Freezes and Rain

Well, it's winter now, which in Austin means it's sunny and 60 degrees most of the time, but over the last couple of months we've had both rain and freezing temperatures. I bet we've had around 7 inches in the last two months or so, a real contrast to the rest of the year. This has shifted the drought status from Exceptional to Extreme! Yay! Freezing temps in November wiped out the last of the nightshades, so it's cool weather veg from here on out till, oh...March maybe.

I harvested a broccoli a while back (var. Marathon), and will be harvesting another this evening. It's beautiful. Unfortunately, my camera card adapter is broken right now so I can't upload for the time being. Sorry.

I threshed the Tepary beans and got about 2.5 lbs of beans from roughly 45 sq ft of bed space, though they were in the ground from about May - November, so it's a big investment of time and space for not much beans. Let's see.... I've estimated the garden has 600 sq ft of bed space, so 2.5/45*600= 33.33 lbs of beans, if I dedicated the entire garden to tepary beans. That's about how much beans I could eat in a year, if I were careful. Maybe with the drought I'll do that, or not. I haven't tried eating them yet so I don't know how they taste.

Varieties to avoid in the garden:
Marathon Broccoli
Shogoin Turnip
White icicle radish
Danvers half long carrot

Varieties to seek out:
Oriental Giant Spinach