ページ

Dec 23, 2011

Germination in a cold day

 As the X'mas is coming, the temperature is getting colder and colder down to about 5 degrees C (40 degrees F) in Osaka. I seeded pak-choys and spinach 2 weeks ago covering them with vinyl tunnels to keep the air inside warmer. Today I thinned out pak-choys sprouts and found the spinach germinated.

 Choosing sprouts to be thinned out is still a little bit heart-breaking to me because I always wish all of sprouts to be grown and harvested. But I have to do it for pursuing bigger vegetables in a limited space.


 The growth of spinach is usually slower than pak-choi and other leaf vegetables and I'm very happy to find some spinach has germinated. It has been very cold in my town and I wondered when they could germinate.

2 comments:

Mark Willis said...

It's good to hear about gardeners like you who are not put off by the cold weather, but are determined to grow SOMETHING during the Winter.
Do you have time off work for Christmas? I am not working for the next 10 days, so I have started looking through my seed catalogues, trying to decide what to grow next year.

takaeko said...

>Mark
Well, growing vegetables in winter is sometimes challenging to me and this winter is colder than usual and maybe a sever condition to my vegetables.
But I believe vegetables which can survive through the cold weather must be delicious!

I know westerners usually take a long Christmas holiday and in my case I took 4-day holidays,including a national holiday (the birthday of the Emperor of Japan).
We, Japanese, take "the New Year holiday" starting from 31th/Dec to 3rd/Jan. My family will spend the holiday with my mother in her house eating mochi (rice cakes) and drinking Sake.

I wish you and your family a merry Christmas and a happy new year!