Well, my summer garden was a bit of a bust. We got some tomatoes and basil, but not much else… unless you want to count some random pumpkins growing out of last year’s seeds, and what I think is millet growing from dropped birdseed. I’m guessing on that one, though.
We’re probably going to keep things simple for the fall. Just some broccoli and one variety or another of lettuce. I think after last year’s experiment with unusual varieties of lettuce, my husband is quite willing to go with something we know we like. It just didn’t really work out last year.
I’m really trying to build this habit of growing more food at home. I like knowing what goes on my food as it grows, and its great for the kids. If I grow the right stuff they snack on it quite freely.
I don’t think I’ll try for much more this year. My husband has been resisting the idea of a fall garden, but I think he knows now that I’m serious about it. Not like southern California doesn’t have amazing weather for growing food most of the year, after all.
There’s nothing like a homegrown tomato. We sit around the dinner table and say it tastes like candy.
Unfortunately, Colorado only has a short time for growing– about April/May until the middle of October (and we’re praying for a long summer!)
We eat salad from our garden from about July until maybe mid October. My favorite greens to grow are rainbow chard– it has the density of spinach, and is pretty colorful (green with red veins, etc). We also grow a lot of cherry tomatoes, which are bursting with flavor. This year we also have garlic chives, broccoli greens (still no broccoli flower yet), carrots, tomatillos, jalapenos, and cucumbers. Thankfully we have friends who donate squash to our cause– our butternut squash isn’t ready yet, either. 🙂
Being able to provide food from the garden is really a blessing to our family. We love every bite!
We got squash this year from a friend who had excess. Pretty nice since ours didn’t work out. We had given her one of the excess tomato plants from when we bought them, but it just didn’t thrive. Her yard gets really poor sunlight, so her produce came from yet another friend.
I always say the San Diego area has two seasons, wet and dry, with the dry being much longer than the wet.
You’re so lucky… up here in BC we have a really short growing season. My tomatoes are just now starting to ripen (omg, yum 🙂 I’m going to try garlic and onion outside over the winter, and hope the freezing doesn’t kill them. Meanwhile I’m growing herbs indoors and trying carrots as well… we’ll see how that goes!