Winter Garden

Mustard Greens

                                                                             Carrots                      

Oriental Spinach

Chinese Kale

Walla Walla Onion

And plenty of Romaine lettuce that I somehow didn't get a picture of.  

Seed Catalogs are comming!

It's like Christmas all over again!  The seed catalogs are coming!  One of my favorites is Territorial Seed Company.  I can't wait to start picking out what I'll have in my garden next spring.  I hope to post pictures of what I have growing righ tnow by this weekend.  I actually have a vibrant and living garden growing this winter.  Romaine, Oriental spinach, Chinese kale, turnips, carrots, beets, and mustard greens.  All doing pretty well inspite of the several hard freezes we've had.  Cross our fingers they make it long enough to harvest! Pictures to follow soon - I hope!

Crazy Fall

Like I said in my food blog, Omnivores Delight I've had a crazy couple of months.  It's not been a fun crazy, but I keep trying to move forward.  Unfortunately all this craziness has taken a lot of time from my blogs.  I have been busy in my garden though.  I've been attempting to see what I can grow into the winter months here in Humboldt.  So far lettuce and Chinese Kale are thriving well beyond my wildest dreams.  The Oriental Spinach would be if the slugs didn't like it so much.  My turnips and beets are struggling.  The soil just doesn't have the nutrients they need to thrive, but my carrots seem to be doing pretty well.  I just stuck some onion starts in the ground, walla walla's and green bunching onions.  I'm pretty sure this is the wrong time of year to do this, but they seem pretty happy, so we'll see how this goes.  I also have a bunch of mustard greens doing pretty well.  My arugula is struggling, but the seeds I had were pretty old.  I'll have to get some pictures of my garden, as weedy as it is, and keep you posted on the progress.  Hopefully I'll find the  time between now and the crazy Christmas holiday, which by the way we will be enjoying leg of lamb from the lamb we raised ourselves.  I'm so excited about that! 
Happy harvests!

Winter Gardening

About a month ago I was reading an on line article from Mother Earth News, Use Cold Frames To Grow More Food, and on page 3 a section called Milk Jug Seed Starters got my attention. For one, it was an unusually sunny and warm January here on the North Coast of California, which got me motivated to get out in the garden, and second I have a ton of milk jugs waiting to be taken to the recycling center. I figured why not use a few of them to take care of my itch to get outside and garden.

Back when we took our trip to Oakland's China Town we had picked up several packets of seeds from the markets. Oriental Spinach, Chinese Kale, and Edible Amaranth. They are all suppose to be winter hardy plants, so I decided to experiment and try these seeds out along with some Romaine lettuce seeds in the milk jug seed starters and see if I could achieve some success.


So far I have been pleasantly surprised by the Chinese Kale and the Oriental Spinach. Nothing has sprouted from the Amaranth yet. Being the ignorant gardener I am, I'm not sure what I did wrong. My Romaine sprouted and was doing beautifully, but has since been demolished by some critter, most likely slugs and/or snails. I have one start left from the 20 or so that first popped up. I'll have to give that one another shot and find a safer location. Apparently the slugs and snails don't care too much for the kale or spinach. I hope I didn't just jinx myself by typing that.

Here is my one lonely lettuce sprout, that probably won't make it through the day:

And here are my successes. The Chinese Kale:

And the Oriental Spinach:

And true to the poorly translated from Chinese to English instructions, they are cold tolerant plants and have survived the cold front that has brought freezing temperatures
to our area, beautifully. I should be able to transplant them to the garden without hardening them off, since they've already been acclimated to the weather. At least that's what I'm hoping.

Hopefully I'll be writing of further successes with the Chinese Kale and Oriental Spinach, and that I finally figured out how to get the amaranth to sprout. Oh yeah, and whether I've succeeded in saving any new lettuce sprouts from the slugs and snails. Those evil little slime makers!



Well, off to look up some recipes for Chinese Kale and Oriental Spinach, and some psychological tricks to get my kids to eat them.
Happy Gardening!