My first time fall/winter gardening! All plants from Lone Star Nursery. Holy basil in the first bed doing well, trimmed it back to make room for the artichokes (2 varieties). Planted kikuna (garland chrysanthemum greens) which I was excited to find, it’s my favorite vegetable! Next to the kikuna is purple Brussels sprouts.
In second bed, rosemary bush needs to be pruned back, some peppermint is coming back, green onions and chives look good, after weeding we can add more plants.
In third bed, the Japanese eggplant has started flowering again (I love the little purple blossoms!) and the okra is sprouting new branches and pods. We planted Chinese broccoli, and my friend Stacey made me a resin Buddha in Kamakura style, looks good among the plants. The yellow pear tomato from spring/summer started producing prolifically again as it’s cooled down from the summer hot, but it did produce all summer and was the one of the most heat resistant tomatoes I planted.
In the fourth bed, we kept a cherry tomato plant rash it started producing again, I planted two kinds of rainbow chard, some mixed salad greens, collards, and blue grilled kale, and purple kale.
These raised beds are probably at least ten years old, built with corrugated metal sheeting and wood, the top wooden sills need to be replaced this year. A few years ago we put in soaker hose irrigation on timers and it’s made all the difference in being able to keep everything alive in the summer when it hits the 100s.
I still need to mulch around the plants, and a tree we just planted (desert willow). We were able to get enough compost from our compost pile/bin, I’m a very lazy composter and usually the big turning of the pile coincides with harvesting the finished compost for planting. Yay gardening!
