First Snap Peas!

This is the first flower of the first snap peas this season. So pretty!

Unwelcome Garden Pests!

 Imported Cabbage Worm!! These are on the red cabbage, I also found them on the bottom of the broccoli leaves. You may have to look really hard to find them but if your leaves have holes and/or are chewed up, this is probably the problem. Look for the white moth/butterfly with a black dot on the wings in your garden and get rid of it and any of it's green velvet worms!

Cool Weather Crops-A Whole Different Garden!



Peas after one week.




Red Cabbage




Spinach

 The winter garden is a whole different experience from the spring garden, so far. There's a lot said about delayed gratification, but I guess cool weather means slower growth. That's ok, it's just different.

And...let's talk about pests. Slugs, birds,squirrels and clover. All have attacked and it's only been twenty-four days!

We've added an "overflow" area. In the few weeks before the winter planting we dug up an area by the fence and added in food scraps to prepare the soil for extra plants. It's flat, not like the raised beds. Evidently that's an open invitation to slugs. I tried beer in a shallow pan-didn't work. The next night I went out with a flashlight and picked them out-Gross! I have tons of oyster shells because I can't throw them out (hoarder?)so we added an oyster shell border, knowing that they don't like sharp edges. Can't really tell if that's working because they ate all of the lettuce and most of the chard in 3 nights. the next thing that I'm going to try is replanting the lettuce and bordering each plant with pennies, since they also don't like copper.

I can hardly wait for broccoli, cabbage and peas!!!

Ok my bird loving friends, please help me identify this gorgeous predator visiting (I hope he's just visiting) the garden. Hopefully he'll scare off the squirrels and not snack on my hummingbird friends!

Fall/Winter Crops

After 5 months it's time to plant the Winter Garden already. We planted the cool weather plants on Sunday, when it was like a million degrees outside. Here's a look at the new garden:

Doesn't look like much yet...but just wait!

Chard

I can hardly wait to see how broccoli grows.



Peas already look like fun!

The Final Harvest

September 29, 2012. The final harvest of the Spring/Summer Crop. Whoa! There is so much more than I expected. The plants really camouflage their fruit. The way the program is designed, the first year we follow the plan, just like it's given to us. (pretty much) So, the plan says to pull out the spring plants to make room for the cool weather plants. It was pretty much finished anyway but look at everything that we harvested!

Canning Workshop

One of the optional projects that graduating La Meza Verde familes chose was food preservation. So, last Friday Sylvia came down from San Francisco with her husband, Bill, and brought all the things that we needed.

Laura, Sylvia, Debbie, Patty



Laura, Dora, Sylvia

Sylvia, Dora and the stuff.

Sylvia, teaching as usual.

We had the workshop at my house. Because it's so close and  there's a stove it fit the criteria. Altogether there were 10 of us if you count the boys. That's the most people that I've had in my house in a long time.
I spent 3 days giving my dingy kitchen a much needed cleaning!!I had been nervous but by Friday AM it felt so good to have everything decluttered and clean. Luis pitched in and cleaned and painted(?) the bathroom and washed the outsides of the windows, even though it was his birthday.      
By the end we had made pickeled jalepenos with carrots and veggies, strawberry and blackberry jam. It was so much fun to cook with other people! Sylvia was awesome! I was inspired!         
Since then I've made a birthday cake with the strawberry jam in the middle, canned a jar of green beans, made zucchini parmesean and I might make biscuits tonight to go under the blackberry jam!

Malin, Debbie, Sylvia

My idea of canning involved bushels of fruit or veggies, steam, sweat and so much time. It never occured to me to just put up 1 or 2 jars at a time. What a concept. Thanks Ladies.