Anybody else working on their winter garden?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

I've been getting a bed ready to plant my garlic, and am just about ready. Dug the red clover under, expanded the bed and edged it with some of the 6 inch across or so maple logs left over from cutting down the tree last winter. Still going to scatter some fertilizer and maybe mix in some compost, then it's time for the garlic to go in.

Now that the bed's bigger, I'm thinking I'll have space to add some non-garlic, but I'm not sure just what I'll go with.

Who else is working on what?

[Warren Stupidity]

1. I planted Brussel Sprout seedlings a few weeks ago.

They are doing fine and should be good late November early December.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

6. Everyone inspired me, but I don't want to run out of time, so I hit the garden store.

I just picked up 4 packs of brussels sprouts, cauliflower and cabbage to pop in. As is typical, it started raining while I was out there, so I'll wait until the rain lets up to put em in.

[NJCher]

2. garden greens

I planted kale and lettuces extensively back around the first of September. I had actually planted earlier, but a lot of my seeds didn't come up. I have lots of plants going now, and I hope they survive Joachim.

Spinach, too, of course. I also planted some malabar vining spinach, and it looks like it has come up.

You are smart to plant garlic, Erich. So much store garlic comes from China, pollution capitol of the world.

I was wishing today that I had planted turnips. Fresh turnips,


Cher

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

7. I mainly just plant it because I'm picky about the taste.

I grow Inchelium Red, which won a few awards, and roasts up very nicely. I was so irritated - a month or two back, I actually boxed up most of my harvest for the year to send to friends down in New Mexico, and the post office managed to actually lose that box. Somewhere around a hundred heads wasted, grrr. Glad I kept enough back to plant.

[DirtyHippyBastard]

3. It is mostly root crops for me

I am in zone 5. In the last week I planted garlic (3 kinds) and have added a couple new onion types that are typically planted in autumn; Egyptian walking onion, and yellow potato onions, both planted from sets (bulbs). The only non-allium I plant in Fall is corn salad (aka mache, Valerianella locusta) to get some winter greens for salads.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

8. I just can't seem to get onions to grow.

I've tried several times, and not had any luck so far.

[ian cameron dromore]

16. I had great luck first time

I Just bought the cheapest onion sets (baby onions) in a pound shop but spent the most time and a little more money on the soil. I have a heavy clay soil which I enriched with my own garden produced compost, lots of sand to loosen the clay and spent three days double digging (two spades depth deep) to ensure a good deep bed.

I also made liquid manure from Nettles and Comfrey and fed all the veg and got great results.

What type of soil, or plot do you have?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

17. Mostly dense clay.

I spade in compost and sterilized manure and recently added ash from burnt maple and cherry, but haven't really mixed in sand.

[ian cameron dromore]

18. Soil is the key

Clay surprisingly is full of nutrients but you need a lot of other material to break it up. Sand works great as it stops the clay binding together again. For a veg plot 4 foot by 13 foot i added 2 bags of sand (approx 40 kg). Fork this in with additional compost and you should be set. Just ensure you have enough depth for the roots, i.e. dig up the soil quite deep (two spade depths) and also add height with whatever wood you can make a box out of. i used old scrap planks lying around garden.

I haven't tried growing Onions from seeds but just buy the bags from the cheapest place I can, I planted Onions last year and still had some of them for Xmas dinner. (Even found some in the ground that survived winter as I was digging over the beds getting ready for the new season.

Good luck with it and if you have any queries get back to me.

[libodem]

4. I can't get through my pumpkin patch

I planted some lettuces and spinach but haven't seen hide nor hair of any seedlings. I think they may have been eaten.

I got one cantaloupe. Still have zucchini and yellow squash and tomatos going. One tomato was all I planted and it must have spread 6 feet. Crazytown.

[libodem]

5. I only got about 5

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Different angle:

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The crazy tomato:

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[japple]

9. We planted turnips, turnip greens, kale and curly mustard to eat and Austrian

Winter Peas to use as a cover crop. We may put in something else before the end of October if the rain ever lets up.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

10. Dogs kept running into my bed to eat dirt, so I've put up some ad-hoc fencing.

Luckily I still had a bunch of smaller trimmed limbs from cutting down the cherry tree to use.

My taste palette doesn't run as much to the bitter and spicy as yours seems to; I'm sticking with bland. Well, and the garlic, but I use a lot of garlic, so that doesn't really seem 'spicy' to me.

[japple]

14. Turnips are sweet, crunchy, and add so much depth to soups, potato dishes.

They are delicious raw, grated into slaw, or used much like carrots. They are one of my favorites.

[japple]

15. Have you tried leeks? We have grown them in the past and hope to get

leek slips in the spring. They come in lots of 60, so we have to find others growers as that is too many for the two of us. Will get them started in early spring.

[alfie]

11. Turnip greens, collards and red romaine so far

Need to clean out a place for my multiplying onions and some garlic.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

12. Is there anything special you need to do for onions?

I just have had no luck with them whatsoever. I tried some that I grew from the cores of onions I was cooking with and also got a bunch of the red onion seedlings, and I got absolutely bupkis out of any of them.

[alfie]

13. I dig in some bone meal

I have varying results. These will sprout soon and stay green all winter. I use them as green onions as I need them until they start growing mid spring. They never get bigger than golf to tennis ball size and many will just divide into big marble size. These are the ones I save to replant. They also for, bulbs on top of their stems which can also be planted.

I have never had much luck with the ones that are supposed to get big.