New Years Day 2008

As New Years Day goes this one wasn't bad. Pleasantly cool but not so much that I felt the need for long sleeves until about dark or so. Could have been sunnier, but it wasn't gloomy or anything. The ground is still moist from the three tenths of rain we received two days ago though a day or so of sunny, dry, and breezy will soon dry that up. We're predicted for a freeze tonight - 27 degrees - but the real show will be tomorrow (Wednesday) night when the Weather Service predicts we'll sink to a chilly 16 degrees Fahrenheit. If it really happens it'll be the coldest I've seen it here since the Christmas Storm of '89 when the official low at the airport in Gainesville was 16 but my front porch thermometer said 11! Fortunately this time we won't also be dealing with a thick coating of ice and a dusting of snow too.

With an impending severe freeze on the horizon I shoved everything in containers back into the hoophouse snapping a photo or two as I was doing so. This is a Eureka lemon, one of the varieties commonly sold for grocery store fruit, with both fully mature fruit and blossom buds about to open. The greenhouse always smells heavenly when they do. Sometimes I have mature fruit, half-grown fruit, and blossoms all at the same time, but I was negligent with my fertilizing schedule back in late summer so no immature fruit this time. This one is a Key lime, also known as Mexican limes for our Left Coast readers. I couldn't get the blossoms to show up nicely but they are there if you look. As always if you click on the photo you'll be able to see a larger version. I picked the last of the mature fruit off before I thought about taking pictures, but as you can see there are immature fruit there with the blossoms. Key limes aren't as fragrant with their blossoms as the lemons, but they are still sweet if you bend a little closer. This one is NOT a thornless variety so pick the fruit at your own risk!

My Tahiti limes are putting on some nice leaf flushes, but it's hard to distinguish the new growth from the old in a photo. Even the Buddha Hand citron is beginning to blossom though I wish it would put on some new leaves first. Back before I repotted it last month I let the old media dry too much forgetting that it didn't retain moisture as well as the coconut media so it dropped a lot of leaves. I'm sure once this blossom flush is finished the new leaves will be forthcoming to support the new fruit. I'm looking forward to using the tree as a specimen on my back porch if it sets some nice fruit.

The vegetable garden is plugging along. You couldn't tell it from looking at the photo but I took seven buckets of weeds out of there over the last several days. A bit of moisture and some warmish weather and they fairly shot out of the ground. The hens in the permanent yard would get excited everytime they saw me coming with another bucket for them.

A couple of hens in the new flock on the other side of the garden fence decided they wanted to see if the grass really was greener on the other side so they flew over. Thirty two hundred square feet of winter forage wasn't enough it seems. Neither of them did any damage except to the rutabagas which they devastated. Nothing else, just the rutabagas. It's a mystery to me, but it seems they really like them. I'm not sure how much of the two rows are going to make it through. I don't think they like our erratic warm/cold/warm winter weather here. This doesn't seem to bother the turnips though as they are growing rampantly. After I took the photos I thinned the second row, the first being done a couple of weeks ago. I also thinned the carrots once again. I've never had any luck with them in the past so I tend to leave them a bit more thickly than I probably should. Both of the root vegetables are starting to swell and color up. The elephant garlic that I planted directly is getting rather large in spite of the fact that I haven't weeded their row yet. The stuff I transplanted after sprouting other places is lagging, but I attribute that to having to grow out new root systems. I think they'll catch up in due course.

The chickens are loving their winter forage. I moved more birds into the tractors so there are now thirty of them out there. This being the first time I've attempted this I can't decide if the forage is going to last through the winter or not. They may well wipe it out before the end of March. Next year I think I'll till up a patch out in the pasture for winter forage as well. Feed consumption is down about twenty percent or thereabouts, but whether I'm saving any money or not is an open question considering what I spent to grow it. I can say though that the egg yolks are staying nicely orange which is the main reason for doing this. No need for food coloring when making yellow cakes around here!

With any luck we won't take any significant freeze damage tomorrow night. I cobbled together some greenhouse insulation this afternoon using old blankets and a tarp which should allow the little heater inside to keep the temperature above freezing. The orchard trees are on their own, but I chose them all on the basis of their cold hardiness so other than some twig damage I think they'll come through OK. I did clip all of the Ponkans tonight as they are completely ripe. I may clip the remaining Satsumas and Seville oranges as well tomorrow.

Here's to staying warm!

.....Alan.