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We’re planting our winter veggies right now, in waves, so we’ll be able to harvest at different times. We bought a cute little greenhouse from Lowe’s ($40) to make it easier to grow seeds outside. We’re considering putting some small warmer weather vegetables in there and seeing how they do.
Cute little greenhouse!
This weekend, we planted lettuces, mustard greens, and bok choy.
Ready to go into the ground...
Our new garden beds are working out really well. They get more sun than our side yard.
YUM! We've got leeks, mustard greens, lettuces, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, and cabbage =)
Here's our second garden bed. Green beans and spaghetti squash on the right.
We're getting quite a lot of green beans. They're super-tasty.
We also started pulling up the summer plants from our side yard. They had a bit of measly production left, as we harvested a tiny butternut squash and itty bitty eggplants, but overall, they’re done.
Pulling up cucumber plants.
A couple of weeks ago, we had a big storm here. Our big, beautiful eucalyptus tree fell over. Thankfully it didn’t land on our house, but did damage our spa cover slightly. We found out later, from our neighbors, that the tree had already fallen over once before! The people that lived in our home before us propped it back up. Clearly, a poor idea. When my hubby was digging out the roots, we saw that the largest root had been broken off from the trunk long ago. Once a tree falls over, it’s pretty much said “Goodbye, world”.
So we bought a loquat tree and put it in the spot where the old eucalyptus tree was.
We bought it from our neighbors. At a garage sale. Score!
Loquat trees grow very quickly, are evergreen, and produce tasty fruit. Three wonderful things that both the hubby and I desired. My mother actually grew her loquat tree from seed. These trees are very expensive in the hardware store or at the nursery (~$60-$75), so this may be the way to go for those looking to guard the pocketbook.
We started some seedlings for winter a little over a week ago.
I sold my old TV and used the $$ to buy sooo many seeds!
Lettuces, broccoli, carrots, spinach, spaghetti squash, cauliflower, kohl rabi, onions, leeks, celery, cabbage, brussel sprouts, chinese cabbage, bok choy…and so on and so forth! I’ll try to cover some techniques later for you folks that live where there’s a killing frost. Here in West Sacramento we get a light frost in the winter mornings, and that’s it.
True to my first post on growing from seeds, we used the biodegradable pots this time. They’re $2 for 50 at Lowe’s or Home Depot.
We're reusing the miniature greenhouse trays from spring
And, now here are our seedlings!
Green beans in the front are actually a summer veggie...I'm pushing it a bit.
Even though we don’t have a huge yard, I know others have an even smaller space. I was wandering around Instructables.com when I came across this wonderful little tutorial. So, of course, I ran out and grabbed a hanging shoe pouch thingy ($13 at Target). I filled it with potting soil.
I put mine on our fence.
I planted a number of different herbs in it, as well as some mesclun mix and arugala.
Oregano, Tarragon, Catnip, Dill, Basil...and some more I can't remember =)
I made a little hole in the soil in each of the pouches.
About the same size as a little seed starter pot.
And then I poured some seed starting mix into it, and patted it down.
I planted the seeds into the seed-starting mix.
Hopefully this will get them going! I’ve been watering them every day, so I’ll let you know how it works!
TIME INVESTMENT: 1 hour
COST: $13 for shoe rack, $5 for seed starter (I already had some lying around), and $5 for potting soil (already had some of this too). You won’t use all of the potting soil or the seed starter. $23, without seeds. Seeds run $1.50-$2.50 a packet.
My husband just put together a cute little greenhouse. We’re working out some kinks, but I’ll show it to you next time! We’ve also got some quails that we hatched from our quails.
