Planting winter vegetables

I haven't shown you around our vegetable garden for a long time, so here we are today, walking through it. One of my tasks yesterday was to sow seeds. I still have the parsley soaking, which is a good thing to do before you plant the seeds, but the rest of them are in their containers hopefully preparing to germinate.

I did up a full trough of crispy hearted lettuce - winter is the only time we can grow that here, as well as Crimson Globe beetroot, paw paw pumpkin, a seven colour mix of heirloom capsicums (peppers) and a couple of tomatoes. Already germinated and ready to plant are curly kale, cauliflowers, spinach, beans, Portuguese cabbage and nasturtiums.

You may remember that I planted up an elder tree last spring. We had instant success with the flowers but it was too hot to develop elderberries. I was hoping that would happen in winter. It has! I checked yesterday and the flower heads are developing berries - not all of the head, but enough to make elderberry wine.  Hopefully, in the midst of winter, the entire flower heads will produce fruit.

 Here is the elder as it stood yesterday. It's been in flower consistently since it was planted.

These are a couple of cuttings of the elder that are now ready to plant out or give away.

I do my seed sowing in the bush house and here, in the door way, mint is overflowing into a pot below.

This is the bush house you can see here in the background.  It's a simple structure Hanno built for me many years ago. It houses the germinating seedlings, sick plants, cuttings, ferns, orchids and the worm farm. It provides protection from the wind and sun and even in summer, it's much cooler in there than in the rest of the garden.

Over in the garden, there we are growing snow peas.

Lettuce, potatoes and bok choy.

 This area still needs to be weeded. It is where the new seedlings will go.

 The tomatoes are already showing signs of wilt. It is that brown speck on the leaves.

 Further over there are capsicums (peppers), and a hot chilli.

 Here we have black kale, turnips, potatoes, red cabbages, zucchini and tomatoes.

 Cabbages, peas, lettuce, garlic, daikon radish and oranges.

This is the black kale - Cavolo nero.

And of course, our girls, wandering slowly over the backyard in the late afternoon, having their last feed for the day and hoping for something to be thrown over the fence.

The lemon tree is waiting to be picked and the juice frozen for the stockpile.

Our garden is late this year because we've been so busy with other things. But with prices rising and vegetables still very expensive after the floods, it's one of our main priorities from now on. What are you growing this season?