What to do if you have when you only have 9 degrees F. outside

You may not be thinking at all about your gardens.

I winter garden and I have some hints for any of you with plants still in your garden.

We had a very unusual weather week last week. I've lived here for over 25 years and this is only the 2nd time I've seen something like this where we go from 70 degrees to 9 degrees. Not much can endure that kind of drop for that long. But here is what I do. I take a daily walk in the garden and cut away any branches that froze and are now turing soft and icky. You must do this each day until a healthy plant remains.

By doing a little at a time you give the plant every chance to survive on it's own. Here is what survives after a normal freeze, chard our all time top performer, the smaller chois, kale, beets if they are a winter variety and carrots if the ground didn't freeze too deeply (which I don't believe it did. Things I hope survived, garlic, shallots, beets that weren't winter types,and some of my herbs.

Be sure and clean out all that is dead as soon as possible. I had a nice looking pumpkin on my front porch turn to mush in a flash!

When it's all tidy in your garden put your feet up and look at those seed catalogs and dream of what we will grow in the spring!

Yes my salad table is still growing nicely. It had a double layer of plastic and a 60 watt bulb. We ate lettuce and choi's from it last night and they were perfect. Remember I put it against the house wall to further warm it, even so it was covered in ice each day!  The chives will have to be cut way down and see if they can return, but the winter lettuce is doing nicely.  A slug found his way in but he is gone and his holes remain!

I haven't given up on my garden have you?

I couldn't find homes for all the garlic.

I had so I went out in the sprinkles and planted what was left. What I wish is that the seed company would make a nice mixed package. I end up with more than I need and hate that I paid for it but long that I have a choice of garlic. I have three nice big bags I'm really enjoying eating. Next year I'll plant my own from the cloves I get this year. I have enough variety to do so.

This brings me to the thought that we could all save money
by sharing our seed buying.
I'd like to start a nice seed group.

Several of us are thinking about how to work this. The basic idea would be everyone decides what they will grow and how much seed/plant they need.
We hope you will trust us to help choose the best varieties to plant.
After we get the master list we would have each person buy a portion of the list and there would be a time to divide it all up.

I never use up a whole package of seed.
Do any of you? Maybe carrots and beets , but never broccoli, or Garlic! etc.
I welcome suggestions for how to organize this.

Now for the photos of what I picked while I was out planting garlic.
I will make soba soup with the chard and kale and herbs that remain.
Might be beans left.

I covered everything very tightly from the winds the last week and it's time to open things up so we don't get bugs hatching.
I want any bug life at rest when the freezes hit.
Crazy how you have to think a head but I do and it helps me have nice food to eat each year.

The funnest veggie I was able to grow this year was the rommanesco Broccoli. Sorry I didn't take a photo but it looks like a multi-pointed chartreuse alien!
Yummy and fun to grow.
Also the radicchio grew really well and I'm going to roast some with a recipe
I found online

This is my first year to grow Kohlrabi. I'm wondering how it will taste

This and two pumpkins are the only squash I got this year. These are giant size so they will make several meals. I miss the butternuts. We ate 4 Delicata and a fair bit of zucchini but it was not a good squash year.

The big gray ones are almost blue, the photo doesn't do it justice.

See my squashes heavy stems, this is what they do when I grow vertically, if you grow them on the ground they don't get such thick stems.  Amazing isn't it!

If you want to know what these squash or your own squash is look here.


http://whatscookingamerica.net/squash.htm

plant Garlic and shallots

Did you get your garlic and Shallots? It's time to get them in the ground. With this warm and cold thing going on in the Northwest you might be wondering what to do......PLANT.....yes plant them so they get a nice foot hold on the ground before any bad weather. Then after they are up put a dressing around them of straw, leaves or what ever you have that will give them a bit of protection. Don't cover up the garlic just dress around it closely. It we get BIG snow like a couple of years ago I will add 6 or more inches around them again. Roses like this kind of protection also.

If you need to know how to plant garlic see the video on the side bar.

Happy cool weather gardening, Sat looks to be beautiful!

fine eating

This is a close up photo these really are tiny

That's a cherry tomato and that squash was only about 6 inches long.
Picked by sunset last night

This is the end of the summer growing season and I have a manta I say over and over....."Harvest each day"

Why? First off you get to eat really gourmet food, it's tiny, it's fresh, tender and yummy.

Second nature is going to take it all back very soon, with all our rain and the cold soon to be upon us the plants will slow down to barely grow.

So every day I'm picking those small green, yellow and purple beans, I'm watching the tomatoes and picking them when pink (they are splitting from too much water if left until ripe) I'm taking those zucchini at 6 inches etc.
I'm harvesting the top basil leaves that aren't spotted from all the rain,
and collecting the newest sprouts on my herbs
which will have to be tucked away soon.

If you don't know what size those veggies should have been for harvest check out this web site. If you were apart of our gardening group you have this handout. Once you know the harvest size reduce that and collect things at a gourmet size and cook gently and enjoy!

http://snohomish.wsu.edu/garfact.htm

look at FS#26



You will do this kind of harvesting once again with the early spring foods.
It really does take a couple of years to see the circle of life and hop onto the Merry go round.

roasted potato recipe

I don't think I can ever match Amy's red tomato that was served to us at our last meeting but here is the recipe for the roasted potato salad I brought.

It's good.

Roasted Potato & Green bean salad

From the book Grocery Gardening

4 med Yukon gold potatoes cleaned and cubed (I used some of each kind of potato I grew)
1/2 cup olive oil plus some for coating baking sheets
1/4 pound fresh green beans, cleaned and trimmed (I used yellow wax beans)
1 shallot, minced
1 tablespoon Dijon Mustard
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tsp fresh Thyme leaves, minced

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place the potatoes on a large foil (oiled) lined baking sheet, use two if needed to keep all potatoes flat on sheet. Drizzle (this is not the 1/2 cup of oil) with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper (I use sea salt and not a lot) Bake 45 min. or until potatoes are brown and well caramelized.

Blanch the beans by immersing them in a large saucepan of boiling water for 3 minutes. Remove beans from the saucepan and dunk them in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process. Drain and dry the beans.

In a large bowl, combine the shallots, mustard, vinegar and thyme. Salt and pepper to taste and whisk to combine the ingredients. While whisking add the 1/2 cup of olive oil in a stream. This should become creamy as you whisk it. Continue to blend oil thoroughly into the dressing. Add the roasted potatoes and beans, stir and serve.

Note: All fresh ingredients did come out of my garden. I am so loving these shallots!

highlights of our season end meeting

It was a great gardening season. HORRIBLE weather but what a lot was gained in this season of gardening. I know you each learned something you didn't know. You all worked hard and that in it's self is a big gain. What we learn we can do gets easier to do.

Here are some snippets of what we covered in our last meeting.

To put your garden to bed for the winter:

1. Clean out everything if you don't you invited nasty bugs to winter, plants will keep growing and grow leggy and be attacked by one thing after the other. Don't leave what you aren't growing

2. Don't cover your garden with plastic directly on the ground (mold)
Don't put compost in until spring unless you are planning a winter garden or planting over wintering seeds.
With all our rain the compost nutrients will be nearly gone by spring planting

3. Clean the ground around the garden of gardening debris. You can be your own worst enemy but letting things rot in the garden. The compost bin is for rotting items.

4. If you wish to protect your soil you can put a mulch over your garden. Newspaper, peat moss, straw. Just keep in mind anything you lay down will be a home for some kinds of bugs. Remove straw in the spring it doesn't compost fast enough to leave in your garden. If you cover over wintering seeds uncover them in late Jan.

What if you do want to garden through the winter what do you do?

I planted late summer seeds for fall harvest. They include beets, kale, carrots, spinach, broccoli, choi's, any of your orange cards. I am starting to harvest the kale, spinach and broccoli. I want to leave a lot of things for that kiss of frost which will sweeten kale, beets and many carrots. This means that I have not put my garden to bed yet and I won't be until late Oct or frozen nights which ever comes first. Shockingly I am still harvesting beans that are still producing.

If you did not plant seeds for a fall harvest you can not reasonably plant now and have the plants have enough heat to grow. The only exception I see is that great salad table, which I plant now and grow all winter with a cover and a 60 watt bulb. Yummy miners lettuce etc. You can plant your garlic and Shallots now.

What can you winter over?

Wintering over means planting seeds from varieties that can take cold ground and then spring to life in early spring.

Some plants work very well this way, others it is a waste of time.

What works for me is to plant the kales, chard, beets and broccoli but not the peas they rot and rarely make it. Here are some of the seeds I work from and any with the key words, early, winter, frost etc. will work. You need to protect these seeds with mulch or at least plant them a bit deeper than you normally would. (not so deep they can't ever pop out!)

Lettuce-Arctic tundra blend (winter hardy)
miners
mico greens mix (harvest when small )
Winterwunder
Arctic King butterhead
Provencal winter mix (a nice mix of winter hardy greens)


Kale- Winter Red

Broccoli- Rudolph early sprouting

Beets-flat of Egypt

Chard- Fordhook Giant Swiss chard

Carrot- Merida
Autumn king
Yaya

Little Hints

Before I winter over my garden I take a trowel and stir up the soil and destroy any cut worms, or other under the soil bugs! It's worth it to me to keep the bugs under control naturally

Got green tomatoes? if you don't see signs of blight then remove any blooms, any un-needed green and see if those 4 days of sunshine next week do it. I hear it will be in the 70's yeah! If that doesn't work collect the green tomatoes and do one of the following:

1. Make green relish
2. make fried green tomatoes they are yummy
3. dip the tomatoes in a 9/1 water to bleach solution dry and put in a paper bag with one uncut apple.
Check the bag every week removing the spoils or the conquests.

Donna's wisdom: Everything comes in a cycle, Bugs have theirs, air and water currents have theirs, we have ours. We garden with the hope that we can adjust to the cycle already in place without us! We plant everything we love and we only get what can survive the cycle then upon it. We have to love gardening for the hope of possibility.

Fonnell's widsom......don't worry if your garden pays for itself now. If you were hungry and you didn't know how to grow anything then who is going to feed you? By your third year of paying attention to the garden you will have gained so many skills it will pay for itself. Do you think you would have any veggie or fruits to buy at the store if the farmers felt it payed for itself? Good question. Some times it does, sometimes it doesn't

Donna is a senior citizen, once the superintendent of the floral for the Evergreen State fair and a very wise gardening friend of mine.

Savory Pull-apart Bread

Savory Pull-Apart bread

I served this at our get together and it wasn't my best one so try the recipe and make it yummy. This comes off the Bisquick recipe site and there are a lot of other good recipes using veggies.

10 sun-dried tomato halves (not packed in oil)
2 cups original Bisquick mix (I make my own)
3/4 cups milk
a mix of cheeses (what ever you have on) hand 8 ozs
..................
All these items can be substituted with what ever comes from the garden
fresh items should be saute' to remove moisture and caramelize the sugars.
I do it in a big frying pan. I chop every thing finely so the recipe goes together fast. My family loves this for an afternoon snack.


3/4 cup roasted bell pepper (drain the jar and chop finely
1 tablespoon of chopped fresh oregano (1 teas dried)
1 tablespoon of chopper fresh basil (1 teas dried)
Herbs of your choice
artichoke quarters, dried and chopped
1-3 garlic cloves finely chopped
Onions, shallots
2 tablespoons olive oil

Heat over 425 degrees
Grease 9x9x2 pan

Cover dried tomatoes with boiling water. Let stand for 10 minutes, drain and chop finely.


Mix Bisquick mix, tomatoes, half the cheese and the milk in a medium bowl. Stir until a dough forms, be careful not to over mix.

In another bowl mix: remaining cheese, the saute' veggies, the herbs and oil.

In your greased 9x9 drop half the dough by tablespoons closely together in an irregular pattern in the pan. spoon half of the cheese mixture over the dough. Drop remaining dough over cheese and then top with the rest of the cheese mixture.

Bake for 20 minutes of until golden brown. Serve warm

I learn more each year

I went to the Seattle pops with some gardening friends on Sat and I never fail to learn something more. So here is a great hint we talked about.

You have tomato plants with lots of green tomatoes? Start removing any blossoms, and get all the extra small growth off the plant. This makes it easier for the plant to work on only the fruit that is there and unripened. So go pinch those blossoms and see if it works.

POTATOES!

I planted German Butterball, an heirloom, Russian Banana also an heirloom, you can see the 4-5" fingers in the box.
There are purple Viking and Yukon Gold in the box also.

TODAY WAS HARVEST DAY
I've been spacing out the collection of food
The garlic before fair
The onions after fair
and now two of the cans of potatoes
that seemed to have the hardest time growing.

The plants had been attacked by something, long ago some of the green could barely grow while they struggled they flowered. I only hoped there would be some potatoes to collect. With two days of dry weather I decided today was the best I could do and I got my tarp out and dumped the two cans. One can did very well with a large harvest but medium size potatoes. The other can did very well also but the only potatoes that got very big were the reds. All the rest are new potato size. Because of the infection I saw on the plants I am putting all plant bits in a plastic bag to go out in the trash. NO COMPOSTING


These potatoes could have trouble being stored because of the attach on the plants so I will have to be sure and eat these 113 yummies in the next two weeks. Not hard to do with their size. The soil, in the 2 trash cans, was wet so the potatoes are still holding onto the mel's mix but after a day or so drying I will brush them all off.
I will make sure they are dry and then bag them in mesh bags.

How about you? What are you harvesting?

Sept 23......OK I've now harvested all 5 cans
The one can on the North part of the yard had the fewest potatoes
The cans I gave the most compost to had the biggest
All and all the cans all did well just smaller
My favorite potato so far is the finger potatoes.

August food tasting

Oh what a nice morning we had! Well food was involved that was certainly a nice part. We talked about the gardening problems and there was no shortage. Doesn't this make you really value those people who farm for a living! We toured Amy's garden and talked about what to plant now....right now.

We will be having a Sept meeting to talk about putting your garden to bed correctly for the winter.

Here are a few pointers for right now:

1. Harvest the herbs before they go to seed.
You can cut them in serving sizes and freeze them in water in an ice-cube tray. Don't have a tray save a foam egg carton. Label your bags and toss those herb cubes in freezer bags for winter tasty!
You can dry your herbs and then blend them finely to use in a shaker. This is best down at a low temp in a good food dryer. I can give you instructions if your dryer didn't come with any.

2. you can also process your leaf crops, string bean and pea crops. Sometimes we over plant and sometimes we just can't eat any more! I freeze most of mine after blanching them.

I set up a big pot for hot water, a big bowl for ice water, and my salad spinner. Get out your freezer bags or airless bag processor. I go cut my kale etc bring it in and wash it, cut it in the size I want. Heat water to boiling and keep at a rolling boil. Toss in all the produce at once, set timer

Leaves very light 2 minutes
Heavy leaves 3 min
peas, green 1 1/2 min.
beans 3 minutes
squash 3 min.
Broccoli 5 min 3 if cut up smaller

Boil the whole time required. You can keep reusing the same water, just return to a boil each batch. Remove produce from boiling water and put into the bowl of ice water. stir around to cool it off. let it sit in the ice water for the same amount of time as you boiled it. Put into salad spinner and spin as much as possible to dry it. Leaves can be spread on wax paper and put into the freezer to pre-freeze before bagging. If you just fill the bad without pre-freezing you will have a big ice block of kale etc. Bag and put into the freezer for yummy winter eating.

Everyone promises to share the recipes from today but first here is the beet recipe everyone has wanted. Enjoy!

This favorite recipe of mine comes from an old Ortho book call "All about Pickling"

Beet Pickles

2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoons whole allspice
1 1/2 teas salt
2 sticks cinnamon
3 1/2 cups distilled white vinegar
1 1/2 cups water
3 quarts of small beets

1. Wash beets. Leave roots and 2 inches of stems so they won't bleed. Cook until tender in a large pot of water. Remove from water and slip the skins off while warm, trim off stems.

2. Combine the rest of the ingredients, simmer for 15 minutes but never boil the spices.

3. Cut the beets any shape you'd like. I waffle cut in med slices for relish trays and sandwiches. I cube some for topping salads etc. Pack into clean hot jars.

4. Bring liquid back to barely a boil and pour over the beets. I run a knife around to lift the air bubbles up and I add more liquid until 1 inch from the top.

5. Seal and process in boiling water bath for 30 minutes. These are like heaven in the middle of winter and beautiful at the Christmas table.

the pickling liquid will save in the fridge a few days if you need to wait for more harvest.

updates for the coming season

So here are some things you might want to know:

Potatoes should be in bloom or nearly finished (remember our micro-climates) When they bloom that signals the plant to start making potatoes. So if you want tiny new potatoes just wait a couple of weeks from the bloom. If you want nice big potatoes then wait until Sept or later when the plant completely dies down. Clear it up as it does so and then wait a nice week to dump the can. Let's hope it's not raining.

Next is peas. No where else in the U.S is peas a summer crop but here in the northwest. I'm sure everyone else thinks we are crazy to be complaining in nearly August that our peas are starting to yellow and die down. So harvest what you have and be glad. Remember you can plant something else. Peas are a yellow, spring card so no tears please!

I ordered my fall variety seeds and they have arrived. Fall beets, fall kale, fall carrots, etc. August is the month to fill in the garden blanks with the orange fall crops. My favorite being kale which is heavenly only after a fall frost! There are fall salad mix seeds too. Look at your seed catalog and find something to plant for fall.

Next bit of business too far ahead for some to think but garlic we must talk about garlic and shallots. I have harvested all of mine and it is dried and today it went into mesh bags for storage. It gives me a solid feeling to have these two bags of garlic. A center of my cooking. If you order your garlic plants too late they will be sold out. We get our garlic in time to plant them in late Sept. early Oct. Plan a spot they can go in your garden. They get tall, they stay in the ground until late June to late July. Plan ahead and order them in the next couple of weeks.

Remember to add compost to your squares each time you remove a plant and get ready to add a new one. Just a scoop or two. Here is my list of what I'm doing in my garden:

1. sprayed the potatoes for rust spot and the squash for white leaf mold
2. blanched and froze several bags of peas but not near as much as in years past
3. Am watching the little tiny bush beans, the tiny peppers and tiny zucchini in three colors!
4. Collecting the over planting of Kale and blanching and freezing
5. Watering daily. Mels mix is not like your soil, it's 6 inches up off the ground and it dried out in so much heat. You don't use as much water to get it wet but I do have to water all pots and square foot mels mix daily.
6. I still collect lettuce and replant both the choi's and lettuce as I eat it. My chives are going crazy and I'm sharing them with everyone.
7. Have my eye's on the onions. We are eating the ones too close to one another. Very yummy as is the garlic. I put some mels mix over the onions that got too exposed. With mel's mix being so light I won't stop the onions from growing as big as they like. Onions are harvested when the tops die, don't let them make blooms it causes the onions to rot ready to make seed!
8. ordered my fall/winter seeds and my garlic for fall planting.
9. Ate two yellow cherry tomatoes. yum
10. Herbs are doing better so finally I am collecting them. We had some great thyme on some veggies last night
11. Tied the potato branches that were beginning to brake into a nice bundle to hold them up.
12. Tied the onions up so they wouldn't droop down to collect slugs
13 yes I'm still doing my nightly slug walks.
14. I've planted beets where the garlic was I'm craving pickled beets!

What am I eating, garlic, shallots, kale, peas, chard, spinach, 2 tiny sweet tomatoes, choi's, lettuce, broccoli, basil, beet greens, onions all kinds, leeks. Raspberries (I'm keeping them wet so they don't dry up) oh tonight we ate a green zucchini and soon a yellow one!

Tell me what you are harvesting

Sweet peas

Rainbow Chard

I'm back
I had a great vacation!

I came home to a big green garden. Amazing how much growth takes place with a little heat. It's what I hope for a couple months of every summer.
I read the square foot gardening chat and some places are harvesting such wonderful veggies and I feel jealous.
So
Let's see what wonderful things we can grow in the Northwest.
Tell me what you have been harvesting and how it has been to eat it!

Sweet peas among the other peas

The peas have been doing good and I've harvest a good amount and so have my garden helpers while I was on vacation. I planted sweet peas among my eating peas and the fragrance is heavenly.

I've been eating my lettuce for months and I keep planting more and eating more so that goes on with success. My herbs are now happy and sturdy enough for harvest. Today I hope to put my hand into one of the trash cans of potatoes and get some baby ones...let you know what happens with that

Potato can in bloom


kale

Kale

I've had a bumper crop of kale and it is lovely soft kale for salad. I like to put it into everything, stir fry, soup, salad, smoothies. All good. I've been collecting beet leaves for greens and some chard which is still a bit small. We ate the over wintered broccoli and still are. Yes they are small but that seems to be the way of things this year. What are we missing? Heat units which are increasing.

beans in bloom bush variety

Onions looking great I'm not letting them go to seed, just snap off the bloom


Nasturtiums perfect size leaves for salad



Some kind of squash in bloom




Garlic is all harvested and tasting really good
I clean them when I use them by removing the dirty dry layer of covering



Here are the eating peas


I've harvested all the cherries and am still working on the raspberries which will go on and on!


Now tell me what you are eating and how your garden is going!
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Blogger Kevin said...

We've harvested tons of lettuce for salad, radishes, carrots, broccoli, cilantro, and peas.

Everything else is growing nicely, except our cucumbers are growing very slowly - they had it rough early on with the cool weather and slugs. We lost a few onions to slugs too.

Broccoli that gives and gives

I planted a mix of broccoli last fall and early spring it was up and mid spring it was dinner, it must have been one of the kinds that makes lots of little shoots for eating later and that is what we have been doing. There has been more little shoots than I have seen before. So here is the list of the mix, wonder which one it was!

Hybrid Fall Broccoli blend:Everest, Packman, Southern Comet and Belstar. Southern comet does side shoots and so does Packman. My guess is on packman.

Picking all the pretty lettuce

I love this pretty trout lettuce, see the little spots? They belong there! This type of lettuce also grew for me in the winter

Just a few of the kinds of lettuce I took from my salad box for dinner last night

Wonderful Garden Tours! Take a peek

Today was our monthly gardening meeting and we drove to 5 of our members houses to view their gardens.

I must say this was my favorite meeting. To see what everyone has done in such a short amount of time was such a joy! Here let me take you on a mini peek of the gardens we saw today.

This is Rebecca's box of hoped for strawberries. We are all sure next year the box will be full!

As you will see in the next two photo's Rebecca has really embraced the square foot idea of a lot of variety in your small space. It was amazing to see how many fun things are growing in her squares including corn.

It's funny once that thumb gets the green going it spreads all over, this lawn is what Rebecca is most proud of. Good going!

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Shelley used her space very wisely by putting in a long square foot garden. Not only does it look great it uses space really great. Her garden is in a good spot, it has a wooden fence behind it which protects it from the North and the Southern warmth has a clear path.
Her garden was growing so great!
Nice job Shelley.

Look a ripe strawberry! wow

The spacing on this garden is the way French intensive gardening should go but if you find yourself with too many carrots, beets, etc. Take your scissors and reach in and snip out as many as it takes to space the carrots. I have some tiny Fiskars for this, works perfect and then the carrots will have space to become carrots. I leave the healthiest plants.
You did a wonderful job on your garden Shelley!

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Welcome to Hyde Park...Yes Jana has named her garden beds what a delightful idea. As you look at her garden you should know how much work she and her husband have gone to. When you live deep in a forest it's not easy to claim some of that property for yourself. They have worked so hard and the gardens are amazing. I can't wait to see them full of plants.

Go for it Jana!

These are the pop bottle slug traps that we put on the blog earlier. While we talked about this other ideas came out. Right now our abundant amount of rain has us weary with the number of slugs in our gardens. Here are some of the ideas that were offered.

Put out orange peels the slugs gather to the peels and in the morning you remove the bundle (better do this early slug head for cool hidden places when it begins to warm)

Fill little jar lids with a mixture or water and yeast. It doesn't take much yeast and this will attract the slugs right to this tasty mixture instead of your plants. If your garden isn't covered you might fill your lids with rain pretty fast but this isn't normal weather right now.

Some bugs, earwigs and slugs hide inside the PVC pipes. It's wise to fill the end with the spray plastic foam. That way you eliminate another place for bugs to hide!

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Now we are off to Jamie's garden.
She is an adventurous gardener and has put in Asparagus and even placed a deep pot for her parsnips. We were SHOCKED as the neighbor dog plowed through her plants
while we stood there. What a helpless feeling!

I suggest these tiny fences. just to make sure fast moving dogs go around. This won't keep out rabbits and deer but it might make kids and dogs go around.

As you can see they fold up very easy to store and you can add as many links as you need they come in boxes back in the gardening areas.

Jamie's garden is bordered by stone, it looks very decorative right along her driveway.
She hope the warm driveway will help the plants along. Good plan!

Here is the famous parsnips pot. Have you had parsnip fries? Yummy

It is amazing how much space this garden has for planting.
It's not always easy to tell until you start growing things

This clever frame lifts to let you get into your plants. Jamie will be covering it to keep
the wild rabbits out.

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The last garden on our route was Laura's.
I am happy to have been a part of the beginnings of this garden as I gave the work for a square foot garden in a holiday gift exchange and Laura got it!

Laura's family loves flavor in their food and so she has such tasty herbs and plants growing.
I'd eat at her table! Yes good cooks know the magic in their gardens!

This is Laura's first year on this property and look what nice surprises are appearing!
It is also her first year to have a baby
and how neat they got that garden all planted amidst having their son!

With these two big garden boxes there will be some wonderful veggies I'm sure.

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While we were holding our weekly "Get Started" meeting several of our Internet viewers started their gardens so enjoy an additional walk through my sisters garden. She is in the Southern area of California and so are several of our readers.
I don't think too much rain is their issue but I welcome their comments and photos.

I love that square foot gardening brings family all together. This is Georgia's grand daughter and grandpa making the box. I didn't even know they were following us along!

It's cooler in the evening there and it looks like they have finished mixing their soil
and are very happy to be done!

Wow it's a beauty.

My sister has knee problems and this nice high garden will be perfect for her!

We suggested she rotate off the brick wall to cool things down for the plants growing on the vertical and we had her raise her vertical up higher so her beans would have plenty of space.

She moved her squash into a tub, it looks like it's getting too much sun.
Can you believe any one could get too much sun? Not us!

They had a big surprise arrive during the garden building. One day in sweeps all these honey bees! what do you do with an instant hive?

After a bunch of phone calls Georgia found out NO ONE wants your bees. Maybe they are worried about the African bees coming up from South America, they have arrived in parts of Southern California. Let's hope they left as fast as they appeared!

Her tomatoes are ready for eating but it's not her doing it.
I remember paying Clint and Shannon when they were kids to pick these
monsters off the plants.

Wow these peppers look great!

I sent my sister some bean seeds I hope they do well for her.

Yes I've always thought warm climates just had too many bugs!
This is what happens after you see those darting white butterflies! This is why I put floating covers on my broccoli and cabbages and Choi's.

WELL THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR SHARING
YOUR LOVELY FIRST SQUARE FOOT GARDENS!

We'd love to see more on our next trip around.