winter gardening

If you wouldn't mind sharing, please let me know what you plant in your winter vegetable garden. We're doing one this year for the first time and just need to know what everyone grows...thanks so much.

You may find this Houston planting chart (Zone 9a/9b) helpful:
http://www.settfest.com/files/DrBobRandallCalendar.png

Thank you!

Cabbage, lettuce mix, kale, swiss chard, onions, chives, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, garlic, celery, parsely, cilantro.

Les

Thank you so much. Have you platned already?

Yes, in pots for setting out. The cabbage is emerging this morning, the chard yesterday, Kale and Mustard was up Mon. and onions Tues. Some of the lettuce is up. Thyme is up. Don't feel rushed on my account.

Next i will roll away the clear plastic from the 'solarized' section of the garden, add some inches of compost, then transplant these things.

http://www.thisland.uiuc.edu/57ways/57ways_15.html

Thanks Les, I do realize we're a bit late for some things. I do have collard greens and green onions already going.

Les, that was a very interesting link, thank you.

I haven't started anything yet. I'm really behind. No excuse really. ;)

hi, weegy. i just potted up two (2) heirloom tomato seedlings yesterday and i have one more to go. i don't have a winter crop; however, my fall-planting homework will be the fingerling potatoes when the seeds arrive.

if feldon has not not started yet, perhaps it's not too late for me to start winter greens...must research.

happy gardening!

I don't think it's too late for either of us moonglow. We have been doing quite a bit of research and hope to get our area cleared and planted very soon. This first year of course will be a trial and error perid.
Thanks for your reply.

talk about trial and error! i found out accidentally that crook neck squash and zucchini are OK in pots. it was a good discovery since i like the idea of square foot gardening. i don't have much space.

Hi weegy, I don't live too far from you and with all our 90 to 100 degree weather, I thought it was still too hot to plant the winter garden. Watching Paul James on TV, (he is in zone 6), he said to refrigerate the seed and water the dirt to fool it into feeling cooler. I'm guessing mid to late October here in SoCal are close to early Sept in a lot of places. Remember how hot it was late Oct when all the fires were burning?

Hi quilty! We are still in the midst of digging up an old flower garden to replace with vegetables so we are not even close to planting. We plan on digging the clumps of flowers up this week and then prepare the area. I do remember how hot it was that October...we happened to be at the River that same weekend!
Thanks and keep me posted as to when and what you're planting....inquiring minds want to know!

Hi to all the "high Zoner's". I did plant some of the "winter" veggies!! The Saturday before last we had a high of 69 degrees!! Happy, happy. :) I planted beets, more radishes, cabbage, broccoli, sweet peas and Texas larkspur flowers to keep the bees happy. Alas! the weather warmed up to 80's and even some 90's with more 90's and the hot dry winds coming. :( I am trying to keep them damp and I do have some little fledglings starting, but I hope it's not too hot for them.

Does anyone think shade would be a good thing?

We got our garden in...we planted celery, parsley, romaine (seeds), spinach (seeds), collard greens, broccoli, swiss chard and tomoatoes.
Here's the finished product!
(This used to be my little iris garden but you notice I did slip some irises back in there?!!?!?)

Here's another view..

Weegy - what a nice looking garden! You must not have "big pests" to keep out. My garden has chicken wire all around it making it difficult to get in and out. Yours has such pretty, trim rows. How do you water? I did not see any drip lines and it is so hard to keep them moist & cool (winter veggies - hah - hah) by going out and sprinkling so many times a day.

Thanks guilty! (We're supposed to ask you what you're guilty of!)
My dh waters by hand 2 or 3 times a day, it's still hot here. He lets the water run down the ditches and then sprinkles the top as there are seeds that need to be watered more. We don't have big pests, just little pests, cats and dogs! The birds were sure loving the grubs in the compost!

You make me sound so much more intriguing, but it is Quilty, not Guilty. LOL I'm guilty of sewing quilts! Dogs, cats, gophers, squirrels - those are the big pests I was talking about (or the rare occasion when the horses or goats get loose, but my fence isn't substantial enough to keep them out, should that happen). I have used some "Organic" fertilizers that the dogs especially like to dig into. Then I realized, DUH!, there is bone and blood meal in it!

Yes, I sprinkle at least 3 times a day. I would LOVE to get some of the driptape that come in rolls that I saw in one of the drip irrigation catalogs (am I allowed to say the company name ?) and use that with a timer. It's like if you want to grow vegetable in the Inland Empire, you can't ever leave home for more that a few hours what with our heat

LOL! Quilty not guilty!!! Sorry about that! I think roadrunner is the one that said we need to ask you what you're guilty of!!!
You can say the name of the company, I'd like to see the driptape. Our dogs are little, I thought you meant deer or something of that size! We're in tract housing so all we can have is dogs and cats. Our neighbors tried to have a rooster but that didn't go over too well here..I swear I didn't call the city although at 5 or 6 in the morning, I was awfully tempted!

Just great - I've got folks discussing my possible sins. He-he. I should have kept ya guessing! Our Miniature Pinscher looks like the roadside signs of leaping stags when she jumps over the fence. She can jump as high as the countertops. Deer is at least one problem we don't have. Saw one once in neighbor's yard and I'm sure they are in the Ortega Mts behind us, but we are more likely to have coyotes and mountain lions. Have seen them or their footprints as close as the gate to yard, but not inside. Neighbors on all sides of us cannot say that though.

The driptape I saw was from Drip Works http://www.dripworksusa.com/ttape1.php There may be others, but this is what I saw.

Seems like chickens should be OK - and not so noisy as to give themselves away. Also, rabbits make instant compost.

LOL, you got us taliing quilty! I guess if I would have looked closely I would have seen the "q" I still think guiltygirl is a good one!
Thanks for the link, I'm checking it out.

(Sorry this first one is long... but my concerns do not appear to me, as "Normal." I'll need all the help I can get!)

Reason being, I was careful growing up, not to learn anything about the "farm" part of this family Stock-Farm here in west Texas. That, coupled with a ShortTerm Memory Glitch, just absorbing the ins and outs of successful gardening requires I refer again and again to the written word...

But as a Depression Baby, and WW2 days youngster, I did learn how to barter, milk, and gather eggs and my own game... thus I COULD live "without money." Returned from city living to the farm in 1991, and am prepared to live virtually without the stuff in case the country continues to go completely bananas and I lose Soc Security checks.

Though I am called Pioneer Woman and Health Nut (mostly game and raw or stir fry) only cactus apples and mesquite beans veggies seems a bit rash... Yet, my efforts at gardening have always fizzled -- too big a garden -- too high water bill -- lack of knowledge and stick-to-it-tiveness. (So I haunt FarmersMarkets in season.)

For physical reasons this Go-round, I must garden at waist-hi level.

A few wild bees water with the mules, goats and yellow-jackets. I have "seasoned" chicken and mule manure (My m-in-law had the most beautiful rose garden, using chicken-house "tea."); want no chemicals; have little money for commercial potting soil. (This red clay dirt grew many a bale of good cotton for my daddy -- and the pasture fed the healthiest White Faced calves in the area.) I'll water with rain water this time (cistern and/or 750 gallon water bottle -- maybe some gravity drip).

Come Spring, I hope to have finished a sort of green-house enclosure built -- "Widder-Rigged" -- from my collection of good lumber; old screens and windows. (South / East / West exposure)

When the Feed Store offered broccoli settings for $1, I mixed buckets of the red dirt with a little sand, and some potting soil... set out 4 broccoli seedlings in a big feed tub in a SouthWest corner of an old screened shed (gets sun about 3/4ths of the day now in late October) fenced off against big critters until Spring. (I'll be happy for the Winter, if I get 3 bites of broccoli.)

I'm about to dig out my "Square Foot Gardening" and raised-bed books...

So... will you "prime the pump" for this old brain of mine? And make some suggestions before I completely foul up and get discouraged? (AGAIN!)

Blessings on all of you... MuleMarm in west Texas - (zone 7 -- I think!)