1st True Leaves And The Extreme Garden 2-13-2024

Extreme gardening after the snow. I was asked by a viewer, where do the plants get the light to grow if you got them covered up? Well, let's take a look. Can you believe it snowed in winter? That's why we do it. We're going to save everything. This does look white, but it's actually called clear and it does let some of the light come through. In extreme gardening, it's a matter of covering and uncovering it. Right now, it is so beautiful out. It's time to uncover. We didn't uncover yesterday because it didn't get up above more than 40 degrees. It froze hard last night. And then right now we're in the 50s. So let's go ahead and uncover. Extreme gardening, winter sowing. Can you believe it? We got our first true leaves. Take a look. And even with that heavy, wet snow, we were able to pull this We've got true leaves. We've got the first true leaves coming up. This is why we do it. Our purple lettuce is doing just fine. But whatever cold frame you're going to use, you really do need to open it up once it gets over 40 degrees. You'll be amazed at how quickly this warms up. And it only takes a couple minutes. I think we'd have more spinach if Riley would quit walking on it. This is why we do it. Garlic definitely has had his cold time. We ought to have a nice little patch here. You can do this too. It really doesn't take a lot of effort. Obviously here in February, I do expect several more days of cold weather. So even though I want to get out here and plant, I'm still going to just kind of bide my time a little bit. Although we have some seedlings that we can go ahead and up-pot. Come on, let's take a look at what we got. Some of these giant cabbages are reaching for the sun. That's what happens when you have that real warm day next to the real cold day, even with the intense light. We've got true leaves coming on, but we're going to go ahead and fix some of this legginess. We're going to up-pot these a little bit. It's turning out to be a beautiful day and it's going to be this way for the next couple days. I'm itching to plant. We've got a little bit of cold coming, so I got to hold off. But there's always something you can do. We saw these earlier today. They had the day out there with the sun and the wind. So I think we're going to go ahead and up-pot some of these bigger ones right here in the center. They're just about ready to put on their true leaves and there's two of them in each one. I was going to do this anyhow, just like everything else. We're just going to gently remove them out of their cell. Basically what I'm doing is I'm giving it a little push from the bottom, but I'm also using the pencil to help remove that whole clump. As we break it apart down low, evidently those seeds are right next to each other. You really don't want to squeeze these stems. Just kind of work that soil loose. Sort of tease them apart. Just gently tease them apart. You see how nice and long those roots are. Like I said, we've got a little soil down in here. Make sure that's firm at the bottom. Just get those roots down there to touch the bottom. Gently add some soil in around. Once you get it all the way around, then you can snug it in a little bit. You can add a little more, snug it in a little bit, add a little more. We've still left plenty of room to add a little more soil if we need to. In this operation, a chopstick or pencil works really good. You're going to want to tease those roots apart very, very gently. Be very careful around the stem at this point. You don't want to crush that stem. You just gently snug that in. If they're leaning a little bit, this is a perfect time to stand them up. I like these plastic cups. They work really well and if you keep them out of the sun in the summer, they'll last a couple years. We've got some happy little cabbages. Sometimes they're just in enough solo cups. It's going to get dark before I get any more. That's good because it gives us something to do tomorrow. Look at what we got growing over here. Now I did space these giant cabbages out, but if they get to 76 pounds, that's still too close. And the Japanese cabbage back here, I didn't space those out very well at all. But the beets are looking fine. All in all, I think we're making it through the winter pretty well. And you don't need to be an extreme gardener to be a gardener. I'm just showing you what's possible and I'm having fun. But if you want to start a garden, right now is a good time to start thinking about it. What kind of garden would suit your needs? What kind of area do you have? How much sun are you going to have? All of these things you can start thinking about right now and start planning. And if you wanted to go deep mulch, now's a good time to start gathering your material. Get it laid in now and in a couple months you'll be ready to plant. And if I can do this, you can do this. And until next time, remember, take care of yourself, take care of your family, and God bless you. Come on, let's plant. Let's go plant garden!