Garden Snapshot: Winter

A taste of spring: I got my first harvest of the New Year today. Planted in August, these greens have been quietly overwintering in my hoop house.

Kale, several types of bok choy, and arugula

But maybe not as quietly as I would have liked… in December the voles found their way into the garden again. One tiny crack had appeared in the steel mesh lining the base of my garden fence, maybe the width of a finger and completely hidden by a snow drift. This, apparently, was all the invitation the voles needed: at least eight of them managed to find their way in.

Luckily, they mostly targeted the carrot tops and lettuce, leaving everything else more or less alone. But it took a few weeks post vole removal for me to decide I wanted the greens enough to harvest around the remnant vole runs.

Although it doesn’t keep the rodents out, the ‘wiggle wire’ that I installed in the fall is keeping the plastic cover tight over my hoop house, standing up to extreme winds.

A rather muddy picture of my ‘wiggle wire’, which has done a great job of keeping the plastic on my hoop house this winter.

 

I’ll be starting tomatoes from seed in a few weeks. Although this winter has been scarily warm so far, I’m definitely looking forward to spring.

My fence is good at keeping some larger mammals out of the garden. (I took this picture in August).