fall garden

Growing goodies in the garden…

Though it’s winter outside, there are still wonderful vegetables growing in the garden.

Planted in early fall, these edibles love the chill of winter.

I know my gardening friends are already harvesting and have pulled up some lovely carrots. Mine were planted a little later, but I’m eager to check one of the larger ones.

My 8-year old is a veritable bunny, and would readily crunch on raw carrots at every meal. She will have a blast when we harvest these.

Don’t you just love the little vegetable marker? It’s an antique spoon with a hand-drawn label.

This Dwarf Satsuma Orange is in the greenhouse — it would not have liked our few light freezes. The warm humidity of the greenhouse provided great conditions to help it ripen. It’s the first year for the orange (with me) and it produced 3 oranges. We’ve eat two of them and they were sweet and juicy and had very few seeds. I can’t wait to eat the third one! Doesn’t it look tasty?
Growing happily, I can’t wait to eat the cauliflower with a creamy bechamel sauce, just like my mother made it and my German Oma before her.
The red cabbage adds a burst of color to the winter vegetable garden and brightens it up. Naturally, I’ll make German red cabbage with it.
I’ve already harvested some small broccoli florets, but there are just a few still hanging on. Next year, I will plant many more of them.

Also growing in the garden right now, I have artichokes, Swiss Chard, parsley, sage, cilantro, and strawberries.

Now it’s time to start seeds in the greenhouse. I know I will be ordering a variety of tomato seeds to try, but there is a world of other vegetables that work well started as seeds before the last frost in a warm indoor environment.

I can’t wait for the spring garden. But I have to eat the winter vegetables first!

Are you eating vegetables from your winter garden?

Seeds are stronger than you think!

As we felt the wrath of tropical storm Hermine last week, I was most worried about all the tiny little seeds I’d so carefully planted just a few short days before.

I had visions of them floating away down the road to the neighboring town of Buda.

Then I had visions of them simply drowning in the mud-filled beds.

And finally, I had visions of them surviving, but scattering and intermingling so that I would never know what was what.

Guess what? They liked the rain. So much so that some of them popped their little heads up in just 4 days!

These are bush beans with their pretty little copper marker made with my nifty spiffy label maker. (Do you have one? I love mine!)
And these tiny little guys are going to grow up to be Brussels sprouts.
While some of the plants are a little water-logged, many of my plants have emerged rejuvenated after the storm. This ice plant is bright and cheery.
This heavenly hibiscus loved the deep, long drink.
The Hyacinth bean vine blooms burst forth after the heavy rains.
These plants aren’t in the direct path of the rain (although we had lots of sideways rain), they loved the humidity of the storm.

Veggies in…

Okay, so it’s a few days after September 1st, the official first day for planting certain fall veggie garden seeds here in Central Texas.

But we were busy with a full Labor Day Weekend until today. Today — gardening day!

We’re forecast to have several days of rain, so it was now or never (well, maybe not never) today. Perfect timing for planting little seeds so they can get some nice fresh rainwater.

Then I hear from my husband that we’re expected to get up to 12 inches of rain over the next 3 days. Yikes — my little seeds may wash away. But I’m going to think positive.

Keep your fingers crossed for me that we don’t end up flooding.

I planted Calabrese broccoli – transplants and seeds, Provider snap bush beans, Sunshine Mix carrots, leaf lettuce – red and green, Brussels sprouts, Red Acre cabbage, California Bell pepper, jalapeno pepper, and finally, flat leaf parsley to replace the giant tree of parsley that served as a host for a gazillion swallowtail caterpillars this spring and summer. I already have summer squash (and yes, you plant it in the fall!), basil, and tomatoes planted.
In two weeks, I’ll plant some more carrot and Brussels sprouts seeds. In October, I’ll put in some beets. And I’ve left a little room for other things that catch my fancy along the way!


Makes me hungry just writing this post. Do you have any going in your garden?

A fresh start …

This collection was waiting for me on Saturday morning. Can you hear them? They were saying: “Plant us, plant us!”
So, I put on my garden gloves and grabbed my shovel and my tub trug and dug in.
My DH brought around 8 bags of compost so I could amend the beds. After being bug-infested and fried for 50 days over 100 this summer, I figured that they needed a little a little perking up.
Here’s what went in:

  • Tomatoes — Sunmaster, Viva Italia, Bush Celebrity, Big Beef, Sweet 100 cherry, Purple Cherokee
  • Canteloupe — from my garden blogging friend, Meredith, at Great Stems
  • Jalapeno peppers and sweet red bell peppers
  • Straight-neck and zucchini squash
  • And some marigolds around the tomatoes (in the hopes of keeping away BUGS! Ha!)



And then I crafted this fancy-schmancy shade cover for the tomatoes because it is just so darn hot that new transplants will get too stressed without it. I covered a trellis with shade cloth and then tied strings around it all, and voila!

Today we hit 51 days over 100 degrees, surpassing last year’s shocking record. With 6 weeks of Austin summer left to go, we are likely to have the hottest summer ever … ever. Sigh. But I am going to try for that Fall garden in spite of it.

(I am having visions of cool season crops…but I can’t even think about them yet.)

Are you thinking about a Fall garden? Or are you eating yummy summer tomatoes? Think you can fed ex me some to replace all the ones I had to rip out?!

Okay, guess I will have to go to the farmer’s market next Saturday.

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