It's Fall Gardening Season!

My husband and I went to Lowe's yesterday and got some plants for the winter harvest season :) We worked on the beds before we left for vacation, cleaning them out, adding dirt, fertilizing, etc. So the beds were all ready to go today when we planted :)

Here is our assortment of vegetables and herbs :) We decided to try some winter vegetables, which we have never done before, so we got Buttercrunch Lettuce, Chinese Cabbage, Corn and Okra. Also, we got Tomatoes, Thyme, Leeks, Cinnamon Basil (yumm!), Spicy Globe Basil, Cilantro, and Mint. I even grabbed two citronella plants to help with the mosquitoes. I had these before but they got too dry and died, so I was happy to find them at Lowe's :)

We spent about an hour outside and the weather was perfect - not hot because a storm was threatening. It was lightly breezy and much cooler than it had been all day - honestly it was a very fall kind of day :) And the Gordo had a blast being able to hang out in the yard. Here is what our garden now looks like :

All buttercrunch except 2 cabbages on the right.

The herbs :) We threw a cabbage in there too since we ran out of space in the other bed.

Okra on the left, tomatoes in the middle, more okra and corn on the right.

Citronella plants :) We put these near the porch door to help with mosquitoes getting in the house.

Also, here is a little update on my plants from my last post. All of the vegetables are gone but they really did well all in all. We had some serious problems with squirrels, but everything grew beautifully. These are the plants left growing:

The dwarf pomegranate is full and luscious :)

We have a pomegranate! Yahoo! We've only ever had one other, so this is very exciting.

The daisy gardenia - this one looks great. It's not that much bigger, but gardenias are notoriously slow growing so the fact that it is a little bigger and it looks this good is exciting. It was so pretty when it bloomed!

This is a pine tree we got for free at Lowe's on Earth Day back in April. It's looking good and about triple the size it was when we got it :) 

Camellia :) We had two but the squirrels literally ate every single leaf off the other one.  We put juniper at the base of this one and I think the spiky-ness of it saved the camellia.

The camellia is full of little buds! I can't wait for them to open up, they smell so  nice and look so pretty :) And by the look of all those buds, this baby will be full of them!

So, if you are at all interested in trying to garden, now is the time to get those plants in the ground if you live in Florida. If you live farther north, it may be a bit too late for you to get much before the frost comes, so check out what is said for planting in your zone. Luckily, Florida stays warm most of the year so a garden can last for a decent amount of time - even tomatoes :)

I highly recommend giving gardening a try. It's a lot of work, I won't lie, but few things are as rewarding as growing plants. Why not use your yard and spare time to supplement how expensive fresh produce is or brighten up your yard with some nice flowers?