Vicarious Gardening in January

Although I'm truly not ready for spring yet, nor am I the least bit eager to start seedlings in the house, I do have a garden related project that needs to be done.

What I am wanting to do may be dry as dust of little interest to anyone else, but it is time for me to finally pull my notes together from the 2013 gardening season for my own records.

So here goes the first of a couple of posts regarding last year's garden and the harvests from same.

Let's start with the onions.  I don't have much trouble growing onions and last year, as usual, gave me a good crop of both yellow and red.  I have them in an area of the basement that has been staying between 45° and 50° this winter.  Forty-five might be on the low side for optimal storage for onions, but so far, so good.  I find perhaps one soft onion in each bag.  I still have four of these containers full of onions.

Rhonda over at Glory Farm sent me some wonderful garlic in the fall of 2012 which I planted.  Those cloves developed into some of the biggest bulbs I've ever seen.  I probably wasn't too smart in that I used every last one of them and didn't save any for planting.  Yep, not the brightest move.

Down in the root cellar (where the lighting leaves a bit to the desired so the following pictures are kind of hit and miss), the remaining cabbages aren't very pretty.  But on the other hand, this is the longest we've been able to keep heads of cabbage and have them usable.  If I peel off a couple of outer leaves, they're still sound and flavorful.  These few are all we have left.  I wish I had planted more, especially the red.  They never seem as bothered as the green ones by insects in the garden, and I really like having a purple vegetable on our plates.  (How often do you see that?)

We have carrots in this over-sized pail covered with a damp towel and they look great.

Also some in plastic bags with holes poked in the bags for a little ventilation.  I think the ones in the pail are keeping much better.   I purposely didn't plant as many carrots this year as I usually do.  The total harvest came in at 21-1/2 pounds and I think we're going to make it well into spring with the ones we still have left.

The beets are in a couple of 5-gallon pails each covered with a damp towel.  I never got around to processing a bunch for the freezer, but I still might do that because when wanting to serve beets as a veggie, they sure are a lot more convenient right from the freezer.  I didn't use any beets to make pickled beets either because the last time I did, I got way carried away (what was I thinking?) and we still have enough for 10-12 years.  Or more.  The beets are keeping exceptionally well.  In sorting through them, we found only a few small ones that were beginning to feel a little soft.  Those went to the chickens.

The remainder of the turnips in the root cellar are not doing well.  These few are all we have there, but I do have a bagful in the spare refrigerator . . . which aren't faring any better.  Don't know if I'll even plant turnips next year.  Well, maybe just a short row for eating fresh.  I do like them for crunch in summer salads or on a tray with dip.  If I do plant some, I must remember that the green tops grow huge and over-power anything within 5 feet of them.  (Not quite, but almost.)  Also, I know they are best harvested and eaten at 2-3" in diameter, and I let most of them get too big this past year.

Our potato harvest was fantastic last season, and we couldn't ask for more flavorful potatoes.  Solid, hard and crisp.  They're in the root cellar, some in 5-gallon pails covered with a damp towel, some in a big cardboard box covered with a damp towel and some in burlap bags.  So far, they all still look really good.

This covers vegetables in the basement and root cellar so I'll end here for this post.