by A.J. Coltrane
We had set up the EarthBoxes with winter greens under the deck.
Unfortunately, the planting happened really late in the year, then we were blasted by 20 degree temperatures at night.
Stuff was recovering somewhat, but it’s all basically stalled. As it turns out, that location seems to receive too little sunlight. The back of the house faces vaguely northwest, when combined with the lower angle of the sun and shortened days there’s not enough sunlight for the plants to do better than break-even at best.
The front of the house faces a little bit to the southeast. The morning sun means that the containers in the front are doing this:
That’s mostly Mache, with some iffy-looking Romaine in the middle and small Cilantro plants in the back.
They’re doing tons better, so we moved the four best (most salvageable) EarthBoxes to the front yard for more sun goodness:
The remaining boxes under the deck have been rolled out to a more open location on the back patio. We’ll see how it all shakes out. Right now I’m thinking that the struggling boxes in the back yard will get interplanted with fast-growing cool-weather greens and vegetables in late February or early March. We’ll let the front-yard boxes go until it’s tomato season again.
I don’t think it could have gone a whole lot worse during our first real season of winter gardening, but we’re still getting something. Hopefully it’s up, up, and away from here.
The plant mix definitely needs some work. More on that later.
FlatbreadGarden 