited time as the greatest barriers to producing more food for our homes and communities. We have to make most use of every square foot of green space we’ve got. We plan seeding and transplants dates with efficiency in mind, so that as soon as one full bed of lettuces is harvested, the tomatoes or peppers are ready and waiting to replace them. Whether you’re under the fluorescent tubes of a farmer’s winter office or under the covers reading by cell phone light, the colored pages of seed catalogs, rich in detail and the makings of any gardener’s dreams, are welcome reads in making this winter plan a summer reality.
Additionally, we take time to address the maintenance and tidying of our spaces and equipment. Dust the cobwebs and wipe down the germination tables. Time to put a little TLC into that dysfunctional lawnmower. And sharpen those hoes, harvest knives, and pruners! And organize those sheds so your garden help can actually find the right tool for the job! And...whoops… forgot about that mouse trap there... And wow I’ve been looking for this ratchet piece for four months…
You get the picture. Maybe in greater detail than you desired.
Trees are bare now. And farms and gardens seem most restful. As busy as our routines can stay, anytime and all the time, it’s worthwhile to take a cue from nature in this season. Relax and listen. Sleep a little more. Live in your long underwear.
In our office, we take this time to gather for more meetings than ever, to touch base between our diverse projects and to put details to dreams for the upcoming year. We connect in these chilly times to strengthen our relationships and build systems of communication that we’ll depend on during the frenzy of plantings and weedings and harvests and potlucks in future warmth! Days are short this time of year, and they’re also numbered. Before buds break and weeds shoot forth, there’s plenty to do (and not do) to make the most of them!