Never pass up a chance to sit down or relieve yourself. -old Apache saying

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Gardening in February

This has been a milder than normal winter down south as well as much of the nation.  I think we might have gotten below freezing once this winter, down to a scary 29 degrees, for a few hours.  Ooooo.

So, we have continued to garden all through the winter.  We've had a steady supply of carrots, insanely delicious carrots.  Here's another batch we pulled up a couple of days ago.


(remember to click the pics)


We have four other staggered carrot plantings scattered about, so we'll have carrots for a good while longer.


We've also had a nice supply of onions.  We enjoy eating the green tops as much as a bulb below the ground.  The garlic greens are great too, and really strong.  I recently found a bunch of 1015 onions at Lowe's and planted them all over.  Don't need much space for them.


Lettuce has been another winter hit.   


In these six pots are recent plantings of three kinds of lettuce, two types of carrots, and some beets.  All are looking good.


We realized recently that we had a full 12 square feet, at least, of underutilized space in the front yard.  There's a telephone pole in that space, and the water meter access, and we've planted various flowers and shrubs there over the years, but we finally dug most all of it up, piece by piece, laid down some more compost, humus, and Micro-Life, and we will soon plant something....not sure what yet.  Something edible and tasty.  We'll probably have every available space growing something.  Need to make a border first....


Look!  On the roof!!  We have a broccoli head!!  OK, so it's small, but just you wait.


Cabbage will be following soon, I'm sure, unless the varmints get it.  We saw a possum sitting on our fence the other day, surveying our garden.  Ugly SOB.


A veritable sea of oregano.


I love our herb garden in the front yard.  We have oregano, basil, rosemary, cilantro (my all-time favorite), dill and thyme all growing together.  It is awesome having fresh herbs from the front yard for cooking and seasoning.  We also let the neighbors take whatever they like from the herb garden.  It's the neighborly thing to do.  Oh yeah, there's some swiss chard in there too.  Here's one shot of the front (jungle) herb garden.


In the same herb garden, we laid down some of our own homemade compost a few months back, and lo and behold, a ton of tomato plants started coming up.  Now, there are tomatoes growing everywhere.  Some are tiny, some are going to be large.  This is a case of benign neglect.  We just let them go.  Didn't do much of anything with them.  No tomato cages, just a little tomato food.  


February is the time to plant tomatoes here in Houston, so I recently put six seedlings in the ground and in pots.  We hope to be rolling in tomatoes soon.  




The nasturtiums are going gangbusters.  Great on salads.


Collards!!



Kale!!



And, hey, looks like we'll have some lemons this year.  The smell of these flowers is indescribably wonderful.


Happy gardening, everyone!


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