Carrots and Onions

I was having a little garden withdrawal today so, after closing the sheep stall doors, no lambs yet, decided to visit the garden. I found pottery herb markers yesterday so placed the garlic marker today. The garlic is poking through the hay mulch. The sprouts aren't too tall. I think they will be fine even though we all know it will frost again. Bob and I planted a winter garden in August as an experiment. We wanted to see if a second planting of lettuce, carrots, and onions would be ready in time for the wedding. Also, how long would produce be available throughout the winter. The first part of the experiment worked. The lettuce mix and carrots were great. The onion was small but tasty. To check on the second half of the experiment I dug up an onion and several carrots today. They are perfect. They onion is still smaller than a spring planting but the carrots are huge. They are still sweet and not fibrous. Great fun, like finding hidden treasure. I marked my cutting garden with tall stakes today as well. The cutting garden is in the large vegetable garden. I've added perennial plants every year and plant annual seeds to fill in the holes. The garden is in full sun three quarters of the day so sunflowers, cosmos, lilies, and daisies do exceptionally well. All of these will be available, except the lilies in September. The large vegetable garden, as opposed to the herb garden, got away from me last fall . The weeds were out of control. Much to much even for Big Mama, my large rototiller. I decided to call my friend Ken. He has a new John Deere tractor complete with a monster, rear mounted rototiller. He came when he had a minute and graciously tilled under all the left over vegetation. Unfortunately, that included half of the cutting garden. That gave me a chance to rethink some of things I wanted to include in the garden. I started replacing some of the perennials last fall. We'll see what comes up in the spring! Thanks Ken! Live well, Carmen