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Kales in the winter garden. I like to let the annual garden stay in through the winter, knowing that some things will keep alive and the plant roots will feed the soil microbes through photosynthesis. It also allows the garden to be decorative over the winter and I get appreciate the displays of life, decay and regrowth. The kales left in the garden will produce early spring flowers for the pollinators and visual enjoyment to then be replaces with new plants.

Purple kale bucket

Purple kale trunk regrowing leaves

Tiger in winter garden

Multiflora Rose in sunset

Sheets on clothes line

Winter brassica arrangement

Inside looking out

White oyster mushroom spawn inoculated into shredded cardboard and layered into a recycled plastic planter pot. For inoculation I put the white plastic bag over the top and after a few weeks when I peeked it looked like this. I decided to try to top fruit the oysters in our shower tub since it is a little too cold outside and that way I can keep an eye on the daily growth. I spray water with a small spray bottle a few times a day for moisture.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

The Captain!

Day 6, ready to eat the first tub grown oyster mushroom and they were yummy.

Sautéed oyster mushroom with garlic, onion and carrot top. Sweet carrot, beet, daikon, red cabbage and kale sautéed with brown rice and pink ginger curry sauerkraut.

Pink Yarrow just keeps going

Kales are becoming one of my favorite plants to work with, so beautiful, tasty and healthy.

Best raspberry season ever. After application of our aerated compost tea the berry size doubled and we tripled our harvest even in a drought.

Our blueberry and wildflower patch

Decorative red asparagus seeds. Another great plant that is both visually beautiful, tasty and a favorite of pollinators.

Young blueberry bushes on fire.

Wild blackberry electric fall foliage with new saffron beds in background.

Making new black raspberry beds with cardboard, woodchip, a little of our good compost and of course the newly propagated black raspberry plants. We tip root black raspberries as soon as they are done fruiting into planting pots with a rock on top and about a month or two later it is all root ready to be cut and planted out. Both black and red raspberries have become our favorite berries, they are visually beautiful, produce loads of berries. In our experience they are easy too. Just give them some mulch and a little compost or aerated compost tea and they thrive even through droughts.

White oyster mushroom grow on cardboard in plastic tubs in our greenhouse, super tasty and fun.

The seedless grapevines keep growing even after the frost.

November figs from the greenhouse. This year we had 2 fig harvests one in early Summer and one now in mid November.

Red and Savoy cabbages, a little smaller than normal due to the drought but still decorative even after the frost.

Dried up cup plant stacks ready for kindling and a blue chicory flower making its last splash before winter.

The many wild aster flowers makes fall the most beautiful season here.

Boneset wildflower another fall beauty

Our new grapevine Torii

Milkweed seeds ready to be blown away. We have milkweed growing everywhere now and try to leave it be for the monarchs and pollinators. In the orchard we have found that where we have large patches of milkweeds the trees do really well too.

Saffron harvest.

Fall garden harvest storage.