Winter Veggies

The winter vegetable garden is humming along...seeming to enjoy the chilly weather. While the broccoli planted in late September is finishing up...

 the seedlings planted in late November are growing nicely. Next winter I will make a note to plant the second round of broccoli a little earlier...in late October or early November to keep the harvest closer together. Last week we planted a few more Cherry Belle radish seeds to keep them going.

One single, solitary tomato bush planted in a container is now setting fruit after having spent a big part of December in the garage instead of the garden. It won't be long before we can enjoy these Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes on our salad.

New tomato seeds have been planted in anticipation of planting in late February.

Here's a good pic of the 1st round of broccoli and the most recently planted in front of it. Leaf lettuce is filling up the salad bowl, while the recently planted romaine is gaining a foothold in the garden.

Don't you just love the varying colors of vegetables? The broccoli is such a pretty color blue and the chartreuse-colored lettuce...just as pretty as any landscape plants in my opinion.

The green onions, leeks and carrots are thriving. More Petite Sweet carrot seeds were put into the ground last week, and I need to pull some leeks and cook up a batch of potato and leek soup.

Growing vegetables in winter seems so much easier to me than any other time. There's less bugs...less disease...and the plants just laugh at frost and freezing temps.

And, in addition...there's a large variety of veggies to choose from...certainly more than I planted. We planted our favorites: broccoli, carrots, collards, radishes, snow peas, lettuce, green onions, spinach, tomatoes in a container, dill, parsley, onion chives, thyme and potatoes.

And, speaking of potatoes...A bag of red, purple and yellow small potatoes...purchased from the supermarket...will be planted on February 14th. Our first crop last year was super easy...and so yummy that we're gonna do it again this year.

As the garden continues to produce...we are enjoying plates of crisp salad straight from the garden, and bowls of hearty soups to warm us up on a cold night.