Last week, I thought the overwintered cauliflower wouldn’t be ready for a month. However, I looked closer this week, and lo and behold, we’ll harvest purple cauliflower within the next two weeks!

The sunny days this week, the final week of February, spurred the daffodils to start blooming. We can typically expect a dry week sometime in February; every time, it’s a gift to enjoy.

If you know where to look, there are signs of spring. Only the most hardy plants dare to start re-growing this early in the season.

As you can tell, the garden was snowy! The first, and maybe the only, snowfall of the season blanketed the area on Thursday, leading into Friday. The purple-sprouting broccoli should be just fine.

Last month, we changed our propagation area by switching our soil heating cables to heat propagation mats. The result is the micro-greens are flourishing. We have a good selection and have added beets and chard seeding to increase variety.

We had 17 days without recorded precipitation. Days were sunny and above freezing, and each night dropped below freezing.

The overwintered broccoli should be ready sometime in late February/early March. We have four different varieties with a succession of maturity dates. They persevere through rain, snow, sleet, ice, and freezing temperatures to produce.

Sunrise comes late this time of year. On the shortest day, Saturday, December 21st, the sunrise was at 7:49 a.m. and sunset at 4:33 p.m., 8 hours and 43 minutes! The good news is that we are now in a period of increasing day length. Before long, the plants will notice and increase growth.

To ease us into December, we finally received the season’s first freeze. Fortunately, it wasn’t brutal since the daytime temperatures were above freezing. We are prepared and have the garden ready for winter.

We are excited about the upcoming Thanksgiving dinner, as several dishes will feature vegetables from the garden. We delivered a boatload of butternut squash for the soup and still have more in storage!