Just finished the winter vegetable planting today, put in 12 more lettuces. The total is now 30, which is enough for DH to have his large salad every night and for me to have my smaller salad every few days. Plus extra for family or friends.

Nothing else is ready to eat, but everything's growing well. Well, there are some pineapple guavas.

Just finished putting everything to bed here. All the beds are covered with leaves. Garlic is planted. Looking kinda dead out there! Now to put up the snow fence and fence around new evergreens, and find a snowblower.....

Pineapple guavas? Lettuce?

Jeez. And I'm looking out the window at the first few inches of what's supposed to be 2 feet of snow. The good news is we've got wine in the pantry, a 4WD truck, plenty of wood for the Vermont Castings stove with it's glass door, and no place to go tomorrow. Oh, maybe shovel a path to feed and collect eggs from the chickens.

But planting? Nah. Not a good day for it here.

Still hoping for a few good days here...been in the low 60's the last couple days.

Got the last few dead tomato plants and cages outa the ground last night, along with the dead herbs.

So sad to have to do this every year! I want a perfect climate!

Been working too much but still hoping to get that garlic planted!

I know that each winter some people feel jealous of those of us in southern CA. It's not my intention to make anybody feel bad! I just want to talk about what is our busiest gardening time of the year. And don't forget, we don't have any rain at all for 6 months out of every year, not one drop. So it's not ideal. Right now there's a strong wind which is sucking all the moisture out of the soil.

Hi Jenniferch,

Here in N CA we still have time to get more winter garden in. have most of the mustard and cabbage family in already, but we still need to plant kolrabi. Also need to get beets and carrots in the ground. I think we'll wait a week or so to see if another rain comes in. It is always better to start carrots in the rain. Also need to plant fennel.

We are still harvesting tomatoes and squash. My hubby brought in the last of the okra today, and what may be the last of the eggplant.

While so much of the country rests under snow, we, like you, are facing another busy season.

Mindwing

I've still got tomatoes and peppers in the ground--it's supposed to be 75 degrees today and in the 70's for the next few--with rain--but I think picking the green tomatoes and peppers is the smartest thing to do--they're not gonna ripen or grow so making more room for garlic and greens makes more sense. Of course it's supposed to be in the 30's this weekend. Just rechecked the forecast and they're saying high 40's for Halloween--if you don't like the weather, stick around for 15 mins.--it'll change!!!

No Jennifer, having lived a year south of LA, I wouldn't want to garden there. It's like here in the mountains, where the sun is so direct it just sucks moisture out of the soil in minutes.

Still...

We just put in a bunch of stuff on Saturday - red chard, more kale (even though we still have some of last year's), broccoli/cauliflower (total waste of effort but it makes DH happy), celery (never tried it before, and DH will just juice it anyway), and a few other things.

Broccoli is productive; after harvesting the main bud, you can keep harvesting smaller ones for months. And we really like the cauliflower. I tried celery once but it was too hard to grow for me.

Just got more cabbage, some brocolli and red russian kale to plant--now I've got to build some "toppers" for my raised beds to keep the squirrels out so they don't tear the rest of my greens out too.