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Never give up gardening means to me to keep moving and keep trying and keep making it interesting. It costs less to garden if you don't buy the plants from the nursery but instead plant from seed.
This table above has been piled up with garden books and seed trays. I finally cleared all of that and re-dressed the table after getting it better organized.
I have added a third tray for seeds, and I have a new plan. Plant everything from seed or cuttings.
I do have a growing concern for our food here in the U.S. It seems there are too many food recalls, so now I feel that something is up with that. I want to grow as many vegetables as we possibly can here in our small yard.
First I thought I would run that plan by my new hawk friend that came to visit me at my kitchen window. We had a nice one sided conversation before he or she decided to go hang out in the pear tree for awhile.
We have been very busy in our backyard and have converted pretty much of it to growing vegetables and fruits and most everything has changed.
This past summer in some of my older posts this area showed our metal raised beds which are cattle troughs full of soil and we sodded around them and cleaned it all up and planted them with sweet potatoes and beans, a few herbs and squash but I planted late and late is too late because late means too hot when it comes to gardening in our area.
Charles and I decided, well I decided, and talked Charles into helping, and we moved the tanks, full of dirt by two long metal poles and a lot of pushing and pulling and completely something we should not have been doing. We dug up the sod and moved it to another area and tilled it up.
Something wonderful happened, Charles started getting more interested in gardening. I think that he realized that I am not going to give up!
He has always helped me with the physical part, has always been supportive but now he is more interactive and interested. Maybe because it is not 90 to 100 degrees.
Late fall is not so pretty here because we rarely get snow to cover up everything and make it look like a winter wonderland. But we do get cold and below freezing and we need it to get cold so we can change the growing seasons.
We unpacked our stored greenhouses and put them up by the old wood potting shed. Things are quite a mess but we are working through it.
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We worked until dark many days and nights. This greenhouse is a 12 foot long by 7 foot wide by 7 foot tall.
Since I took this picture Charles has put my wood seed tray table in there and we are starting to get things set up for planting.
So where did the three tanks go?
Up here on the patio with the others. I mean business this coming year! For several years we would buy one or two cattle troughs. We have 9 of them now.
We just harvested one of the tanks that was growing ginger. this is the ginger that we harvested in that cattle tank. This is a LOT of ginger. We also grew Turmeric, I didn't take a picture of that. It was dark and we were out under the carport cutting the ginger off the stems.
You may wonder what do we do with all of that ginger? Well, we freeze some, we pickle some, we save some back for planting next year and we share some.
This tank I am growing turnip roots. It looks sparse but it will be filled in with companion plants. Next year when I plant my turnips I will plant with companions right away. I am just now understanding how to get a better harvest growing in raised beds and tanks. It is different than having land and a full garden.
There are not a lot of vegetables to grow in the winter like there are in the spring and summer, but there are vegetables and herbs that will grow in winter. Onions, carrots, garlic, Kale, swiss chard, cabbage, Green Onions, Radishes, Beets, Peas, Parsley Cilantro and if you grow some things under cover such as a frost cover I could add to this list.
My BIG MISTAKE is I stopped gardening in the fall and winter. I always thought that was when we were supposed to stop.
I need to start my spring seeds earlier because I have always waited until it warms up.
Some of you reading this will be going into fall when we are going into spring so there is much for you to be doing preparing for your fall garden.
Just remember this, study the germination time of the seed and the planting to harvesting days. How many days from the time I put this seed in the dirt will my plant be ready to harvest. Then you need to count backwards to when you need to plant the seed in soil.
Then if it is a tender plant that does not do well in cold make sure to protect it.
Study companion planting, what I am learning is that plants like to grow with other plants. It is like walking through a cottage garden with all kinds of varieties of plants and flowers and blooms, they like one another and it matters. Remember that many herbs help to protect vegetables.
Research, research, research. Write it down in your notebook.
Our Strawberry tank right now, here at the end of November.
You do not need tanks to grow vegetables, just dirt in the ground, pots or other things. I am older, have balance problems and a finicky heart. I do not want to give up gardening so this is our solution.
Many of you know I like to experiment, so my new gardening experiment is I have extra seeds left over from the year before last. Some of those seeds will still germinate. I am going to put many seeds out to see what will actually grow from seed on the last day of November and first day of December. I am zone 8b.
Some of the vegetables that I can grow here will also grow in a colder climates that we live. Frost cloth and cold frames also help the plants to be a bit warmer and remember that the roots are not as cold as the plant part above ground.
One of our small trays of peas is ready to be planted out. It has its feelers now where it can attach to a trellis. The peas are loving the colder weather. We have reached 39 degrees this week, that is 3.8 I believe Celsius. We are expecting to go below freezing, 0 Celsius this coming week. We do not hold a freezing temperature for days, normally it will be for hours at a time and climb above freezing during the day.
Our last three zinnia blooms. If I could only pick one flower which would be very difficult, it would be zinnias. They bloomed all spring, summer and fall.
I have a lot to learn about lavender because it is not happy here and I don't know why. I have learned to do cuttings from the lavender so I can try and keep the cuttings growing through the winter. If you know anything about growing lavender please post about it in the forum.
One plant that I have been able to keep alive through many years is the Thanksgiving cactus and it is very pretty this year. I brought it inside today to get it out of the cold. It does like chilly weather up to a point but when it drops below 45 degrees I bring it inside.
I baked a few things and made a chilled dessert to take to our Son and Daughter -in-laws house yesterday for our Thanksgiving meal. This was the last day of warm weather so we made the best of it and ate outside under their carport.
We had a wonderful meal and a nice visit. It was just the four of us this year because our children have grandchildren and the grandchildren have grown up and most are married and they have other family to visit. We have another Great Grandbaby due in five weeks so when we do get together that will be a very special time. We don't push to have everyone together on holidays because it is difficult when families do not live close by. We do pick a time though and get together when it is not a busy holiday.
I took a break from this post for a little while this evening and sewed a frost cover for a round tank that needed to be covered tonight. I have decided that when I have the time I will custom sew the other tank covers so I can just slip them over the tanks.
I will be posting about the winter experimental garden this winter, I hope that we find out that we have been missing out on some winter vegetables.
I would love to hear from you up in the forum, it brings joy to me and many others to be able to talk about things to people with the same interest.
Grandma Donna
