by Robin
We are finally getting to the fun part.... PICKING VEGETABLES!! Here is the last pictures of the full garden before things start to get picked.
I can barely walk! And I didn't even fill all the water spickets! I think I took gardening by the foot a little too seriously.
This is my winter garden. Winter veggies. I did NOT do 2 full gardens this winter purposefully.
I wanted to leave Garden 2 mostly empty for early February planting. Last year, I had a glitch when my broccoli and cauliflower were still producing and I wanted to put in squash, beans, cucumbers, etc. So, this year, we rest. There are some baby tomato and pepper plants. Mostly, they were volunteer plants that I put on spickets. On the bottom row (right), those are my onions that I had to replant after the chickens destroyed the box full of them.
I have 2 sets of turnips growing. This left side batch were spread out a bit further and so they've grown faster. My right side are very tightly packed. Bad me. These cauliflower were from the local feed store. Seven. I missed planting them from seed and fortunately all 7 survived and are healthy. No cauliflower heads yet.
I have an entire row of Valentine Black Beans (bush variety). These are drying beans for making soup in the winter. This is my miracle story. I had 6 beans to begin with last spring. All 6 plants survived and produced approx 150 beans. My friend who blessed me with the 6 heirloom seeds had a misfortune with her bunch and so I shared half back with her. I used my 75 to plant this row. Other than one chicken "incident", all stayed viable and produced heavily. I am about to pick them this week and let them begin drying.
My American and Italian broccoli are both making heads. So far, they're about the size of a fist. Possibly next week, we'll have our first side dish. Happy! All these rows came from seed I saved from the spring harvest. That was a first for me and it appears very successful, indeed!
These are Campari tomatoes grown from seeds of toms I ate after purchasing them from Publix. Who needs to buy seeds. Save the seeds from the cutting board and throw them right in the ground. I probably have 20 tomatoes on this bush alone. I think they're finally going yellow/orange on me. Yipee! These are very sweet and small to medium size.
Again, these are seeds from my cutting board. I bought a beautiful Beefstake or Porterhouse-type tomato from the Farmer's Market in New Smyrna Beach. This was my only surviving plant of all the babies but it is heavy with tomatoes. There are 5 in this picture alone but the whole bush has blooms and babies on it. Fall growing season is so great because the bugs are gone dormant and I don't have to do much care to the plants. Mostly, I just hand-pick catepillars and they're primarily on the beans and cabbage.
Turnips are starting to grow and show their purple. You don't want these any bigger than a baseball or they'll get bitter.
I couldn't resist picking these for dinner tonight. I'm going to try cooking the greens too.
Not pictured was the cabbage. Not sure that will make it. It is so buried under those broccoli leaves and the catepillars are having their way too. Lettuce and Swiss Chard are also being overtaken. It was nice while it lasted. Tasted very good.
Happy Gardening.
Robin
