Well some of my summer veggies (tomatoes, beans) are kinda burned out after our intense heat wave last week -- and since at the end of the month it's time for cool-season planting (at least here in So CA!) I guess I'm just going to do away with them.

I'm planting a Sonoma Diet raised bed - I saw it in a magazine at the Dr's office (no it's not really called that, LOL, but since the contents of it will end up on my 7-inch dinner plate sauteed in garlic & olive oil, that's what it is to me!)

I'm planting "monet" mesclun salad mix, spinach, swiss chard and cilantro. The plan is, they grow, I shrink, and then I will gobble them all up. A win-win situation!

I'm designing the bed so it has a screen cover on it for when the leaves start falling off the trees, I can just sweep them off. I have one area that only gets fall/winter sun, in the spring and summer it's shade.

Hopefully I can burn up some calories digging the posts and stuff....

I am a gardening FANATIC!! lol......not so much for veggies as flowers....my goal is all flowers and no grass....That said, we had a gardening extraganza dinner last night....fresh pesto, the tomoto-basil-olive oil-fresh mozzerella dish..fresh cucumber pickles..fresh cantaloupe.....omg.

I can't imagine what it would be like to be able to grow your own greens all year..must be great....since I am getting into the locally grown, less carbon footprint thing, I think I am going to invest in grow lights and at least do herbs over the looonnnngggg MN winter.....

Happy, healthy growing!

I'm a gardening chick too! But I'm having to learn what grows again having moved here last year. I'm used to the north (of Canada, not the US) where the season is short but "full sun" means 16+ hours, so things grow really quickly. My garden this year has been mixed, not too many tomatoes, some zucchinis, lettuce, and carrots (for when I make it to wave 2). It was really hot through July and we've had little rain, so this year hasn't been the greatest. I can't imagine planting now, up north we would have had the first frosts a while ago now, I'm still getting used to it being warm out in November.

It's finally getting cool in the mornings, but no frost yet. Still gets relatively hot during the day though. I'm planning on digging up the carrots and then digging in shredded leaves to compost for next year, I don't think the soil is that great.

Not doing so good on the Sonoma eating this weekend. I have a cold and don't feel like chewing through the salads I'd planned. Grrrr...

Jax

Hey Maryblu! To be honest with you it's a bit of a mixed blessing, because what happens every holiday season is I totally let the garden go, just out of being busy with seasonal stuff and burnt out on it....and subsequently spend Feb/March in weeding ****!

I think this year I'm going to try "vetching" which is you plant a winter ground cover in the dead zones (it's kind of ugly & weedy looking) but it chokes the real weeds out and dies back in the heat, and you can turn it back in to amend the soil.

What I love about our mild winters is planting our salad for Christmas dinner in the fall. I make the most amazing (if not exactly slimming) salad for Christmas from my mixed lettuce garden! It has candied pecans, goat cheese, and TONS of olive oil - lest Dec. 25 sound relatively healthy I can assure you that there are chips,guacamole, tamales and margaritas along with that! YIKES!!

My goal this holiday season is not to let the fattening days (Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving) turn into fattening MONTHS!

Yo jax! Sorry to hear you're under the weather....it's been too warm for soup to sound good to me so far but you bring up a good point, maybe it's a nice idea to make some Sonoma styled veggie based soup for the freezer for those inevitable seasonal colds!

I'm not quite as avid a gardener as you guys but I do like to get my hands in the dirt. I'm having the problem of moving to a new location and having to learn about the new soil, heat, light requirements here. Full sun in Mississippi and full sun in PA are not the same thing! A bunch of my plants scorched to death this year but I'm learning. I do want to plant an herb garden since I can't get fresh herbs consistently here but I haven't figured out where on my property will be the ideal spot etc. I have virtually no shade. I planted 2 trees this year that will eventually give some shade but that will be several years from now. Our soil is also terrible. It actually isn't soil-it's sand. I have a compost pile going so next spring I should have some nice amendment.

Hey Petra, do you have a strawberry pot, or somewhere you can buy one? Now that you live in a milder climate, you might want to try that out, use the sections in the pot for different herbs. The nights get a little chilly in the winter here for basil, but in the winter I do grow cilantro, dill, thyme - oregano also works in the fall.

If you put them all in the strawberry pot you can sort of move it/shade it if you get a hot spell.

Wow for some reason I just noticed the thumbnail pic on Mariblu's post....GORGEOUS!!! Mine is not so pretty at the moment....lots of bare spots from the 113 degree weather we had last week!

Yea, Mariblu your garden is amazing.

No, I don't have a strawberry pot but we have a brand new HUGE Lowe's and I bet I can get one there. I'll look into that. I have a bed that just gets morning sun where I planted a camelia and it seems to be doing okay. That might be a good spot. It doesn't get to 113 here but the heat index can get to 108 and the humidity is unbelievable. It seems to be starting to cool off at last.

I dabble a little in gardening. Over the summer, I had some eggplant and butterbeans (lima beans) growing. Being in Florida, we will plant our fall gardens soon. It is still way too hot. I want to expand my fall garden this year.

I've learned a lot about gardening from a gardening website called gardenweb dot com. There are a LOT of specialized forums, like for florida gardening. But there are also forums dedicated to other areas, including North America. There are also topic specific forums such as vegetables, heirloom vegetables, four season gardening, square foot gardening, asian veggies, tomatoes etc. Way too many to list all.

For those of you up north, you may want to consider building a simple cold frame. That way you can grow some lettuce, arugula and other greens after frost.

I love going out into the yard and picking something to make for dinner. My fall garden will definately be planned around the sonoma diet.