My Fall and Winter Garden

I started the day by planting my fall and winter garden, filling up all those seemingly empty squares in the photo above. In late July, I started planting seeds of plants that I will be able to harvest in the fall and throughout the winter. I ordered a bunch of hardy, over-wintering seeds from Territorial Seed Company's Winter Garden catalog. According to Seattle Tilth, July is the second spring in our climate, so it's a good time to plant cool weather crops again, like lettuce and peas. The following crops will hopefully be growing in my garden this fall:

• lacinato kale (dinosaur kale) and red kale
• collards
• boy choy
• swiss chard
• 3 types of bibb lettuce
• romaine lettuce
• red merlot lettuce
• onions
• rutabagas
• 2 types of spinach
• 6 buckets of carrots

Then, I got out the ladder and precariously gathered all of the apples I could reach off my tree. I have no idea what kind of apples they are, except that they look like little crab apples. They're small and tart, but they bake beautifully. Last night, I made a rustic apple tart with another Mark Bittman recipe. I'm telling you, that cookbook of his is worth checking out. 

Finally, I harvested the seeds out of one of my ripe heirloom tomatoes this afternoon. I'm going to take the seeds through a fermenting process that will allow me to store them until I am ready to plant them in February. Thank you Gayla Trail (the author of the book that got me started, You Grow Girl) for showing me the way.