Direct from my winter garden, can you believe it?! Red leaf lettuce and arugula, freshly picked and washed in the morning before work, then onto my dinner plate crisp and cold in the evening. Life is good in the Central Valley.

Red leaf lettuce and arugula.

Seems like a lot of work, but to be honest, I planted my winter garden back in late fall and completely forgot about it. It was doing it’s thing through the holidays (aided by a faithful irrigation timer) and I was doing mine until I ventured back there about mid-January…. et voila! I’ve got greens bursting out of three of my four raised beds; three varieties of mustard greens, three kinds of kale, bok choy, cabbage (both red and green), of course chard, and the onions and garlic are finally starting to push. Winter gardens are great since there are few pests to deal with – and thank goodness the squirrels aren’t interested in this stuff!

And “what’s in the fourth box?” you might ask? Well I used that box last summer for eggplant, all kinds of peppers and fennel (forgetting that fennel is a winter vegetable). So now the fennel is big and beautiful and mine is amazingly mild eaten raw. Something I’ve been enjoying as well. I’ve left the eggplant and peppers in the ground to see if they’ll come back – I’ll cut ’em back a bit here pretty soon. Fingers crossed as they were tasty and so prolific.

Anyway, I’m starting to add Kitchen Garden Design and Maintenance to my repertoire of services. I’m in the idea phase on the design of a formal kitchen garden with one of my pruning clients, hoping to get that potential project off the ground in time for spring planting. Will keep you posted…