This Month in My Garden - December

The weather outside isn't doing too much to lure me out of my cozy home! Right now I'd rather be inside sipping a hot cup of tea and baking cookies then digging in the dirt, especially since we've been struck by the coughs and colds around here. For a few days this week, I didn't feel like doing anything that wasn't absolutely vital to our family's survival!

I did go out today and pick some lettuce out of the cold frame. I've been thrilled to have fresh home grown lettuce, even now, in December! Since this is the first year I've planted lettuce in a cold frame, I didn't know what to expect. Is it too much to hope that it will continue until Christmas?

My only gardening goal this month is to cover the strawberry plants with a mulch of straw. We like to wait until the weather gets good and cold in December to mulch the berries. Mulch too soon and the mice may move into the straw for a warm winter home and spend the winter feasting on the strawberry plants. By now, hopefully all the varmints have already found their winter quarters.

The only other project I could tackle this month is cleaning out the garden shed, which was on last month's list. But I'm guessing it will wait until spring!

So this concludes the month by month look at my garden tasks. I began in January as a way to force myself to look ahead at what I wanted to accomplish in the month. I don't know if it has been helpful to anyone else, but just the effort of posting it here, gave me the incentive to accomplish much more in my garden then I normally do. Plus I didn't forget half as much. Not that I ever finished everything on my list for the month. I am usually good at aiming high since if I aim low, I don't accomplish anything at all. Thanks for giving me some accountability.

Now I'm trying to think of another monthly series begin in January that would have the same effect. In other words, something that I want to do, but never quite get to it, that if I had the incentive of posting here, would see that it got done. But, on the other hand, I don't want to pressure myself in starting some grand plans that I can't keep up with! Any ideas?