FORGET Spring/Summer Gardens!

After a whole lifetime of NOT growing a fall vegetable garden, I took the plunge this season. Here's just a little bit of what I've been up to...
I am now buying everything from Southern Exposure Seeds, by the way.
See my experiment? My Ginseng sweet potatoes? I got 91, count 'em, 91 usable sweet taters from 6 slips. The bunch I just dug were from ONE slip - and boy, some are huge!
And, although my Amber Globe turnips have not bulbed up yet, just LOOK at their health, yes, in VIrginia red clay (well fortified, I admit). They're new for me to grow, too. My peas really outdid themselves, my spinach is incredible, and my lettuce is lovely. I tucked 'em in yesterday with a bunch of white pine needles (free mulch and good to break up my clay), and they already seem happy.
I'm really thinking that fall is the best time to plant.

Fall weather here is kinder than spring, which makes it a better time to plant a lot of things.
The one place you may have trouble is with things that day-length sensitive. Cabbage family for example - they grow like crazy at northern latitudes during long summer days, but grow slowly at southern latitudes during short winter days.

Gracye, well done. I will try sweet potatos again next spring.
I now have spinach and red mustard, beets , and some other volunteer scattered greens ( tat soi and komatsuna, or whatever the komatsuna crossbred into maybe) and I've had lettuce grow well into January under snow and a row cover. I love picking greens instead of picking " totally chewed ribs of greens leaves" and fighting harlequin bugs or cabbage worms.
Red mustard can grow all winter here, or it does so against a south wall. THis year I have it in the garden bed. No bugs in winter. Love it!
The parsley looks better now than it did all summer too.
Garlic is planted.

Gracye, I am totally beginning to hop on the fall band wagon. My fall garden was quite good, if I do say so myself, this past 2013. The weather was excellent and that did help. I keep reading what I can about what will grow fall and winter here in NE Texas and am beginning to regard spring and summer gardening as the build up for Fall. I miss veggie gardening in the Midwest as that is what I grew up with and know. But this Fall veggie garden has me feeling like I can learn something new and be successful at it.

Thanks for posting the photos! I am trying peanuts again this summer. Maybe that will help fill in the gap.

Terri

Looking for status reports after this really cold winter.
My mustard was planted in the garden bed, so a 7B instead of the 8+ zone I get in my southern facing bed. The mustard looks totally frozen out despite row cover.
Spinach plants are surviving the same conditions- but many of them disappeared. Gone without a trace. The voles like the row cover there, I wonder if they ate the tops of spinach since they had row cover for shelter?
Voles also found parsley roots. gone.
I guess I'll replant spinach and mustard asap and try for early spring crop.
This winter was a big reality check.

Ya boy, has this spring ever been a bummer. But we must persevere!

Three rows of my onions look to be about 70% OK. The last row (Texas Suppersweets) is a gonner. The White Bermudas look to be doing the best. My garlic is fine and the radishes seem to be OK. They weren't quite ready to pick so I don't know that the freeze will do to the taste or growth but the tops look OK.

The broccoli looks like it will live. The largest leaves are toast but there were a bunch of teeny tiny leaves and they look good so I think they will bounce back. Lost some lettuce but the Paris and Nevada lettuce looks fine.

I guess that is all I have to report right now. Sorry to hear about those voles. They are little stinkers!

I am in Warrenton, VA. I have spinach growing from last year, albeit scraggly. I didn't expect it to live. Every garlic clove planted is up and thriving. Rhubarb not up yet.
Yesterday, while hubby dug for extending the veggie garden, I limed, put grass seed down, and threw around all the Holly Tone that I had, even bought another bag. Finally pruned my roses (!), they weren't budded out much at all, and good thing.
I bought and unloaded 17 bags combined of organic soil amender (for my clay soil), and Black Cow (I just love it). Threw the BC around my asparagus, rhubarb (which is not up yet), and the garlic. Put rose fertilizer around my roses. Sprayed the tulips with deer-rid. So GOOD to get outside!
I have many little veggie plants, and also blue Larkspur, growing away, inside. Took a total of four days for everything to come up - what a testimonial for my organic, family-owned seed-companies! And my great little seed-starting cabinet.
One horrid thing. In the morning, I saw ONE doggone stink bug on my front door screen. Later, it was on one of my seedlings! Got the old burial at sea treatment, and fast! ACK!
And now, the snow will work its magic with the earth...! Let it come!