DAILY NOTES FOR THE FARM AND GARDEN

1st: The season of Deep Winter begins today. This season has six significant cold waves, and it lasts from the 1st through the 25th of January. Average temperatures in this season are the lowest of the year everywhere in North America.

2nd: Skunk cabbage is up in the swamps, the tallest spears about three inches but not blooming. New mint is common and water cress bright in the sloughs. Some dock, chickweed and catchweed are growing back in sheltered microclimates. Coralberries and black privet berries are till holding. The hulls of last June’s sweet rockets and August’s wild cucumbers are empty, brittle and delicate like shed snakeskin. The Japanese knotweed leaves hang like huge russet cocoons. Osage fruit is darkening quickly, breaking down, squashy.

3rd: From January 3rd to January 27th, night contracts by approximately one minute every 24 hours.

4th: Winter is the season of scarlet buds on the wild multiflora roses; box elder buds, tucked tightly to their green branches; privet buds, minute and black; pale, supple buds of the honeysuckle; blackberry canes with blood-red buds; the fleshy, orange buds of the buckeyes; the tight, round, silver buds of the dogwoods; the stiff, woody buds of the crab apples; the pale green buds of the lilac; the sharp thorn-like buds of the American beech; the deep purple bud clusters of the red maples.

6th: In the greenhouse, the Season of Jade Tree Bloom ends as Camellia Season flowers in the Deep South and Black Bear Hibernation Season ends in southern forests.

8th: The period between January 8th and 12th is one of the main storm windows of year. And the period between January 8th and 21st brings more below-zero temperatures to the country than any other time during January.

9th: Fox Mating Season and Coyote Mating Season take place as Owl Nesting Season develops. At bird feeders, sparrows become even louder and more voracious as Sparrow Courting Season follows the lengthening days. Farmers and gardeners take soil tests and continue winter fertilizing.

11th: The major lambing and kidding season begins as January progresses: more lambs and kids are born in the next eight weeks than in any other months. However, as the moon wanes through its third quarter, most abortions in livestock and humans are said to occur.

12th: By this time in the year, listen for the increasing frequency of titmouse song in the morning, the occasional call of a blue jay, the appearance of pileated woodpeckers at feeders, the falling of the prickly sweet gum seed balls, and an allergic response by some people to pollen from pine trees.

13th:  Spray your broad-leafed evergreens with anti-drying agents to prevent winterkill. Then take cuttings to propagate shrubs, trees, and houseplants; they should do well as the days lengthen.

14th: Sometimes the January thaw comes a week early, bringing out opossums and skunks. Sometimes cardinals begin their mating songs early at the same time, allowing the weather, instead of the sun’s position, to dictate the commencement of spring.

15th: Markers of the progress of the winter include the emergence of flies in your house (perhaps brought in on a plant last fall), the appearance of small moths on mild afternoons, crayfish hunting the swamps when the sun warms the wetlands, juncos beginning to flock in advance of their migration north, and crows starting to move up from the South.

16th: Between the middle of January through the middle of May, spring moves from New Orleans at a rate of six miles per day or one degree every four days. The seasons are variable and unpredictable, but those average rates of vernal progress hold. Whatever is lost with one cold wave is gained in a later thaw.

17th:  In the southern half of the country, snowdrops have come up, some with their pale white tips showing.

18th: In the warmest winters, fresh foliage of crocus, columbine, garlic mustard, wild onion, henbit and celandine is coming back in sheltered areas.

19th: The January Thaw period begins on the 19th and lasts through the 25th. Frost seeding typically begins at this time of the year: crops such as red clover are broadcast in the pastures, and grass seed is scattered over bare spots on the lawn. The freezing and thawing of the ground works the seeds into the ground.

20th: Throughout the South and the Border States, hellebores and Chinese witch hazels are flowering.

21st: It’s time to apply fertilizer as growth begins on woody plants in the South. Frost-seed oats and barley, too.

22nd: Yellow sow thistles blossom in the Carolinas as the first maples flower in Georgia. White clover, red clover, and dandelions are in full bloom in Florida, and the squat winter thistles are fat and thick there. And wild onions are as tall as they are in April throughout the Midwest.

23rd: Bluebirds accompany the appearance of the first snowdrop, day lily, crocus, daffodil and peony foliage.

24th: Road kills increase in the thaw throughout the North. Elderberries and azaleas start blooming along the Gulf Coast; new calves are out in the fields and turtles hatch there.

25th: Some almanacs say that the 25th of January is the traditional date for raccoons to mate. A different measure of the season: the sun approaches a declination of 19 degrees today, putting it at its mid-November noontime height, and marking more than 20 percent of the way to spring equinox.
Bedding plants and hardy vegetables are seeded throughout the country now in anticipation of tomorrow’s new moon.

26th: Today is the first day of the season of Late Winter. Late Winter contains five to six cold fronts and lasts from January 26th through February 18th. Today is also Chinese New Year: The Chinese market favors sheep and goats in the 60 to 80-pound live-weight range.

27th: The day now starts to grow at the rate of two minutes per 24 hours, and average temperatures, which have remained stable from the middle of January, climb one degree almost everywhere in the United States. Averages continue to climb at the rate of about one degree every two weeks.

28th: Cardinals and doves begin their pre-dawn songs. The first major wave of robins comes north across the Ohio River.

29th: Throughout the southern half of the nation, wild strawberry leaves appear, and fresh violet leaves on the Japanese honeysuckle venture out from the axils of their woody vines. A few red nubs of peonies have appeared.
Across the North, the foliage of the oak-leaf hydrangea has fallen in the past two weeks; Osage fruits have turned deep red-brown, and the orange berries of the winterberry vine are falling from their white capsules.

30th: Stirred by meteorological changes, yellow aconites are no longer winter rarities. Many snowdrops are also open in sheltered microclimates throughout the lower Midwest. The Groundhog Day Thaw often begins today or tomorrow and lasts until abound February 3rd.

31st: The sun's declination passes 17 degrees 31 minutes today, one quarter of the way to spring equinox, just as the final weather system of January arrives.