Seedlings

The stores have vegetable plants in stock now. If you want to save a few dollars go to a nursery where they have 6-packs of tomato plants, which run about 60 cents each (instead of the $3+ per plant at the big box stores). It is a bit early to be setting out tender plants like tomatoes - we could still see a frost this spring in spite of how warm its been lately. Sadly, the tomato seedlings we had raised since December met an untimely death so we bought some Roma and Early Girl tomato's from a local nursery, along with some peppers.
Onion starts are also in stock and if you use onions and haven't grown them before, give them a try. We found out these are so easy to grow and have so much enjoyed having fresh onions whenever, right there in the back  yard.

Broccoli

We have had such a wonderful winter for cool weather crops this season. The broccoli and peas are flourishing. Normally we have to wait another month or so to harvest large broccoli heads, but not this season. With weather in the mid-70's for a few weeks since Christmas the peas have been blooming and setting pods and the broccoli has been quietly growing larger. Pictured below is the largest broccoli head and a few zucchini picked today.

Heaven in January

We have preserved the tomatoes and zucchini through frost thus far this winter (fingers crossed that we can continue this luck through mid-February). Last Sunday we enjoyed braised cherry tomatoes and fried zucchini. That one meal made the entire winter garden effort worthwhile!

This is going to be a record year for peas. Our edible-pod peas are now waist high and blooming, which means we have another three months of growth. There has only been one other year we had this kind of pea crop in the last 22 years - that year they climbed over a 4-foot trellis, fell to the ground and grew back up over the trellis again. We picked our largest mixing bowl full of peas every week for about a month. The kids still talk about that year. Isn't it great to create happy memories with a garden!?

The broccoli has heads about the size of my fist, one of them about twice that, so we will soon enjoy wonderfully fresh, sweet broccoli from the garden. We love winter gardens!