Brrr Brrr Brrr

Looking out the window these days, I'm not inspired to go out to my garden and check on it.  Since a few days after Thanksgiving, we've been having freezing temps at night, and the last few days, even in the day.

I did take some vegetable waste out to the compost pile a couple of days ago and had a quick look as I passed by.  The tatsoi, arugula, celery and cabbages were still looking good.  Perhaps I should take a look now that we've also had freezing day-time temperatures.  (Looks out the window.) No.  Not today.

What amazed me was that the Black Pearl ornamental pepper I have - in a pot, no less - was also looking good until just a couple of days ago, even though it had gone through several freezing nights and not-all-that-warm days.  I took this picture two days ago.

After the last couple of below freezing days, though, it has finally given up the ghost.  I would, too, if I had to stay outdoors.

I brought a potted lavender into the cellar, where it will have to do the best it can with the amount of light it gets (not much), as well as a potted creeping phlox.  I've got several pots of coleus and some rose cuttings under lights in the cellar taking up what will be valuable space in a couple of months when I want to start garden seeds indoors.  I may be forced to create a cold frame outdoors to transfer them to.  I won't cross that bridge till I come to it, though, because there's no guarantee any potted plants I have in the cellar will be worth saving by spring.

I did actually have some seedlings under lights as well.  I had five or six small pots of rhubarb and about eight small pots of Black Pearl seedlings.  I say "had" because now I only have three of the rhubarb seedlings.  In a matter of two days, somebody ate all the other seedlings off to the soil line.   There wasn't a speck of evidence that anything had been there at all.  I covered the last three rhubarb babies with inverted plastic cups, and so far, so good.

I don't know who did it.  I suppose it could have been crickets, as I see them from time to time, but I don't see signs of them eating on anything other than those seedlings.  Perhaps it was a mouse?  I haven't seen any other signs of mice, either, but they usually do come in when it gets cold.

Wondering if mice eat plants, I Googled, and I'm sorry I did.

I did not want to know that.

The seedling loss is not a disaster as I have more seeds of both the pepper and the rhubarb, but until I know what's eating them and figure out how to stop it, it doesn't seem smart to plant more. This is going to be much more important in a couple of months.  So, I'm procrastinating.  (And secretly hoping whatever it is will go away.)

The rhubarb I'm trying to get going are two red varieties,  'Cherry Red' and 'Holstein'.  I had to find a seed source for them (Downright Natural) because I can't find anyone around here offering any plants other than 'Victoria'. The small plants I got from a nursery a couple of years ago were 'Victoria', which at the time I thought was a red variety.  I was wrong.  However, at the end of November, I picked the last of this year's rhubarb, and the stems were actually a light red, with apple green insides.  Quite pretty.

Perhaps it's the cooler weather that turns them red.  A couple of websites I read said the red color is a product of higher soil pH.  I'm having a hard time believing that is entirely the issue when my plants were green all year long and then turned red in late November after having nothing done to change the soil pH.  (I remove old stems whose leaves are turning yellow, so it's not them contributing to anything.)  At any rate, here's a picture of my final harvest:

Compare that to earlier harvests.  (Sorry, no pictures other than this pie.  The red in there is cranberries.) The green inside of the stems isn't even the same color.  It's more of a celery green than apple green.

I won't be able to harvest any of the red this year, because you need to wait at least a couple of years so the seedlings will get well established and put their energy into the root system to create a healthy plant.  My mother has some red rhubarb plants that are at least four years old (we don't know where she got them), but since she has been harvesting them too early and too often, the stems never get bigger around than my little finger, and often not much longer.  I harvested enough stems from my two three-year-old 'Victoria' plants this year to make enough for ten or eleven pies (4-5 cups per pie), with the stems being at least as big around as my thumb, and many of them over a foot long.  The red varieties may not have the same vigorous growth as 'Victoria' - I don't know - but I don't think there should be that much difference.  I dug up two of her red ones in the spring this year and replanted them with mine.  I didn't harvest from them, so we'll see what happens.

A couple of days ago, I received this year's Baker Creek Seeds catalog. They offer a free one if you're interested, and it's a nice big (150 pages) color catalog chock full of information and sometimes even recipes.

I went through the catalog to pick out things I want for next year, including this vegetable I had never heard of: Celtuce.

I'll have to learn how to use it.  Or maybe just give it to Liz, the wonderful chef at Catalpa in Arrow Rock.  She's a magician with food.

I have a feeling I'm going to end up with more things than I have room for.  I usually do.

'Til it warms up,
Happy Holidays!