With DH’s urging and assistance, we hit up our favorite local garden center (Green and Growing) for some winter starts. In past years, I’ve tried starting these myself in June, indoors, to have ready to put out in the fall. This year…was not so much a gardening year. No such starts were started.
We picked up five broccoli, five purple cabbage, five “dino” kale, five red chard, and five golden chard. We also picked up some onion starts, strawberries, thyme, and parsley.
In they went!
Left to right – golden chard and Tuscan kale (DH calls it dino kale), and red chard. If you look closely, you’ll see the garlic starts (volunteers salvaged from spring’s lazy leftovers) between each plant. Don’t mind the weed whacker’s contribution to mulching…
Purple cabbage and broccoli. I don’t often do actual rows of things. This year for some reason, I thought I’d go a little more conventional in arrangement to show off the colors. (And then the broccoli rebelled and wouldn’t fit in a row.)
Then it froze, hard, and we covered everyone up. The sun returned, the sprinkler was reset to a weekly cycle (we’re still on restrictions – once a week maximum), and the holidays came and went.
The garlic is more noticeable now and we may start nibbling on some greens soon.
plumdirt 
oh how I envy your green showing through fallen leaves…( long sigh) we are in for the coldest weather in 20 yrs according to CNN this week! Keep posting to encourage us in this cold sweep:-)
I’m hearing about that weather! We’re staring down a possible “cold front” soon that will drop our highs from mid-60s to mid-40s…brrr….(but so very far from the -25 I read could happen!
Great that you’re making the most of the extended Texas growing season…and it’s balm for the eyes, when all we see is white!
We lose our growing season here when most folks are getting into bumper crops (July and August). I’ll trade you winter pics for summer 🙂
Wait til morning – I should have something to trade 🙂
ahhhh, green……….beautiful photos – we’re in the Colorado deep freeze here!
I’ll try to keep them coming! I so enjoy your summer photos when everything here has gasped in the heat.
Mmm, thank you! Enjoy your growing season!
I have little luck with winter gardening. Everything seems to grow so slowly, and the frost then kills anything that had promise! Yours is looking good!
We’re pretty far south so our short winter days aren’t so short as more northern lands. Things definitely grow at a painstaking pace compared to spring, but thankfully any frost we may receive is light and warned of well in advance (plenty of time to lay out the sheets for protection.)