Yes, that’s right–good, bad and very, very ugly. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First I have to say THANK YOU and G’Day to Australia!!!! You may recall in my year end blog I was so happy that I had followers on every continent EXCEPT Australia. Well…that has all changed. Thank you, my Aussie friends, and I hope you keep reading.
With that said, it’s time for my winter garden update. In case any of you think I have a really easy time of it and everything grows beautifully without any effort–wait til you see some of the problems I’m battling.
But let’s start with The Good. And that would be cabbage. Interestingly, my cabbage blog has been read the most–more than Jake’s guacamole (that bothers him) and more than Two Men and a Mango. So it’s only fitting that I share one of my beautiful red cabbages. It will probably be ready in another month.
The peas have been fantastic. You can see them crawling toward the sun. I planted a variety called Oregon Giant, and they really are giants! The vines are taller than I am and the peas are out of this world. In fact, I picked some today and plan on using them to top off a pea soup.
The last of the good news is also part of the bad news. We had a really big heat wave here in Southern California that lasted about two weeks and pushed the temperatures into the 80’s. That was good for my pepper plant. I was surprised to find this growing.
But all that heat was really bad for my cilantro….which bolted.
And bad for the Romaine lettuce which needs cool weather. It bolted as well.
I’m also having problems with my cauliflower plants. They fit into the “ugly” category. This is not what a cauliflower should look like. Ever!
Nor should it look like this.
What to do, what to do? Well it just happened that my friend, Janine, who’s also growing veggies wrote about this very problem in her blog. www.lagunadirt.blogspot.com
She recommended tying the leaves together to protect the heads. I tied mine up today and we’ll see what happens. Thanks, Janine.
Another victim of the heat wave was my Swiss chard. Talk about a growth spurt! Check this out. It’s more like Jack and the Beanstalk. Interestingly, all those leaves were really tender. I made a Swiss Chard and Tuscan Bean soup today that I’ll share in another blog–it was really, really good!
Oh yes, my other nightmare–Brussels Sprouts. I can never get them to, well, sprout. Here’s what I’ve got–nada.
But to finish on a good note, I planted more cauliflower and lettuces today. I refuse to give up on the cauliflower!
I tied up my passion fruit vines and even found three ready to eat.
And perhaps best of all I had a good harvest! I laughed at the shape of the carrot. It looks like a little man.
Categories: Gardening Tips, Winter
Tags: winter garden
1 reply ›
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
That Swiss chard beanstalk is very funny! Interesting the leaves are still tender. Your cabbage is beautiful, too. Quite a bounty for the dead of winter!