The Garden at Winterhaven Devas, Nature Spirits, Fairies Oh My
My original 8 double-dug garden beds that are 4 feet wide and 16 feet long were created specifically for vegetables. For years I worked hard at trying to have a garden that produced vegetables for as many months of the year as possible.

I grew overwintered cabbage and onions and purple and white sprouting broccoli. I grew kale and parsnips and left carrots in the ground to be dug over the winter. I canned tomatoes and pickled everything under the sun.

That kind of gardening is very rewarding and LOTS of work. After about 12 years of it I decided what I wanted to do was grow things we really liked to eat instead of insisting that we eat what I could grow. I gave up canning tomatoes and making pickles and actually learned to enjoy autumn and late summer!

That also means, I've stopped fighting with the aphids on the crops in the fall and I just put the garden to bed. Now most years the only thing out in the garden in the winter is Swiss Chard and Parsley.

Swiss Chard

I still grow varieties of potatoes, carrots and onions that store really well, I just keep them in the garage instead of the ground!

Bucket of Potatoes

We eat a lot of broccoli and lettuce so I plant succession crops of those.

Little Gem and Red Sails Lettuce Broccoli

By planting 5 beds of vegetables I can keep us in fresh produce from early June (spinach and lettuce) until mid-winter (beets, carrots, winter squash, potatoes and onions).

Here's what I'll be growing in 2009.
Jade Bush Beans
Nickel Filet Beans
Red Ace Beets
Packman Broccoli
Southern Comet Broccoli
Merida Carrots
Napa Carrots
Nelson Carrots
Marketmore 86 Cucumber
Fountain Hybrid Cucumber
Blushed Butter Cos Lettuce
Freckles Lettuce
Red Sails Lettuce
Copra Onions
Parsley
Cascadia dwarf Sugar Snap Peas
Oregon Giant Pea Pods
Oregon Sugar Pea Pods
Sugar Snap Peas
Waverex Petit Pois
California Wonder Red Peppers
Russet Norkotah Potatoes
Yukon Gold Potatoes
Jack Be Little Mini Pumpkins
Small Sugar Pumpkins
Olympia Spinach
Regal Spinach
Teton Spinach
Tyee Spinach
Mesa Queen Acorn Squash
Bennings Green Tint Summer Squash
Bush Delicata Winter Squash
Bright Lights Swiss Chard
Brandywine Tomatoes
GH 761 Greenhouse Tomatoes
Sweet Million Cherry Tomatoes
Black Beauty Zucchini

I start planting seeds indoors on March 1st for things like Tomatoes and Red Peppers that will go in the greenhouse.

California Wonder Red Pepper in Greenhouse Cherry and Greenhouse Tomatoes

I start planting peas, potatoes and spinach out in the garden in March.

Then in April I start transplanting things like broccoli into the garden.

The bulk of planting takes place in May, though I wait to put out cucumbers and squash until June 1st.