Our January Garden

This is coming about a week late as we have now entered a cold snap. A rather frigid one at that. We wanted to post some pictures of what our garden looked like at the first part of January and give a little description. This is the first winter season we have employed this method and we are fairly impressed with the results thus far. We garden with raised beds (I got tired of trying to till this land really fast) made of concrete blocks. Each garden is approximately 100 square feet. Here is a picture of what they look like. This picture was taken on a warm day, January 5, the girls are picking out the weeds and grass to give to our Dexter bull for a treat.

We used black, flexible pvc pipe 1" in diameter. This fits nicely into 1 1/4" shedule 80 pvc pipe cemented into the various hole in the blocks. They are set about evey four feet. The black pipe then just hoops over to the other side. We used just regular plastic bought at the building supply for the cover. It is not greenhouse plastic, nor is it uv rated. This is the first full winter it is being used. We did use it in early spring and had wonderful results. We may add another layer which will increase our growing season even more. We don't have a magic formula for the soil other than lots of organic matter and rabbit manure and compost. The soil is a definate work in progress. Here is another picture. We are growing cool season crops such as cabbage, broccoli and various varieties of lettuce. The broccoli and cabbage have not produced any heads as yet, but, you can see, that things are pretty green. We have been enjoying fresh garden salads all winter. Yummy! Raised beds are th only way to go as far as we are concernded. We have other beds that we plan to put a hoop house over and plans are in the works to build even more. We like this style of gardening because the soil can be manipulated and controlled much easier, weeding is quicker and easier and the moisture in the soil seems to remain longer with less nutrient leaching.