It’s the end of January and my winter veggies are finally looking *really* good. Not quite time to harvest them all, but now I’m excited with the anticipation. Please pardon the formatting issues below, WordPress is not being my friend today.
My sugar snap peas are finally producing like crazy. This variety was supposed to be bushy, but still needed supports. They also took a lot longer than the listed 62 days, as I planted them in September. The insects are already after them, so I’m about to harvest what’s already grown.
The earthbox has been great for my broccoli and cauliflower. I grew both regular broccoli and a cheddar cauliflower from seed. I found some Romanesco broccoli seedlings at my local nursery and decided I had to have just one. It satisfies my gardening habit *and* my geeky love of fractals. Currently, it’s about the same yellow color as the cheddar cauliflower, which will turn more orange because has a ton of beta carotene in it! Yay for Vitamin A.
Not quite a winter plant, but since NorCal has mild winter, my everbearing strawberries are producing a nice crop already. I can’t say enough good things about the “growin’ bags” i use, as it keeps them off the ground and away from pests, and is also a great space by going vertical. I was hip before vertical gardening was trendy 
You can buy the bags seperately as 4 hole or 10 hole, or with strawberries from Park Seed.
And since even a mild winter still brings the blahs, I added a few “annuals” to brighten up my windowbox. (Technically perennials but typical treated as annuals.) The celosia were done for, but I thought the salvia still had a little life left in them. So I added orange calendulas and red and yellow English primrose, both of which are prime bloom season right now. What you see in the middle is silver falls dichondra, supposedly an annual, but is still going strong from last year. This is one of my favorite cascading plants and it looks great in such a variety of containers. I wouldn’t call this my best windowbox, but I was making due with what’s in season for a pop of color. I often feel stumped with what to do with my garden when it’s between winter and spring.
