So How Does My Fall Garden Grow?

So this year has been an experiment for my Husband and I in the new challenge of Gardening.  We read a book called 'Square Foot Gardening' by Mel Bartholomew and decided to give it a try.  As if we don't have enough challenges - Now please understand we have tried gardening before but it was more like just putting seeds and plants in the ground and watering forever and getting nothing but this year we tried something new and had actual real live produce.  WoooHooo!  So the summer garden went pretty well.  And we found a few things that we would do differently next year but all in all it paid for itself which was a miracle considering the start-up cost of doing square foot gardening. 

So after our wild success we decided to do something really wild and grow a fall garden.  This is something that we had never tried.  I found from research that we could grow several items in our area.  We're in Central California, out in the 'Valley'.   The list included Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage, Beets, and Potatoes.   I started late in the decision to do this so we had to use small plants for the Broccoli, Cauliflower and Cabbage instead of seeds (next year I will do better). My biggest challenge when planting was that I managed to have the tags on the plants fall off before I got home so I had a six pack of Broccoli, Cauliflower and Cabbage but didn't know which was which.  So I just planted them all.  Well I have the results  . . . wanna see :)

Notice no Beets or Potatoes.  Well the beets made a valiant effort and came up but never produced anything (our summer beets were wonderful) and the potatoes came up and were doing well until the first frost which totally took them out (yes, we do get freezing nights in California too, just not very often).  I haven't had the heart to dig up the dead plants and throw them out yet.  Oddly enough our parsley which didn't do anything this summer finally found its footing and is going gangbusters.  Go figure.  Enjoy!