No hard frost yet here on the coast. We picked a dozen big bell peppers this past weekend. The pepper bushes are still loaded. My collards are growing quite nicely, too.
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Well, we had ground frost the past two mornings, lows around 34. Peppers got smacked. Good while they lasted. The collards, on the other hand, loved the dusting of ice.
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All growing well in leaf mulch

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Very Nice.
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First hard freeze coming this week. Harvested all the spinach yesterday. Put up 10 quart bags in freezer. Onions not ready, so I mulched them with about 2 feet of wheat straw. Will see if they survive the freeze. If not, then a whopping $2 in costs is down the drain! Surprisingly, they are growing much better in the fall than they ever grew in the spring/summer!
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I got some Rosemary growing as hedges. That's.. Pretty much it. Not much grows in the desert, unless you time it just right and spend all day tending whatever it may be. Haha
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It's time to order seeds again. I'm gonna try to NOT put it off till March and then get half my stuff and complain about the service.
I swore last year I'd never order from Park Seed again. Now I have their catalog ready and waiting. I've been ordering seed from these guys for 25 years, what the heck ya gonna do, right?
I really, really, like Willhite Seed. Crazy good prices on huge amounts of seed. Stuff always comes in a couple days and my whole order is there. I'm sure I won't order from them.
This is only one of the many things wrong with my head.
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Man, been eating white egg turnips, curly mustard, and collards the past several weeks.
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Got my seeds from Park awhile ago. Some of them. They shorted me six packs of corn seed but billed me for them separately a couple weeks ago. I highly doubt they'll ever show up, they do this to me every single year. Granted, sometimes the seed shows up about a month and a half after planting time, but that's as good as "didn't show up".
I'm not in a big hurry, so I'll wait a bit before I start calling them. Wish me luck!!!
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Gathered the last of the collards in post #283. Got a large pot full on the stove. Awesome!

Yesterday I planted Iceberb, Red Sails, Buttercrunch, and Romaine lettuces. Also planted two types of radishes and 3 types of garden peas (Chinese snow pea, a dwarf pea, and an early sweet). I planted two types of summer squash, bush cucumbers, Seniorita jalapeno, Giant Bell, cilantro, dill, and basil in cups for the window sill. They should hit the ground in a few weeks.
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I have 2 avocado pits growing in the window sill and 1 celery growing on the kitchen counter.
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Grabbed five pounds of waxy red potatoes today. Probably won't cut up and plant them for at least two weeks. Hope to turn ground in next day or so, and work some horse manure into the area that I will add for an asparagus bed. I also plan to get some starter plants going for lettuce and broccoli. Hopefully some photos to follow. I'm not sure about planting dates this year. I had seeds in the ground three weeks before Good Friday last season, and two weeks before GF year before that. But we are running 15-20 degrees colder this year than last, and this might be the year I have to wait for GF, or even later. Mid-term weather predictions don't look good for early planting.
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Seeds sprouting inside
Red Chard, Beets, Romaine, Butter Leaf, Bok Choy, Broccoli, Radish.
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How many of you used lawn clippings for mulch under your veggies? How's that workin for ya? I am thinking of trying that this year.
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Anybody have any garden pics yet?
I just got a yard of Mushroom Compost yesterday to add to my exinsint raised beds.
Plants from seeds are doing well under the lights.
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Garden's doing good now that last snap of cold weather went away. This was from two weeks ago. Everything has jumped now. Garden plants: Iceberb, Red Sails, Buttercrunch, and Romaine lettuces, two types of radishes and three types of garden peas (Chinese snow pea, a dwarf pea, and an early sweet). I planted two types of summer squash, bush cucumbers, Seniorita jalapeno, Giant Bell, cilantro, dill, and basil.

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My garden is full of mulched leaves and grass clippings. I've been doing it for years. No weed problems what-so-ever! I can peel back the layer of clippings/leaves and the earthworms are everywhere and the soil is so moist and dark. I also don't till any more. I just work up the ground where I want to plant. That also keeps down the weeds. It's a win-win!
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My landlady used to complain about her backyard being a desert. It was nothing but tan clay when I moved in.
She bought a truckload of chipped wood mulch, but her idiot yard man scraped it all away over several weekends
and it all went out to the street. But that still didn't teach her. Instead of bagging leaves every fall, I would rake
them into a pile and run the mower over them until they were shredded. That worked better cause the dumba55
couldn't get a good grip on em with the rake. But eventually he would undo everything I did. Then she got tired
of him breaking or stealing all her tools and told him to stop coming around. NOW you can see the results. I never
know why people don't mulch down their leaves every year. It makes outstanding dirt and the worms love it.
You can't throw leaves on a compost and expect them to rot. They have to be shredded first. I always get angry
when I see some idiot with 35 bags of leaves on the curb awaiting pickup.
But now that my own processes are allowed to go on without interference, she has a good 7 inches of rich topsoil.
Everytime she comments on it, I tell her that she'd probably have 15 inches of topsoil if she would have cut the
a-hole loose sooner. She still can't grow grass, too much tree canopy cover. But at least the yard doesn't make
dust anymore. ANd those trees REALLY work well in the 98 degree summer here. Step into that fenced backyard
from the street at 4:30 in the afternoon and the temp drops 15 degrees.
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Great pics Jamie. Thanks for the grass clipping comment. So you dont have to worry about any grass seed actually growing out of your clippings?

Brad, last year I started composting everything! I am going completely organic this year and moving forward. I just built a worm composter over the weekend also.
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This is the first year I did everything by seed. I got sick and tired of the crap I was getting from Home Depot and Lowes. Plus I want to do everything Organically moving forward.
Here are a few videos of the things I did this year, starting with seed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSmThYl-0uw


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnF8QzEZh4s


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHZJC7lU1Qk
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