winter vegetable garden – preliminary report

On Sunday, we headed over to our local garden supply, Yamagami’s, to scout out a possible living Christmas tree (we’ve got room in the yard now that we’ve taken out a few struggling/ugly trees). Has anyone in the Bay Area found a pretty pine, spruce or fir variety that does well in our climate? All the ones we really like (Noble Fir, for example) need colder growing conditions than sunny Sunnyvale. So we’re still on the lookout for this year’s tree… and any recommendations you may have on where to buy living trees locally.

While at Yamagami’s, we couldn’t help but notice a nice sale on winter vegetable flats. We were excited to stock up on romaine lettuce, ‘bright lights’ swiss chard, sugar snap peas, Walla Walla onions, spearmint, fava bean seeds and the celery pictured above. I’ll post a few more pictures soon, just need to wait for a few semi-buried plants to surface.

I was not happy to dig my hands into the cold soil this week, but then I remembered Paul was crunching around in snow in Belgium and I figured it was the least I could do. I prefer plant maintenance and harvesting to actual planting you see – and it’s not because of the dirt!! I love dirt and don’t mind getting my hands dirty. The thing is, I usually worry I’m not planting them right. You know when you sow from seeds what the planting instructions are; they are helpfully printed on the back of the packet. Not so with generic black flats of seedlings!

I never know which ones to plant deep and which to plant shallow for optimal development of a healthy root system. So I experiment and, luckily, have more successes than failures. And I can already hear what you’re going to say… read a book about planting seedlings! I know that would help but I don’t usually like “how to” books. I read cookbooks like stories, not usually for the recipes contained in them, that should tell you something.

Maybe I’ll get really adventurous and ask a local gardening expert and videotape them doing it!! What do you think about that?