Wow, your garden is looking GREAT, Ill-Man!! I love your pavers around the island bed. Ooooh, I'm eager to get back out in my yard and finish cleaning things up and replanting. You have inspired me, though I don't know if I will be adding many veggies. I'm happy with shrubs and flowers, I guess.

I'll bet you are going to have some more fantastic meals with all your homegrown produce. (Love the shark and hushpuppies, too. Yum!)

Marcia

Beautiful pics of your very successful garden!
Willy

Hey,Professor!
Everything looks great. As Marcia said,the pavers around the island really looks good.Nice job.
Felix

Beautiful greens, Michael. I especially love the dinosaur kale. Never heard of it. What does it taste like?

I don't usually show much of my veggie garden, but these are pics from now and a couple from last month. This is the most success I've had from my garden.

I had so much broccoli from Thanksgiving to last week. The heads grew much larger than I'd ever had, but the plants are very slow to produce second heads and they are smaller than I'm used to getting from second heads. I just planted more seedlings. Wish I'd done so a month ago!

My meyer lemon has kept us supplied with lemonade since November and still has a lot left to give. Great big, juicy lemons. I love this little, not-so-attractive tree.

Pak choi just getting large enough to thin and use for stir fries. Closer in is a curly leaf lettuce and further back is a bit of basil doing just ok. Will plant more once the weather is reliably warmer.

Snow peas. Not a very big harvest. The vines are rather frail. I mostly eat them in the garden while I water, but there are enough now that I will throw them in the stir fry this week. Very tasty.

Collards always do well for me and are so pretty and easy. However, I am lazy about fixing them. I mostly put a little in stews or stir fries, soups. I need to do more with them.

These are the tomatoes harvested a couple of days ago. Not as pretty as most of the ones you all grow. The grapes are so tasty, but the medium sized ones are just ok. Nice, but not the best. I also almost drown them in Bt and they still manage to get a bad spot here and there. I can only grow them in earthboxes and the vines are ugly and pitiful. I've been meaning to show you so you can tell me if there is still hope or if I should start anew.

My minneola tangelo is not a very pretty tree. It is in the butterfly garden and always a tad sickly looking. Yield is marginal at about 40-50 yearly, but the fruit are to die for. I need to plant another one. We love them.

I also have onions, some herbs and other lettuces I'll save till next time.

Anna

Not as beautiful as many of yours, but here they are.

Anna

Anna
You have a well supplied garden, very nice!
Keep up with the good work.
Willy

anna, i knew you were a fab flower grower, but now i see that you have a handle on the veg world, too.

i think the secret to good pea harvests is to plant them every ten days or so, sowing them among and around the peas you already have going. pull mature plants as soon as they stop producing. if things get crowded, there's little in the world that's better than some pea tendrils sauteed in butter... like spinach, only it tastes good.

Anna,all the veggies are so good. I love cream of broccoli soup and tempura batter fried broccoli.
The citrus are great. I was at the doctor's today and my wife saw a magazine with tangelos and said she would like us to plant one. Another I like to plant is a satsuma.
Felix

Beautiful photos,great gardeners also!

oh, come on! there must be more veg gardeners out there... wriyg?????????????????????????????

I was just about to post how sad it is that my yard has nary a veggie in it, when I remembered I do have a FEW "edibles," anyway. Does a small stand of fennel count?

Yeah, I know I grow it for the butterflies, but I COULD eat it, if I wanted to.

How about a really sad looking little sprig of purple sage?

And, hey...aren't violas edible, too? Why I was growing them just for that purpose. No, really. Honest.

Okay, I confess. NO VEGETABLES at all, I'm afraid. I guess I will have to try to do better this year. Sorry, Michal!

*goes off, hanging head in shame, and feeling totally inadequate in a vegetarian sort of way*

Marcia

Looks great Michael, you too Anna. My garden is still a work in progress...trying to find ways increase production vertically. I'm down to just beans and tomatoes now, pulled the cukes and zukes with plans to start again in early February. Here's a picture I posted over on Corrie's thread.

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WOWEEEE, Tom! Fantastic! I love your set up for your 'maters, and what a harvest! Those pictures should make Michael very happy!

Marcia

No photos I'm afraid but we're eating turnips, cabbage, and broccoli out of the garden right now. The onion crop is coming on strong so it looks like we're going to have a good year there. My sugar snap peas just started blossoming.

In the citrus fruit area our Key limes are mostly finished now and the Tahiti limes nearly so. The lemons are still doing well. These are all container trees and not real big yet but they sure put on the fruit.

Now that they've got such nice new leaves I need to photo a few of them for the blog.

.....Alan.

tom, remind me what you're using as supports? your beans look GREAT. that spot must get a tremendous amount of sun for them to be that lush at this time of the year.

Hi I'll-Man,

The supports are Cattle Panel and T-posts. For the tomatoes I had this brilliant idea to make bungee cords so I could move the cords up as the plants were growing. Sounded good in theory but as the plants got heavy with maters the vines started collapsing as the bungees were just too flexible...several of my poor maters that were 6' shrunk to 3', talk about the worst case of osteoporosis ;-) I'll go back to using 3' rods across the CP this season....

The beans are in full sun and very productive....

Dinner Tonight:
Tilapia baked in parchment paper with lemon slices and olive oil, roasted baby carrots, beets, and yellow peas.
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Willy

Are some of your carrots red, Willy? They looks so pretty! All of those veggies!!

Marcia

Beautiful veggies, everybody!

Tomncath, what size containers are you growing your tomatoes in? I'm curious about those supports too. Looks like a great system.

I'm growing mostly greens this year: nasturtiums, red russian kale, parsley, chard, collards, romaines, and chervil--and other herbs.

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Here's a pasilla pepper. To tell you the truth, the flavor so far is nothing too special. It sort of reminds me of the taste of canned El Paso chilies I ate when I was a kid. But it's a good back up pepper. Like most Mexican peppers I've tried, it has more disease resistance and better form than than regular sweet peppers. It has some heat, but nothing terrible.

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This is an interesting snow pea I'm having luck with this year called "Golden Sweet." Got it from Pinetree. (I'm wondering if it's the same golden pea pictured above?) Notice the flowers are purple, not white. Because the peas are golden, they are much easier to see to pick. And the taste is more delicate than any snow pea/sugar snap I've tried so far. So far no powdery mildew or other problems with the vines. But my success may be due to this nice cool winter we're having. I've had quite a few failures with snow peas in the past when the winters were too warm.
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This is an aji dulce--a different species from most sweet peppers. It's like a Habernero with no heat. The fruity-smokey flavor is so strong that it's almost overwhelming. I'm beginning to think it NEEDS more heat to balance out the taste. But the plant is very healthy and I think ornamental.

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Marcia
The carrots are purple, I also have some white. The beets are red and white inside, I also have yellow beets. The picture came out dark on the side of the beets, so you can't see very much. These are all from a container. The beds have more varieties.

Castorp
The peas that you have look exactly like mine, purple flowers and all. I think I got it from another source, I have to look it up.
I tried last year aji dulce and I have similar opinion like you. Have you tried aji amarillo (yellow)? It is the best in my opinion fruity and spicy at the same time. You can also get in powder and is a good substitution when you don't have fresh.

Willy

I haven't tried amarillo, but I have a yellow variety called "Trinidad Perfume." It also has a strong flavor, with no heat, but more citrusy. I like to use it and aji dulce in combination for different pepper effects--but sparingly.

I'm seriously considering just going with a regular hot habanero type next time. I realize they are VERY hot, but I figure I can just use a little as both the flavor and the heat go a long way.

Beautiful Willie, looks like I gave on carrots to soon. After years of failure because I'm too warm we get a cool season like this where I could probably could have grown any of the cool season stuff :-( Same with the sugar snaps, three failures...I just bought and sowed some Super Sugar Snaps this weekend, we'll see.

Hi Bill, very nice too. Man, I'd really like to grow some Sugar Snaps! I've seen several posts that large indeterminates require 10-15 gallons for adequate root growth but in my two seasons in containers I have not had any problem growing them in 7 gallon containers, and this season I've put two Jetsetters and two Brandy Boys in 5 gallon cheaters (approximately 4.5 gallons) and they produced tons of maters...their tap roots did grow out of their containers and through the holes of the bigger containers into the surrounding soil though. Still, I'm beginning to think it's not so much the container size as the ability to provide adequate nutrients and oxygenation....

I've got quite a few peppers but with the exception of one Big Bertha they are all Marconi's and other various sweet Italian types....

Tom

These pictures are from a few weeks ago. In October I cut up a few red potatoes that had sprouted.

I posted a thread about Swiss chard before I saw this one. Guess I missed it earlier. What a treat to see everyones gardens!

Christine

Holey Sox, you guys make me embarassed I posted a tiny bowl of tomatoes on another thread. GEEZE, look at all the fabulous produce you all are producing!

Very nice Christine!

Heres my pickins from tonight....

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Coke can added for scale

Coke can added for scale
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How I envy those of you with high speed internet connections .
I have no options other than slooooow dial up .
Congrats to all the veggie gardeners extraordinaire - I am imagining how gorgeous your produce looks and tastes .

Beautiful veggies Tom!

Hey gang- it's been some time since I have posted. But I finally got my act together and created a picasa account. Fall garden is going great. The early cold snaps back in Oct/Nov have virtually eliminated all pests over here- it's been a nice carefree few months out back. :-)

I made a slideshow of the veggies.....hope I link to it correctly!

Naomi

Here is a link that might be useful: fall/winter garden

Very nice Naomi! I'm getting hungry again :-)

naomi
great garden! love those gorgeous Black from Tula's. I have some seedlings started of them, grew them a year ago with poor results but they get another chance.

and your greens look wonderful too. yeah howdy you have no pests, not a blemish to be seen. calzone, yum.

I'm not sure. I need advice. I have a small "test-plot" (my 1st garden) while house is being completed & final grading about to happen.

Yesterday I went to check & remove covers after the cold bout and I discovered my collard greens (grown from leftover stalks of bought ones) have got many buds on them - I think they're buds. And when I checked for soil moisture, I found quite a few potatoes "surfacing" just under the mulch. I buried 1 sometime ago.

Will I get collard seeds if they flower? Can I pick the potatoes to cook? Do potatoes need to ripen?