I took this photo of the Big garden in January. I forgot to get a before photo but this is pretty much what it looked like before we started on Thursday.
My general helper and I spent a wasted morning trying and failing to do errands so we came home and went out to the Big garden. The goal there was to dig parsnips.
In January it looked like most of the parsnips were still there, or at least, their tops were.
But when my general helper and I got out there on Thursday, this was all that was actually left.
There were a lot of these at the quince end of the rows: vole tunnels. They had started at that end and eaten about half the crop. I’d planned to dig it in early December before they made much damage, but it just didn’t happen.
Had plans gone right Thursday morning, my general helper and I wouldn’t have been back much before my helper friend arrived at 11:30. I’d planned to have him dig them. But we were back much earlier and my general helper wanted to dig them.
So I left it to her and started cleaning up the perennial plants and cleaning out the dead annuals. I started on the feverfew first. Behind it on the right are the horehounds. I left those as is.
The parsley had made it into January, but the -22F took it out. So I cleaned the bed out.
Next was the lacinato kale. It had also made it to January and was taken out by the deep cold. Behind it you can see a few rotten quinces on the bush.
By this time my general helper had finished digging and started washing parsnips. My helper friend arrived and saw these snowdrops had opened in the New South garden.
I had turned the water on for this faucet, making careful note that it had to be turned off again so as not to freeze.
Some of the parsnips were really enormous and some were so long she couldn’t dig them out and the root broke off.
I set my helper friend to cleaning out the comfrey bed. He said there wasn’t a big groundhog hole anymore. But I wondered if it was just hibernating and would dig out in spring…
When he finished that bed, he started cleaning out the rhubarb and horseradish. The horseradish had already started to grow. The crown is very large and we speculated on how pervasive the roots under it were…
We finished with the cleanout and parsnips around noon and went inside.
I wasn’t intending to really get the garden ready, just remove the dead foliage in case there were overwintering bugs. It will need a good going over in April before we start planting and moving the mulch.
I found this top, looking for all the world like a real parsnip in the vole area. I am always amazed when plants do this, look healthy and there’s apparently nothing supporting them.
We got 33# of parsnips from those 2 half rows the voles left. Many are far too big. It would have been better to dig when I planned in December.
She had even found a double crown root.
My general helper left at noon and my helper friend made me a stirfry for lunch before he left at 1:30. I spent some time trying to figure out where to store the parsnips as the sand box wasn’t yet useable.
I finally realized the humidity in the root cellar had remained around 80%, too high really, but it would help store the parsnips for a while. So I loaded them into the last vegetable box on the bottom shelf.
I was really exhausted by then and spent the afternoon resting. It had been pretty warm, but cloudy all day and I finally had to light fires around 2:30PM. It’s to rain all night and all day on Friday, so we didn’t get the garden work done any too soon.
Both my general helper and my helper friend will be back at 8AM on Friday morning. I plan to start the cleaning of the house, which usually happens all winter, but has not yet started.
We’ll be working in the small upstairs bedroom, vacuuming walls and ceiling, cleaning and turning the mattress on the bed, and dusting and polishing and washing everything else. The books are taken out of the shelves and each is vacuumed before being put back onto the newly dusted and polished shelves.
There’s a small cedar closet for that room and I hope to hoe it out so it can be used. It’s packed with stuff right now. When my helper friend leaves at 11, my general helper and I will again attempt to get the errands done that we started on Thursday.