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.
Suburban Sustainability 
I have a few loquat trees, too! We started them from seeds.
This is unrelated to loquat trees but have you guys thought about growing goji plants? They grow like weeds and don’t require too much care/maintenance. We grew those from seeds, too. If you’re interested, maybe I can mail you some goji berry seeds.