Early cold snap

Starting around November 10 we began experiencing below freezing weather and by the 14th there was at least two inches of hard frost in the ground. I rescued about 15 lbs of carrots although it was tough digging through the frost. 

Here is what things looked like on the 14th

By the 22nd the weather had been almost exclusively below freezing and as low as 5 degrees in the farm. The 22nd & 23rd warmed up temporarily. There was not much life left in the garden by then. 

Radishes in East strip

I pulled a couple of cover crop radishes to throw into a soup today. I'm pretty impressed with how deep these roots are, probably 16" deep. 

Kitchen Garden prep

I dug up another 10 feet of sod and dumped two loads of compost into it. Seeded to rye. Curious to see how well this works. The section seeded to daikon radishes is in the background. 

Garlic planted

I planted two rows of garlic yesterday. The East row was all good large bulbs and I used 16 of them with the cloves spaced about 8" apart.  The West row includes some second-year bulbil cloves which I am experimenting with.

This ground was plowed, disced, and dragged with the spring tooth the day before. Just prior to planting I dragged again with the cultimulcher setup with three closely spaced teeth and a deep setting to mark the rows. This worked well but the rows were not as straight as I hoped. This strip was production ground consisting of bok choi and cucurbits this season.  After planting I spread compost by hand directly on top of the two rows.

Pretty good frost this month probably six mornings so far that looked like this. 

Cover Crop Survey

Overall the daikon radishes are doing a better job of crowding out weeds. The oats are weaker and also suffer animal damage more. The peas are very spotty. I am pulling weeds in the oats and peas to help out. 

Pure radishes in the east field

Radishes with oats and peas in the west field

Wheat is up

Wheat is poking through after 6 days. The first real rain was last night, but there has been dew and moisture in the soil all along.

East field cover crop planted

Drilled in rye yesterday after composting and dragging. Rain comes this afternoon.

This is how we looked doing the final dragging of the field.  This field started in May or June with lots of buckthorn and grapevines.  After roughing things out I went in with the tractor spring tooth and planted to buckwheat.  This came up weakly and sometime in August I plowed it up with the tractor.  The plow found a lot more roots and really helped get them out, although I suspect there are many more still in.  But hopefully there are enough gone that it can be plowed with the team next year.  I worked the ground every time a weed crop came up.  The Western part of this new ground was already planted to daikon radishes, having first started with buckwheat.