It was 72 degrees today, so I certainly hope you all planted gorgeous Winter gardens full of kale, collards, lettuce, spinach, radishes, onions, garlic, shallots, and my favorite bok choy! The days are very short right now as the sun just dipped behind the mountains at 4 pm, but in just a few days, the days will begin to lengthen, and you will be amazed that within a few weeks, you will see your plants responding to the day length. When choosing varieties to plant, not only should you look for temperature tolerances, but also the amount of day length a plant requires. The fancy word for this is photoperiodism. This is how a plant responds to light and dark cycles. Plants are categorized into short-day, long-day or day-neutral, and this is the reason that your bulb flowers, and other plants are leafing out and emerging during these beautiful unseasonably warm days because the day length is mimicking the early days of Spring and so are the temperatures thus my grapes are trying to leaf out, the daffodils are emerging, and I even had an iris bloom!
At Moonstruck Farms, I am finishing up my final holiday events, signaling it’s time to get to work on the long to-do list for the Spring season, which is only a few short months away. The anemones and ranunculus are in the garage, sprouting in trays of organic soil so that I may plant them in the coming weeks for an early Spring bloom. I am concerned that my daffodils and maybe even tulips will emerge soon, disrupting their bloom patterns. I am praying for some nice cold weather to enter the forecast. We also need these cooler temperatures to provide the proper amount of chill hours for our fruit trees. I will be filling the final retaining beds out front with 100s of more tulips in addition to seeding a wide variety of hardy annuals to fill the flower beds, including more calendula, snapdragons, stock, larkspur, delphinium, and violas.
At the Phelan Certified Farmers Market, we had a banner year, with the parking lot and the community center filled with vendors for most of the year! We could not do this without an amazing customer base and the tremendous support of the Phelan Pinon Hills Community Services District. The Phelan Certified Farmers Market reopens on Monday, January 5, 2026, 2 pm to 5 pm, inside and outside the Phelan Community Center, where we accept EBT and are an honored Market Match partner, gifting up to $15 in free farm fresh produce each Monday to EBT customers utilizing their benefits at market. The Wrightwood Certified Farmers Market has vendors, bakers, and more inside the Wrightwood Community Center, and food trucks in the parking lot each Friday, 3 pm to 6 pm, and accepts EBT. Please see the management at the Wrightwood Community Center to process your card for tokens. The Wrightwood Certified Farmers Market returns from the holidays on Friday, January 2, 2026.
