Winter Garden

My winter garden is alive and well. It's feeding my ducks, and wild birds, as well as other insects and animals I can't see, and providing us with a handful of greens and beets.

My main focus in January is to plan the next season's garden, and take care of the nature that continues to live here. As always, I'd rather not go into the garden in the rain and the mud, but if I can be strong, get on my rain gear, and take a short daily tour of my garden, I find many simple things to do, without getting too muddy.

The best tip I've read in any permaculture blog is: Be consistent with 15-minutes a day, year round. I try to take a 15-minute walk through my garden each day, and I alternate the front and back gardens so I don't feel rushed. The consistency of the 15-minute daily visit keeps me connected to my garden even when I don't accomplish much.

Agenda:

1. Read "The Serviceberry"

2. January harvest

3. Garden plans

4. January tasks

5. Prune the Grape

1. Read "The Serviceberry":

Today I'm reading from "The Serviceberry", by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2024). I got this sweet little book for Christmas. 

She talks about the natural economy of an ecosystem; where materials cycle through, constantly changing form, from sugar to feathers, to a serviceberry seedling, and energy flows, but "gets used up in the thermodynamic inefficiency of energy transfer among beings."  Energy must be renewed by the sun, to fuel the flow.

"If the sun is the source of flow in the economy of nature, what is the 'Sun' of a human gift economy, the source that constantly replenishes the flow of gifts? Maybe it is love."

2. January Harvest:

Amy of Ten Acre Farm says, always harvest first, because the goal of all of this gardening is to harvest fresh, healthy food for your table. So, to make sure that happens, prioritize harvesting over other tasks.

This winter, I have kale, bok choy, and beets in the garden, and I plan to harvest some today.

3. Garden plans:

I am continuing the fun work of planning my garden. I've got the veggie garden roughly mapped out. My next tasks are to:

1. Order seeds and plants: Look through my seeds to see what I need and make a comprehensive list, then place an order! Also, buy new native plants and shrubs.
2. Update my planting schedule: I need to determine the date to start each thing, and put it onto my planting spreadsheet, and my calendar. Hardiness zones are shifting, and first and last frost dates are less predictable than they used to be, but we are typically in USDA zone 8b, and our last frost date is April 27th.
3. Start a new garden record book: I used to keep better records, but somewhere along the line I stopped. This is the year I'm going to keep track of garden successes and failures—dates when I notice certain pests, and when I add soil amendments, for example.

3. January tasks:

My list of garden tasks in January:

1. Continue to care for my ducks - cleaning the coop a little more often to keep it dry.
2. Continue to feed the birds, and keep the feeders clean.
3. Clean my tools and oil them (if I haven't already).
4. Prune the grape, and save the vines (see below), as well as the raspberries and thimbleberries
5. Dig up some raspberries to thin plants to 2-feet apart. 
6. Prepare the new pea bed on a dry day- Loosen the soil, spread some leaf mulch, and set up the pea tepee.
7. Mulch the west path with Hawthorn leaves.
8. Repair or replace boards around some beds.

4. Pruning the Grape:
We inherited an old concord grape vine that was planted probably when the house was built. It has survived much abuse. It died entirely back one year, but has come back as strong as ever. We love this grape for it's sweet juice.

We use a haphazard trellis pruning system, with a large number of canes. We put in a very sturdy trellis two years ago to handle the weight, and trained two sections of trunk to a high head height, about 5½ feet tall. I chose two shoots on each trunk to be the arms or cordons - the permanent parts of the vine, running south. These are fanned out and loosely tied to the trellis (this is important because it's hard to remember which are the permanent vines otherwise!)

Now it's time to prune, before the new growth starts. When maintenance pruning, remember that grapes grow from the buds formed on the previous summer’s stems, so don’t remove all the stems or you won’t get any fruit. We "cane prune" because I think our grapes produce better that way...

To cane prune: 

1. Select four canes to be this year's fruiting canes, and 4 to be "renewal" canes. 
2. Cut new fruit canes back to 15-20 buds each (60-80 buds total).
3. Cut the other 4 renewal canes back to two-bud spurs. Mark these with tape. These "renewal spurs" will produce the fruiting canes for the following year and thus maintain fruiting close to the trunk. 
4. The following year, reverse the pruning by cutting the spurs, which will have grown into long stems, back to 15-20 buds to make a cane. Then prune the previous year’s canes back to two-bud spurs. Alternate the pruning on these spurs and canes each year.
5. Remove all other growth.