Growth In The Greenhouse, Even In December

Urban Farming in December at Pringle Creek Community involves spending a lot of time in cold wet weather. The garden and orchards are sitting under a foot of leaf mulch and have been put to bed for the rest of the winter season. The bee hives in the orchard have been holding up to the wind and rain so far and should not show much movement until February.

Life in the greenhouses is slow growing but going! Broccoli starts planted in the beds in early fall have given us our first crop of harvestable broccoli heads. Check in with Margaret at Painter's Hall Cafe for some delicious broccoli cheese soup soon to appear on the menu.

We had a variety of hot peppers growing over the summer and I wanted to experiment overwintering the plants. They gave out another crop in September and I was able to harvest green bunch this week. They were not going to ripen with the cloudy cold weather of our winter season but will be tasty in our winter soup selections. It will be exciting to see if some of the pepper plants will survive until spring and begin giving us peppers sooner.

The greenhouse raised beds will provide the cafe with salad greens, cooking greens, leeks, onions, overwintered carrots and other root vegetables until the garden comes back to life in the spring. As we all bunker down for winter we can all reflect on the past year, enjoy good comforting food, and dream of sunshine and life renewed in 2013.

Happy Holidays to everyone and a Happy New Year!