September kind of snuck up on me, and I really need to get my winter seeds planted soon. In the past, I've had better success in my winter garden than in the summer. Los Angeles summers are so dry that it's hard for veggies to thrive. But winter is wetter, and greens seem to love the cool-but-not-freezing nights. Some of my favorite winter crops include turnips, arugula and, the best of all, chard. Oh how I love tasty, hearty and easy-to-grow chard.

3 comments

1. sue on 9/16/2011 11:44:00 AM

   Carrots, onions, garlic, cilantro, potatoes, and my newest discovery: fava beans--YUM. I dutifully plant broccoli and cauliflower every winter, and lose it to bugs, but for some reason last year I had a few plants that escaped aphid infestation and were delish! (I got them at Sunset Nursery).

    
2. Haley on 9/16/2011 12:12:00 PM

   How about guinea fowl? I hear they're great at picking off bugs and not disturbing the plants. I haven't had the aphid problem for broccoli yet here in Texas. Still too hot to plant yet.

    
3. ThePuzzleMaster on 9/16/2011 08:18:00 PM

   Here up in the Seattle area, winter plants need to be planted back in mid-july. We planted some beets and carrots to overwinter. As for broccoli and aphids, this is the FIRST year I've gotten crowns on our broccoli, I'm proud to say! And it was quite the ordeal.
   
   Armed with just a quality squirt bottle from Home Depot I went out pretty much every day and squirted water on any aphids I found. Additionally, there are these little green caterpillars that just LOVE to eat the leaves, so you have to pick those off too. They can camouflage pretty well sometimes. But after a few weeks of daily (with a couple days missed here and there) aphid squirtings, there aren't really any more on the plants and they're now strong enough to produce some pretty alright crowns! I'm quite excited. I had actually sworn off growing any more broccoli because I found it so frustrating! But I figured we might as well finish the seed packet and this year it's worked out! And yes, it was just plain water in the squirter. I've used soapy water in the past, but this seemed to work just fine!