Better Late Than Never – Fall/Winter Planting

Well, despite having all of the soil purchased weeks ago, we didn’t end up direct sowing our seeds until Saturday, November 24, roughly a full month after when I ideally wanted them in the ground! But here’s hoping that our mild weather means that we weren’t too late and that everything will germinate as planned.

In bed 1 we have: a kale medley, wasabi arugala, bok choy, italian arugala, nasturtiums, and cosmos.

Bed 2: carrots, broccoli, nasturtium, collards

Bed 3: cauliflower, spinach, napa cabbage, sage, swiss chard

Bed 4: Brussels sprouts, watermelon radishes, lettuce medley, cosmos

Sure, some of these might have been better started as seeds indoors and transplanted but we really didn’t get our stuff together in time for that! That’s the beauty of gardening, I guess. Learning opportunity!

We started the spring/summer season with four 4×4 raised beds, at only about 6″ high because we wanted to experiment with square foot gardening. Despite some over watering issues, and the fact that I didn’t fertilize anything whatsoever, we had a surprisingly good season. But we realized that 6″ is far too shallow for a proper root system to develop, and all of the plants were too crowded to truly thrive. So we built those beds up to 22″ high, and added more of the soil mixture that we use: 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 various sources of compost. For compost, we used a blend of our own personal compost, composted chicken manure, and G&B Organics Purely Compost.

Some other highlights from our weekend gardening extravaganza? Finding a little baby avocado tree that decided to sprout in the yard from a seed that a squirrel buried. I was weeding up a storm and yanked it up when I realized what I had, got all excited, and promptly relocated it to a better spot in the yard. I’m going to actually put it in a pot so we can bring it with us when we move, as we really don’t have a great spot for it in our current yard.

I also did some adult LEGO construction by way of cement blocks. We had a bunch leftover from propping up our 6″ beds off the cement patio, so I put them to good use and built myself a makeshift potting table! It ain’t pretty, but it’s functional. And free! I’m going to put lots of baby succulents and starter plants on the top shelf to spruce it up a bit, but it does the job of containing all of our gardening tools and supplies and keeping them sort of out of the way.