As you can see, I’ve got LOTS of lettuce and greens growing right now! I’ve got a wide variety of lettuce, spinach, rapini, Bok Choy, Swiss chard, kale, and other greens, as well as peas.
I’ve also got quite a few onions and broccoli plants that overwintered quite nicely. The broccoli and peas were direct seeded in bottomless pots sunk a few inches in the ground and filled with a rich soil and compost mix. During the winter I surrounded them with glass jugs of water to help keep them warm. The water would warm up in the sun (as did the black pots) and then the added heat would be released at night keeping the surrounding temperature above freezing. If the temps dropped too low (30 degrees or so) I’d also cover the plants with a sheet. We got temperatures down to 23 degrees and none of the plants sustained any damage.
I also planted pots with lettuce and greens in the greenhouse. Above is my beautiful Buttercrunch lettuce.
I planted some cauliflower seedlings in large pots in the greenhouse as well. Above is a potted cauliflower, some Buttercrunch and some Trout Speckled Romaine lettuce. I started the lettuce and most of the greens in shallow plastic berry containers. When the plants were about a month old and had some nice roots I was able to easily transplant them to larger pots without disturbing the roots and causing transplant shock. Sowing the seeds in potting mix in those berry containers works so well I’m doing it with all my greens now. It seems like whenever I direct sow I lose a lot (if not all) of my seedlings to insects- particularly potato bugs. Waiting until the plants are a month or two old before I plant them in the ground seems to give them a fighting chance against the bugs.
This year I bought a bunch of unique seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds. They’ve got lots of different greens that I’ve never heard of before. Above is Aurora Mixed Orach, a bolt resistant spinach substitute. I love spinach, but I can only grow it in the winter- the minute it starts to get warm the plants want to bolt and start producing seeds. I was able to find several different spinach substitutes that can handle the heat, so hopefully I’ll have a much longer season for harvest.
Above is another new find- Chijimisai greens, which are a cross between tatsoi and komatsuna. They have four times as much vitamin A as carrots and are heat and cold tolerant. I love greens like this- highly nutritious with a long harvest season. You can get so much out of plants like these!
I started all my greens and lettuce, and a few plantings of beets in berry containers and then transplanted them into 3 gallon pots. I kept the pots in the greenhouse until the nighttime temperatures were above freezing, and then hardened the plants off for several days before leaving them out in the garden. Since they’re in pots I can move them into the shade when it starts to get warmer.
In October I started some beets (Tall Top Early Wonder) in several berry containers and transplanted them into the greenhouse when they were about a month old. I’ve been harvesting the greens for several weeks now and recently thinned them and had some nice baby beets. I replanted some of the roots from the first thinning and most of them have survived and are growing nicely. Beets are another favorite of mine. You can get so much from one plant! You can harvest the baby greens and include them in your salad- they are so sweet and tender! As the leaves get larger you can harvest them and sauté them (stems included) as you would any other green. Then of course you’ve got the beet itself- delicious roasted whole or diced and sautéed.
Above is the lettuce I started in berry containers in October. In November I transplanted it into the ground in the greenhouse and have been harvesting ever since. It’s starting to get warm now (70 degrees or so) and these plants will probably start to bolt soon since they’re in the greenhouse and the temps get to 85 or 90 degrees during the day. I may save a few plants for seed, but the rest will go to the chickens. Now my lettuce in the gardens is really looking nice, so I still have plenty for salads. Plus I just noticed some stray lettuce popping up in a few of the gardens 🙂
I feel so lucky to have been able to continue planting and growing greens and veggies all winter. There’s nothing as grounding and calming for me as being among my plants 🙂 I just love growing things and tending them throughout the growing season. And there’s nothing as delicious or nutritious as food you grow yourself!
Although the recent freeze has ended the growing season for warm weather crops I’m preparing for the Fall and Winter growing season. Here in zone 8a I’m able to grow a variety of plants right through winter, so my gardening season doesn’t end with the first freeze.
A few weeks ago I started seeds for most of the veggies I want to grow this Fall and Winter. I would normally direct seed many of these, but the potato bugs have been devouring any seeds I’ve planted lately. I figured if I got them started in containers in the greenhouse and let the plants get a bit bigger (and the weather a bit cooler) they’d stand a better chance of survival.
broccoli, spinach, and peas
broccoli and peas
This is the second (or is it third?) planting I’ve made of broccoli. Those darn potato bugs and grasshoppers didn’t give the first plantings (direct seeded in the garden) a chance! This is a second batch of spinach I started as well. I love spinach, so I’ll probably start another batch or two with in the next few weeks. The peas are doing well and I hope to be able to plant them out in the garden in another week or two.
spinach, bok choy, beets, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts
Above is my first planting of spinach along with some bok choy, which I started in berry containers. There are 4 different berry containers there, and when it comes time to transplant into the garden the whole tray of soil comes out easily without disturbing the plant’s roots. If I want to I can gently separate chunks of plants and spread them out in the garden. I also have beets, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts started in 2″ pots. So far they’re all doing well.
lettuce, beets, and tatsoi
Here you can see the berry containers better. In these I’ve got lettuce and tatsoi. I line the bottom of the containers with straw before adding the soil and it helps to keep the soil from washing out when I water. In the back I’ve got more 2″ pots with beets. I love beets too, and lately I haven’t had much luck planting the seed in the ground. Hopefully I’ll end up with a good harvest from this crop. I like to eat the beet greens too. When they’re small they’re great in a salad, and when they get bigger I like to saute them with olive oil, garlic, and onion (and beets and carrots when they’re available).
I also started seeds for Red Russian kale, rapini, New Zealand spinach, and swiss chard. I planted quite a bit of garlic in the greenhouse a few weeks ago, along with some carrots. Some of the lettuce and greens I’ve got in pots will be transplanted into the greenhouse. Lettuce and greens have always done well in the greenhouse all winter long.
butternut squash
I harvested all the butternut squash before the freeze and came away with quite a few really nice squashes. This is only about half the harvest here. These are great because they’ll store for months in the root cellar.
This Fall I’ll be filling up the garden with more plants than ever. Since I’m doing permanent, no till beds now the chickens won’t be allowed in the garden over winter and I won’t have to fence anything off. I’ll have the whole garden to play with 😉 Don’t worry about the chickens either- they’ll be getting a new run in the spring and I’ve got a few ideas for giving them access to fresh greens. And of course they get all the kitchen scraps, so they’re not missing out too much.
I do love living someplace where I can garden year round! I’ve picked some of my best salad and greens in the middle of winter. And let me tell you, nothing is more enjoyable than hanging out in the greenhouse on a cold winter day 🙂 I make sure to mulch heavily and put row covers over the outdoor plants if temps dip below freezing, but I’ve had broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, spinach, carrots, greens, lettuce, and peas survive temps as low as 25 degrees out in the garden, under row covers. Plants are just amazing!
To say it’s been a busy month would be putting it lightly. The garden is doing better than ever before and I’ve been harvesting, cooking, and preserving as fast as I can 😉 I’ve harvested more in one month than I did for the entire season last year! July is normally the start of monsoon season, but although we’ve had the heat (up to 110 degrees!!) there hasn’t been much rain at all.
In spite of the heat and lack of rain the plants have done really well. I attribute this to the thick layer of straw mulch. I generally water twice a week for the in ground plants and daily for the potted plants.
Homestead tomatoes, bell peppers, and potted basil
I started harvesting cherry tomatoes at the beginning of the month, earlier than ever before. By the end of the month I was harvesting cherry, pink, yellow, Roma, Amish paste, and my first Homestead tomatoes (and getting BIG harvests just about daily!) The potted basil (planted early in July) sprouted and grew quickly. I’ve been harvesting that to use fresh and even managed to make a few jars of pesto already.
Look at that beautiful basil!
I’ve been harvesting zucchini (Black Beauty and Grey Zucchini) just about daily. I’ve made several pans of stuffed zucchini, Zucchini chocolate cake, roast zucchini, and more. I’ve had enough to blanch and freeze, as well as shred and freeze, so I’ll have zucchini ready for recipes in the middle of winter. Same goes for the yellow squash.
So thankful for the bounty of the garden!
The green beans got off to a good start and I managed to get some good harvests during the early part of the month. I blanched and froze about 3 quarts and have made several meals with fresh beans. I like to saute some garlic in olive oil, add in the beans and cook just until tender- simple and delicious!
Beans and carrots (with a dish of NOLO bait for the grasshoppers)
The beans got off to a good start, but they’re starting to dry up now. Between the intense heat and the grasshoppers it’s not surprising that the first planting is starting to struggle. I do have beans planted in a few other spots that I started later, so hopefully they’ll start producing soon. I try to make successive plantings with all the veggies that will grow quickly, like beans, summer squash, basil, and greens.
Second planting of zucchini and cucumbers on the end
My second planting of zucchini took off quick and is starting to produce. In the picture above the cucumber plants (on the right) look really good. I managed to get about 4 cukes off the plants before they just up and died:( I’ve had a really hard time with cucumbers (but I keep trying!).
Bell peppers are coming along nicely
After a rough start this spring the peppers have started to really take off and I’ve got quite a few green peppers on the plants. I’ve never harvested red, orange, or yellow peppers before mid to late August, so I’m just trying to be patient and waiting for them to get ripe.
Cantaloupe are full of flowers!
The cantaloupe took a while to come up, and I’d almost given up on them, but they’ve really taken off lately. They’re loaded with flowers and I’m really hoping for a good harvest. Fresh cantaloupe is absolutely delicious!
Zucchini and yellow squash plants have gotten huge!
The first planting of zucchini and yellow squash have been producing like mad and I’ve only lost one plant so far. Amazingly I’ve had minimal squash bugs- a first for this garden. In years past those bugs have absolutely decimated my squash plants.
Desert Grassland Whiptail
This year I’ve got LOTS of lizards and beneficial insects in the garden though, and I really think they’re working overtime to keep the bad bugs at bay. I’ve only used Neem a few times when I spotted squash bug nymphs emerging, and then only as a spot treatment. Neem is organic and way safer than chemical pesticides, but it will still kill the good bugs along with the target insects, so I’m trying to play it safe and keep a healthy balance.
pretty little yellow squash 🙂
For the grasshoppers, which can utterly devastate the garden in no time, I put out NOLO bait, which is a targeted biological insecticide. It only affects grasshoppers and crickets, so it’s safe for the other animals and insects in the garden. I also hand pick and feed the grasshoppers to the chickens every chance I get.
Marigolds for the bees and beneficial insects
One way I attract a host of beneficial insects into the garden is to have a variety of flowers throughout the vegetables. I have marigolds, sunflowers, nasturtiums, calendula, zinnias, and four o’ clocks, along with a few carrots and parsley plants that are flowering. I’ve never seen so many bees, wasps, parasitic flies, praying mantis, ladybugs, dragonflies, and more!
potted cucumbers and butternut squash
The cucumbers I planted in pots are doing pretty good and I’ve even got a few small cukes on the vines. At this point I’d be happy with anything I can get from them!
butternut squash and onions
The butternut squash are all doing good and have lots of squash on the vines. If they all reach maturity I’m going to have a lot of butternut squash this fall! I accidentally overplanted this spring, thinking the first batch of seeds wasn’t going to sprout. Turns out they all sprouted- they just took longer than usual. In the meantime I had started more seeds though, and they all came up as well. Then those mystery plants in the compost turned out to be butternut squash too. Good thing we like butternut squash!
So that’s what’s growing in the garden right now. Hopefully everything continues to do well as summer progresses.
Gardening season is in full swing and things are looking pretty good this year. I started my tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and sweet potatoes in the house in late February. I kept them in the bathroom, which is nice and cozy warm and has a good level of humidity, so I had excellent germination. Once the seedlings started getting bigger I began taking them out to the greenhouse during the day, then bringing them back inside in the evening when the temps dropped.
Here I’ve got my tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings, along with my sweet potato slips
Once the night time temps were around 50 degrees I left the seedlings in the greenhouse full time. If the temps dropped below 50 I covered them with a row cover. I also had them surrounded with glass jugs full of water which absorbed the heat of the sun during the day and slowly released it at night (sort of a greenhouse within the green house 😉 ).
These are my butternut squash and cantaloupe seedlings, planted later than the others because they grow so quickly.
By March the garden beds were all set up and ready for planting. For the first year I’m trying no till gardening in the big garden. I put down a thick layer of compost over each of the beds and planted right in that, then mulched heavily with straw. I’ve certainly got tons of worms, and the soil is rich and loose- no need to even use a trowel or shovel- I just used my hands to gently move the soil enough to make a space for the plants.
One of my mini Bell peppers
The tomatoes did really well and I think I only lost one or two after transplanting. There always seems to be at least a few casualties. The peppers really struggled at first though. I think the soil was colder than I realized, and peppers need warm soil to thrive. Eventually they perked up though, and those that survived are doing well now and even flowering. I planted some Banana peppers in pots and they’re doing really well, in part because the soil in the pots is considerably warmer than the soil in the beds. I’ve also been fertilizing with Epsom salt every two weeks- that really perks up the veggies!
Pots with marigolods, Calendula, zinnias, and yellow squash.
I planted a lot more things in pots this year, and overall that’s working out really well. The zucchini and yellow squash that I planted in pots sprouted and grew faster than those that I planted in the ground (once again, probably due to warmer soil). I planted lots of flowers in pots and as they start flowering I’ve been putting them in various areas of the yard where I’ve had difficulty getting seeds to survive in the ground.
Zucchini’s doing well!
Above you can see that the zucchini (with chives in front) is doing well. All the zucchini and yellow squash have fruit now (I’ll probably be able to pick my first yellow squash tomorrow!). I’ve been fertilizing with Chicken Poop Soup once a month and Epsom salt every 2 weeks and the plants have been thriving.
“Recipe” for Chicken Poop Soup: 1) Rake out the chicken yard and put the chicken manure in a 5 gallon bucket. 2) Fill bucket with water and stir well. 3) Cover and let sit and ferment for a month, stirring occasionally. 4) Strain the solids, dilute well (I dilute one 5 gallon bucket of pure soup to make 4 buckets of diluted fertilizer). Water plants with the diluted soup, trying to avoid getting it on the leaves. I spray the plants with the hose to make sure none of the leaves get burned. So far I haven’t had any issues.
One warning: this stuff STINKS! But the plants love it 😉
Potatoes in pots
This year I planted all my potatoes (Yukon Gold and Gold Rush) in big pots filled with compost. They sprouted faster than ever before and are absolutely thriving! I can probably start harvesting potatoes any time now. I also had a bunch of potatoes from last year come up in the raised bed along with the sweet potatoes I planted.
Sweet potatoes in pot in greenhouse
I ended up with a ton of sweet potatoes this year (I lost count after 40 slips 😉 ), so I’ve got them planted all over. Some are in pots in the greenhouse, which are doing really well, some are in raised beds outside, and some are in the ground in the greenhouse. The ones in the greenhouse are doing the best. They’re another heat loving plant, so they’re perfectly comfortable at 100 degrees or more, just as long as they have enough moisture and mulch. This year I’ve really been going heavy on the mulch, and even when the outside temps have approached 100 there was minimal wilting and signs of heat stress, and the soil was still nice and cool.
My amazing super awesome Trout Speckled Buttercrunch cross lettuce
Now this lettuce above is the most awesome lettuce I’ve grown yet. I planted the seeds in late September last year, then forgot about them when nothing came up for a month. These were from seeds I’d saved the previous year. Then in JANUARY I noticed a few tiny lettuce sprouts, and thought “Oh cool, I might get a few plants out of this after all”. So I covered the area with a row cover and forgot about it again. I didn’t have much hope for a very good harvest, as temps were dropping down to the teens at night. When I finally took the row cover off in late February I saw a whole row of beautiful Trout Speckled Buttercrunch lettuce (my Trout Speckled Romaine crossed with my Buttercrunch)! These plants have survived temps down to 14 degrees, and up to 97 degrees!! Not to mention winds up to 30 miles an hour for DAYS STRAIGHT! And although they were tough enough to survive those extremes (not to mention rather infrequent watering and a bit of unintentional neglect) the leave are thick and soft and succulent. You better believe I’m saving seeds from these beauties! They just started going to seed last week, so clearly they’re very slow to bolt, which is a definite plus in this hot climate.
beets and onions
This year I’v e done a lot of random planting and companion planting. There are a few benefits to this method versus planting large areas with a single type of vegetable. The plants seem to do better in small groupings, and if one area gets hit by bugs or disease, at least I won’t lose ALL of my zucchini, or tomatoes, or whatever else I’ve got. Interplanting also helps to confuse the bugs. It makes it harder for them to find their target food plant. This is also where companion planting can really help. Marigolds and nasturtiums are good companions for most vegetables, as are onions and garlic. They help to repel the bad bugs and encourage the good bugs.
The spaghetti squash looks great!
One thing I’ve had a hard time growing successfully is cucumbers. I started them in pots in the house, then moved them out to the greenhouse when the weather got warm enough and they did really well until I transplanted then into the garden. Most of them have died now 😦 In the picture above you can see a really healthy spaghetti squash and a tiny sad little cucumber plant next to it. I tried planting the cukes in several different places and only 4 or 5 look like they might make it.
Cucumbers in pots and zucchini and yellow squash
I did start a second batch of cucumbers in pots, and so far they look pretty good. Hopefully I’ll be able to get something out of them!
pole beans are off to a good start
Some of my beans are doing really well, while others were eaten before they even sprouted through the soil. Between the bugs and the critters it’s a real battle to keep things alive. I had to start more butternut squash seeds because the first batch was eaten by bugs just as it sprouted. Mice have been pretty destructive too, so I’ve been putting traps out wherever I spot damage. I use Neem, Diatomaceous Earth, and hand picking to control the bugs, as well as encouraging beneficial insects and animals to live and hunt in my garden. I have LOTS of lizards in the garden, along with toads, and ladybugs, lacewings, and wasps. The flowers help to attract the beneficial bugs and the mulch also gives them a place to live. Oh yeah, I’ve got lots of ground spiders this year too. I also have a birdbath on the ground so the lizards, toads, and bugs have a supply of fresh water.
lettuce planted in the shade of a tomato
Above is another example of my random planting this year. I found small shaded spots under or behind the tomatoes and planted little patches of lettuce and greens. Surprisingly I’ve still been able to harvest lettuce even though the temps have been well into the 90’s every day.
My stray “compost tomato” , zucchini, yellow squash, and calendula in pots.
Last fall I filled a bunch of pots with compost to put in the greenhouse and add some heat (they get really toasty in the sun!). I got a nice surprise early this spring when the tomato plant above spouted (don’t know what kind of tomato it is yet, but it’s doing really well and got flowers before any of the other plants). I love my “strays”- those plants that pop up on their own and seem to be stronger, more resilient, and more productive than the seeds that I planted intentionally. I’ve got a couple stray lettuce plants that have been providing leaves for the salad for months now. I’ve got a few stray tomato plants that popped up in the garden as well.
All in all things are doing really well, in spite of the intense heat and wind, not to mention the bugs and varmints (you wouldn’t believe how much the rabbits, mice, rats, and squirrels can devour!). It may sound silly, but I’m proud of my garden ❤ It takes a strong, resilient plant to survive and thrive around here, and my plants are putting on one heck of a show!
Thanks for stopping by- hope you enjoyed this little peek into my personal Garden of Eden 🙂
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