[svalli]

Rather than starting new thread, I am hijacking this old one. Yesterday was finally sunny day, so we took the day off from work and drove to our hobby farm. There was already thin layer of snow on the ground, but it is supposed to get warmer, so that snow will be gone in couple of days. My farther-in-law had raked leaves on his yard, so we loaded all the leaves on an old tractor trailer and moved it to next to my garlic beds. Now I have thick layer of leaves on the beds for winter protection. I will remove those in April, when the sun is shining from higher and will warm the black plastic, which is used to suppress weeds during summer.
I am hoping that high winds will not blow off those leaves. The leaves were quite wet and heavy, so light wind will not move them, but a storm could easily blow them away. Last year, I covered the leaves with light weight row cover, but it broke to pieces when I was removing it spring time and the edges were still attached to frozen ground. This year the garlic bed is in a different spot, where the winds cannot blow as hard, so I decided not to cover the leaves with anything. If the top leaves stay frozen, those should keep the leaves on place, even if we do not get a lot of snow this winter.

Sari