Winter Garden!

Yes, you read the title correct. For the first time in my life I will have a winter garden. AMAZIIINNGGGG.
You may wonder how can that happen. Well the answer is very easy: Thanks to maritime climate that we get here in Seattle!!!!
Wohooooo. I am so excited. This time I am going a step forward and starting the veggies all from scratch.

So yesterday MLF helped to extend the garden.
He was awesome as always. He put the extension and sure enough his analytic brain worked things like a charm in a very short time.

When he was done, it was my turn to sheet mulch the area before we could put the soil. I put wet cardboard and newspaper so that the grass won't grow into the veggie bed but just break down and be organic material for the yard. Thanks again for all this info to Seattle Tilth. I am so inspired and excited to have a winter garden. 

Bed is ready for the soil that is being dumped in the background

   

Is there anything like life without pests in a garden?

Hah! In your dreams may be!!!! It was a dream of mine too. I have been taking care of the plants like babies and making sure they were healthy. I was thinking that the soil was so healthy, and we were trying our best to nurture those lovely veggies.
Aaaaand one day I saw slimy disgusting creatures on my lettuce. Yuuuccckkkk!!!!! was what I screamed and of course MLF was out thinking I am in trouble in some way. Well I wasn't but the garden was.
So I wore my gloves and MLF didn't even bother and we started to pick up those slimy, disgusting creatures. How have they been gotten in there? The next weekend the side of the bed was surrounded by copper shield. Yes, yees I know, they were in there already but that would stop more coming in. After that every single day at dawn and dusk I was out picking out those disgusting creatures and smashing them.

As I was thinking woow this was great OK no more slugs on the leaves and in the bed. Great job. The next week I started to see wholes on the broccoli yet there were no slugs. This was even worse : Cabbage Worm. That white butterfly with purple dots on each wing had laid its eggs . So many of them Ughh. You can see below. removing the eggs under the leaves and removing the green larva (caterpillar) helped controlling. Yet, I think I am lucky to have only these two pests this year. Hopefully with more protection, there won't be any next year.

The Eggs of Cabbage Worm under the broccoli leaf

The Larva (caterpillar)


This is the stage that damages the leaves. You can see dark green, black droplets on the leaves too.

Summer has arrived and about to leave

They say summer has come and about to leave. However, I haven't seen it here. I have been thinking that it is still Spring, end of Spring until we started to have peppers and tomatoes already. Well the garden has done great. Tomatoes have lost control and trying to reach the sky. We started to get peppers and I can't tell you the amount of lettuce, and squash we had. Broccoli has already gone and last weekend I pulled out the lettuce as well.  We had great leeks too.

Having said all the above and looking at the dates. You can sure tell I have been lazy and haven't updated much here. I am guilty! On the other hand, I didn't forget to get pics each time we had new crop. The newest harvets was the eggplant and lemon cucumber. You can take a look at them all yourself: