In our previous winter gardens, one of the challenges has been ease of access. On one hand, we need to seal it off tightly so that (1) the pests will stay away, and (2) the wind won’t “blow the ‘green’ house down” (it can get VERY windy here). And on the other hand, we need to be able to access it easily for obvious reasons. If the vegetable plants are on “lockdown,” there’s a process to “unlock” them. Accessing it (without breaking down a good chunk of it) and creating a door of sorts in a temporary housing structure like this has been difficult. Ben thought of adding a tee fittings along the PVC arches in hopes of creating a place to rest one of the long edges; a way to create a door for easy access. It worked.

One of the drawbacks has been that when it gets really windy, the row cover fabric rubs along the tee fittings and it eventually the constant wear creates a tear. We’ve had to do some patch sewing in response.

We had the seedlings in trays for 3 weeks, from indoor seeding to the point of outdoor transplanting. A lot of the seeds we purchased were from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds; the kalettes were only availalble through Johnny’s Selected Seeds. For some vegetables that weren’t available through Baker Creek, we found other vendors and purchased organic/non-GMO seeds. For asian vegetables that were hard to find, we went through Evergreen Seeds; the vendor told us that all of their seeds are non-GMO.

We got started with our winter garden about a couple months ago. To start the seeds, we used:
– Pro-Mix 4-cu ft Potting Soil (mixed with water)
– seed starter tray
– medley of cool-season tolerant vegetables

This was our first time of starting vegetables from seed, indoors in trays. One of the new vegetables we’re trying were 3 varieties of kalettes (a cross between kale and Brussels sprouts). The packet instructions on these (and another one I believe), suggested they be started indoors. Wanting to follow the instructions well, Ben decided to experiment with a seed starting tray. (In the past, we’ve always just placed the seeds in the soil in the raised bed.)

Since seeds need good light, Ben had read that a South-facing indoor location with plenty of sunlight (it gets plenty here in So Cal), should be fine. Well, despite being in the brightest spot in the house, we noticed they were getting too leggy (abnormally long stems) after a few days. We realized they probably weren’t getting enough light (as hard as it was for us to comprehend). So, we purchased a Jump Start light system and moved them to the garage. They really blossomed being underneath the special light.

But, the legginess they had acquired remained. Would they do ok going in the ground? Would these floppy seedlings with fragile, elongated stems challenge the integrity of their health? Would we have to start from scratch?

Well, we experimented with putting them in the ground after being in their trays for 3 weeks. And while they appeared similar to a gym rat with an overdeveloped upper body and chicken legs at times, they seem to be doing well now after being in the ground for 6 weeks now. I have a couple more posts to share about our winter garden soon.

It’s that time to get everything ready for the winter garden. Ben took out the tomato plants, amended the soil, and we’re working on getting the covering ready for the plants. The 2′ rebar rods are hidden except for the top 6″, then sheathed with PVC piping, and will be covered by Agribon row cover. I’ll share another post as this process develops. We are planting everything from seed this year, so it’s another sort of trial and error thing; we will see how it goes.

Other than that, Ben amended the soil with bulk amendment from a local soil distributor. Any free Saturdays we have are usually spent working on projects. Ben’s working on outside ones and I’m working on inside ones. There’s always something to do or fix; maintaining and growing a garden takes a lot of work and dedication (and money). Though once you get everything in and flourishing, it’s so satisfying to be able to get food from your own backyard.

I’m thankful Ben takes the time to research and do all the grunt work for our garden. If he didn’t, I totally wouldn’t, and our backyard would just be grass and concrete. His birthday is coming up next week and his one request is that we all work on the garden together. That request is easy enough that I think we could make that happen. Hopefully, it doesn’t rain on that day. We’ve been getting a couple of really good rain days in, something we love and desperately need, but that means we get off schedule on the garden plans because Ben’s not able to get out there and work on it. Any of you doing a winter garden this year?

We have noticed a trend this past year, every time it’s been someone’s birthday in our family (so far), we go tree shopping. All of Ben’s favorite nurseries are in San Diego, and True, Brave, and Glow’s birthdays were spent down there, so we also made a pit stop to check out trees. Ben got me a victorian ring for my birthday, but in was in Vista, so we went to pick it up and also go purchase more fruit trees!

He has this long wish list of trees, so with his 40th birthday coming up, I joke with him that his present is picking out 40 trees. HA! We’re running out of space in our suburban yard, so that wish really can’t come true, but if we did have the space, you bet he would cash in on the present for sure. Though, we might be close to having that many already.

Anyway, we went to our usual nursery to see if that had a certain kind of pomegranate tree, but they didn’t. Then, we went to check out a new one to see if they had some of the more rare fruit trees he’s looking for. They didn’t have everything he was looking for, but they did have che and a lemon guava. Thus, in our car, we packed in all six of us, two che trees (male and female tree), and a lemon guava that you can see clearly had trouble fitting in our car. Oh and a Peruvian Apple Cactus plant for me.

The girls are used to being packed in the car with trees all up in their grill, but this is the first time we had to transport a tree sticking out of our moon roof. Everyone thought it was quite hilarious! Despite a much more bald appearance than seen above, it survived the 70mph winds and one and half hour trip back home. Whew!

If you’re looking for some fruit trees, these are the nurseries we frequent in the San Diego area (both in Vista):
– Clausen’s Nursery
– Exotica Nursery (I kept chuckling at the name of this one, but they stock a lot of very exotic fruits)

We finally got to enjoy our first homegrown pomegranates! We only had two, but there are three more that will be ready in a few weeks. Hopefully, as the tree matures, we will get to enjoy many more.

It was planted two years ago in this large container,  but Ben has plans to transfer it into the ground in the next few months. The variety we have is a Parfianka and its seeds are supposedly a bit softer than the traditional supermarket variety, Wonderful.

At Ben’s most recent California Rare Fruit Growers Association meeting, they discussed pomegranates. He’s been taking the girls with him to his last couple meetings because they like sitting and listening to the talks (they bring their own things to work on because they eventually zone out). They had these pomegranate de-seeders available for purchase, but they sold out, so Ben ordered it from Amazon (this is the one).

We aren’t typically kitchen gadget people, but this works pretty well. You halve it, score it five times on each rim, put a half pomegranate on top of the gadget at a time, pound with a spoon, and all the seeds come out. For these beginners, it took closer to 120 seconds, as opposed to the 60 seconds advertised, but it is still the fastest we have ever been able to take apart a pomegranate. We love pomegranates, but the only draw back is how tedious they can be to get their fruit. What are your tips in de-seeding a pomegranate?

They started off like this, then they went, “BOOM!” and now we don’t ever need to buy habaneros from the grocery store. Yippee! We use about 7-8 habaneros a week for this dish (it’s our Friday night thing). Oh gosh, the dish is insanely hot, but it tastes so good. Habaneros have this sweet flavored heat, and combined with lime, tomatoes, and avocados, make this ceviche dish one of our favorite things to eat.

We put most of our pepper plants in the zinc pots, but the one we put in the ground just went crazy. We thought it was an orange habanero because that’s what it was labeled, but obviously it’s a red one. After doing some research, we learn the red ones are way hotter than the orange. The red habanero has an average Scoville rating of 450,000 versus the average for the orange is 200,000.

Our serrano pepper plants were green and bushy, but Ben needed to move them because he needed the space for some fruit-bearing trees. So he transferred them to another area of the garden. The image above is a photo from the day he made the transfer, and while it’s worse now than when it was initially transferred, hopefully it’ll be ok (only time will tell!). If not, we will just have to replant. We also have a Padrón pepper plant (not really that hot) and a Ghost pepper plant (supposed to be ultra-hot, but one fruit has formed, but not ready for harvest yet… scary!). We want to grow some Thai chilies too.

Our current garden project is building more raised beds because Ben has plans to add more trees in them. Every weekend, he is out there building more beds. He’s taken out a lot of my floral bushes and roses to make room for more fruit trees. Our garden projects seriously never end.