This fall we grew potatoes for the first time. We messed up every step along the way: we planted them too late; we didn’t buy starts, instead relying on sprouted potatoes from our pantry; we planted the potatoes whole instead of cutting them up; and we were away for the first frost and didn’t insulate our potato crop with the frost cover.

Coming home from vacation, we found our potato plants completely dead. Could we even still harvest the potatoes? We had no idea what to expect below ground.

To say we were pleasantly surprised would be a gross understatement:

The toddler was gleeful as we found more and more potatoes:

In true Miss Leyba fashion though, she was completely focused on the task at hand and wouldn’t consider smiling for a photo. Removing potatoes from the ground is serious business!

See, a lovely little purple potato crop.

Now my daughter is talking nonstop about dinner and how tasty these potatoes will be!

Too bad we’re having Noddle Salad with Ginger Peanut Dressing tonight instead. (Already prepped and ready to go!)

I suppose we’ll be eating potatoes with dinner tomorrow…

Yesterday a frost warning flashed on my phone! Thank goodness for modern conveniences like weather applications; I’ve been so busy reacting to our pseudo Indian Summer that I’ve neglected to notice that it’s almost November. I guess it’s time to say farewell to our summer veggies (oh, how I love the mild weather here in California!) and get ready for the first frost.

So we headed out in our pajamas before bedtime to gather up all the ripe tomatoes and zucchini, and to then wrap up the potatoes in a frost cover. (Keeping our fingers crossed they’ll make it!)

We’re leaving dozens of green tomatoes on the plants, chard, lettuce and carrots in the ground, and several baby zucchini, still too small to pick.

We wonder, “Will it frost tonight? Will the frost cover insulate the potatoes well enough?” We shall see.

What we know for certain is that fall is here and winter is on its way.

I’m already planning out where I’ll plant the kale.

It may be the end of September, but the weather has finally gotten HOT and our garden is responding! Flowers blooming, vegetables growing and ripening, weeds taking over the place…

First some pictures of the flowers and then a quick video tour of our itty bitty yard bursting with plants.

Before I give you a tour of our garden this year, let me remind you of what our yard looked like last year when we moved in (more info here):

Here it is now, a year and half later:

Movie: Garden Tour from Carrie on Vimeo.

(Sorry if I sound a bit breathless. I had a cold while filming, which we’ll now remember forever. Sigh.)

Today, being Friday, we did something new. After weeding, removing less-than-beloved plants, enriching and turning over the soil (all activities most certainly considered to be OLD), we planted bulbs.

Evidently Spritzer-Leyba’s are not ones for planting ordinary things like daffodils or crocuses. Miss Leyba and I had to choose the three feet tall giant purple allium.

They will look like this:

(photos from flickr)

I know, they are gorgeous, gigantic and insane!

I desperately want them to transform the front garden and add a giant burst of color. I think this should do it! (Fingers crossed!)

I just can’t believe we have to wait six months to see if we planted them upside down… ;)

To refresh your memory, here’s what our garden looked like a month ago when we planted the fall veggies:

We used lots of composted manure mixed into the soil and planted organic veggie starts/seeds from our neighborhood nursery (chard, two types of lettuce, carrots) and cupboard (purple potatoes that sprouted). We then covered the ground with mulch to help retain moisture and heat.

And here is it today, not quite four weeks later:

Hello, leafy green vegetables!

I find it hard to believe that it’s grown so much in such a short period of time! Our veggies have easily tripled their size and we’ve been busy harvesting too!

We still have around a hundred green tomatoes (because of our cool summer), but everything else is growing beautifully.

Once we get tired of the lettuce or give up on the tomatoes, I’m pulling them out and planting kale. Stay tuned!

We’ve had a very cool summer here in Northern California. For the most part, it’s been in the 60s and (occasionally) 70s during the day, with the temperatures dropping down to the 50s at night. This is highly unusual. David absolutely hates it.

While it means we’ve rarely been overheated the last few months, we have had to bundle up every morning cause I refuse to turn on the heat (hello, it’s August!) and our garden is lush green, green, green…

with lots of stems, leaves, and flowers, but no harvest to speak of!

We’ve had 6 cherry tomatoes, all of which Miss Leyba has eaten, and ZERO of the other two types of tomatoes we planted. (They’re there, they’re maybe growing, but they’re not ripening.)

One strawberry consumed by, you guessed it, Miss Leyba.

One zucchini with more on the way.

And lots of cilantro (though it’s going to seed as I type this).

Usually we’d start planting our fall crop now, but instead we have no choice but to wait it out and hope for warmer weather to increase our crop. I tell you, our plants are teasing us right now!

So instead of ripping out our summer garden to plant those fall veggies, we decided to (once again) turn some of our lawn into a veggie bed.

More on that tomorrow…

Hey, Miss Leyba, what’s inside the cabbage?!

Look, it’s a wee little frog!

I love surprises like this out in the garden.

And, yes, these are the same cabbages that we planted back in November… they are finally ready to eat and enjoy!

Updated to add: Miss Leyba’s reaction? “Get it out! Tell it to go away from our cabbage!” Sigh.