What's Growing in The Garden?

Welcome to the first of a series of occasional posts on what is growing in my garden. Most people know what you might find in the garden in July (but that won't stop me from showing you!), but what about February?



I get plant lust for the spring and summer bloomers and veggies like most do (and all the stores focus on as well), and only recently have challenged myself to expand into fall and winter. Confession: I am a fair-weather gardener - really, I just can't stand to be cold and wet. So by expand, I mean plant things in the nice weather that will grow or bloom in the fall and/or winter. Have you noticed yet that I like things easy? :-)


So, here's what I found when I looked around before dinner:


Spinach looking OK for being planted last September and having absolutely no protection or care for the last 5 months! We have relatively mild winters here, but we've had a snow spell and a week and a half of lows in the teens and it survived and even started growing again. I picked enough for our salad tonight- it wasn't the most tender we've had, but it was fine in a salad with dressing.
Then we have leeks. I'm not a huge fan of leeks (just something about the flavor put me off of them when I grew them a number of years ago) - and I grew only about 30 plants this year as a test looking for more easy winter veggies. I'll probably grow them again because they are easy to fit in (see how I squeezed them around the edge of a raised bed?) and I've been using them in soups and have found they are fine that way.

I walked around to the front of the house to see what was blooming in the entry garden. Since it's what everyone sees no matter the time of year, I've been trying to bring more winter bloomers into this area. This is the Hellebore (Christmas Rose) that my friend, Julie, gave me last year. It took me awhile to get it planted and it got pretty wilty at one point, so I wondered how it would do - and it's beautiful! Oh to have something like this greet you on your way to the door on a dreary winter's day - joy! Plant these, please, somewhere you will appreciate them.

This is a reliable winter bloomer - a pink Heather (notice the leaves not picked up from the Fall and the weeds? I'm not kidding when I said I was a fair-weather gardener - just keeping it real here!). The thing I like about these is they are inexpensive, bloom when others don't, and are a tidy evergreen the rest of the year.

And lastly, the first crocus that fought it's way up through the leaves that were never raked. I've really got to get to that...it's suppose to get close to 60 degrees on Friday, so maybe I've no more excuses. Or maybe not.


Jami