Our Seasonal Gardens From Garden To Table

We have had a really good winter vegetable harvest this year. We planted in late September and early October. We were enjoying fresh turnips and greens and boiled cabbage just after the first of the year. We have really enjoyed our Veggie Pod this winter. It has offered us an abundance of salad greens.

Three years ago I purchased 2 small lemon trees. The little trees were very pretty with green shiny leaves all over them. The instructions said to leave the trees in their original cans for two years then to transplant them to the ground. Now at the end of the third year, I have a harvest. I am so excited to harvest these lemons!

Spring arrived with lots of rain this year and made us a little behind in our planting. After we  finally got everything in the ground then here came the blast furnace. What a gardening year here in our part of Texas. We had to do some initiative things to get the plants to sustain in the heat and then produce. Once the harvest was ready it was so important to get it out of the ground before it was destroyed by the heat. Our highest heat this summer has been 111 degrees and that is hot!! These different weather patterns are one of the challenge's that gardening brings. When we are able to meet the challenge and bring in a harvest, then it has been a success. Although it is not the biggest harvest we have had, we like to say it is a success, we brought it to the table!

We have to declare that the summer garden of 2022, was a fail. The drought here in our part of Texas lasted for over 60 days with not a drop of rain. No matter how much water we poured to our trees, plants and gardens they just could not withstand the 106 and 107 consistent temperatures. It has been a very sad garden harvest for this year. We even placed umbrellas around the gardens to try and save the plants, but they just didn't make it. Thank goodness we had a early spring harvest of green beans, cucumbers, onions, and tomatoes.

  It is our first picking of green beans for the season and our first potato dig for the season. We just picked almost a half of a bushel of green beans and dug some potatoes to go with them.  After we clean the potatoes these fresh vegetables are going right into the kitchen and they will be on the table tonight for dinner. Our daughter from Oregon is visiting us right now and she is so sweet to help us out with so many projects, including a little gardening. These green beans and potatoes will be delicious, there is something about just getting it off the vine and out of the ground that brings a whole new taste to the dish.

  We start planting our spring garden in late January and by this time the end of April the first part of May the vegetables are up and some ready for harvest. I am so happy to take you on a short tour of our garden progress for this year. 

We fortunately live in an area where we can enjoy a winter garden. We love to grow greens in our winter garden. We plant collards, cabbage, kale, turnip greens, and mustard greens. We have several herbs that are still producing through the winter months.  We have mother of thyme, oregano, rosemary and sage that are hardy during our winter months. I have a couple of containers of parsley that continues to produce during the winter months.