Some of the new things I’m trying this year include:

• Paris Market Carrots. I love sweet young carrots from the garden. So do the voles. This year, as part of my vole and rabbit foiling program (that’s another whole story), I’m going to try growing carrots in containers. Paris Market is a stubby, roundish variety supposedly suitable for container growing. We’ll see.
• Nyagous tomato from Totally Tomatoes. This is a dark brownish tomato (have you seen the Kumatos in the “Whole Paycheck” market?), which in the words of the catalog have “excellent texture, are firm and blemish free, prolific, and full flavored.” How can I go wrong?
• Witloof chicory. I’ve grown this in the past and had good experience in forcing the “Belgian Endive” chicons in the fall. It’s a little bit of extra effort (which is why I haven’t done it for several years), but time to try it again. And they are quite good!
• Romano Italian pole beans. This is another “old” variety that I’ve grown before, and will reprise in 2012. It’s usually loaded, and they’re stringless with a great flavor. I can’t keep the bush varieties away from the rabbits, so pole beans are the way to go. They also produce a lot in a small space.

• Water Garden. This is a Christmas gift for Ellen. We had a small pond at our previous home, with gold fish, various water plants, and hideously loud bullfrogs. I’m not sure what form this water garden will take yet; we’re still ruminating about it. But I’ve picked out a likely spot
• Add to the walkway. I have some bags of quikrete leftover from last year’s walkway project, so this year I’m going to extend a narrower walkway from the greenhouse to the main walk. It’s probably no more than 25 feet, but heavily trafficked.
• Build a large raised bed with a protective critter-proof cover. The project will be a simple wooden raised bed, with the addition of a light A-frame cover, that will be clad with  plastic fencing material. The bottom of the raised bed will be protected from voles by hardware cloth covering the bottom. It will be used primarily for root crops like carrots and beets, lettuce, parsley, and such. Let’s see if the rabbits, voles, and squirrels can breech it!

Build a greenhouse. This has been a “life long” yearning, and this year it got done. It’s basically an 8 x 12 shed frame clad with polycarbonate panels. Nothing fancy, but it helps overwinter some plants that are not reliably hardy in Zone 7, and gets me off to an earlier start with seed starting for vegetable and bedding plants. I organize a Spring Plant Sale for our church, and the greenhouse is home to much of the “stock”.

Building a garden walk. The walkway was a Christmas gift for Ellen. Our walk had been a series of 18″ square “pavers” laid on top of the “lawn” between our driveway and the front porch. It was, to put it mildly, hideous. We replaced it with a concrete walkway using a Quikrete Walkway mold. It was easy (but hard work), and turned out very nicely.

Building a composter. Some of you may remember Jim Crockett, author of Crockett’s Victory Garden in the early 70′s. He had a plan for a composter he called the “Cadillac of Composters”, holding about 3 cubic yards of material. I completed it in the Fall, and it’s working nicely. The front has removable slats that make it easy to turn the pile, and to transfer the materials from the starter bin to the partially composted bin in the center, to the finished compost bin.

What's Left of a Knock Out Rose

Last night we had a deer attack. They took out some winter broccoli that had just started heading, some escarole, parsley, garlic chives, and pansies. The pitiful plant in the picture used to be a Knockout Rose (at least I don’t need to prune it back in March). Knock Out’s are the 3rd most over-planted shrub/tree in our area after Crepe Myrtles and Leyland Cyress, but this one was actually pretty nice… and it’s the second time in the last year it’s been given a severe haircut. They also neatly trimmed a pretty variegated Wiegela, and a young Trifoliate Orange! Basically, anything not protected with a cage or fence is fair game. This why our daylilies are in an area fenced off by a 7 1/2 foot barrier.

The greenhouse is heated by a portable electric space heater controlled by a thermostat that turns the heat on at 40 degrees.  The polycarbonate panels  are single walled, so I’ve been adding plastic sheeting to the inside walls to provide a second “skin”. I’ also have two trash cans filled with water, along with numerous other containers filled with water to provide thermal mass and residual heat. So far, the heater has been keeping the temperature about 12 degrees warmer than the air temperature. This is fine until the temperature starts dipping below about 20 degrees.

Last night the temperature dipped to 18 degrees. I covered the more tender plants with row covers and blankets. Ellen suggest I turn on a shop light to supplement the heater. Voila! The greenhouse bottomed out at about 38 degrees. Not sure what I’ll do if/when it goes below 15! But clearly I need a more powerful heater, and a backup plan for a power outage…

Our garden is located in Heathsville, on Virginia’s Northern Neck. The Northern Neck is a peninsula bounded by the Potomac River on the North, and the Rappahannock River on the South. Heathsville is about 125 miles southeast of Washington, DC and 70 miles northeast of Richmond, VA. It is the county seat of Northumberland County, population about 13,000.

Our home is situated on the Great Wicomico River on about 3 acres of woodland, consisting primarily of mixed pine and hardwoods (oak, beech, maple, tulip polar, holly, ash), copious mountain laurel, winterberry, dogwoods, and other native plants, flowers, and weeds.

The critters are numerous and ravenous for both plant food, and human blood. These critters include (in no particular order of nastiness) deer, rabbits, squirrels, crows, voles, mice, ticks, spiders, and deerflies among others.

Heathsville is in USDA Zone 7. and in some years, closer to 8. The summers are uncomfortably warm and humid; the winters are fairly temperate with little snowfall. Last frost is typically around mid April; first frost is typically around early November. The garden proper, receives about 4-5 hours of reasonably direct sunlight in mid summer , making it challenging to raise most vegetables and flowering annuals.