December in my garden

Still waiting for the rain this December, but it's cooled off (this week) after having a 90° Thanksgiving. A friend of a friend needed to rehome their chickens (all my chickens are rescues), so we just added 3 to our flock. Meet Nutmeg, Eggnog, and Anise!

Eggnog (a Leghorn), Nutmeg (a speckled Sussex), and Anise (an Autralorp)

They are young ladies, so hopefully that means we'll get some eggs soon. Most of our flock are somewhere around 8 years old so they are retired (or freeloaders).  And all of them have molted and stopped laying for the winter, so we'll see how they do in the Spring...

Plan

Start drooling over seed catalogs! Baker Creek heirloom rare seeds is my favorite (such beautiful varieties! I have a strong penchant for purple vegetables 😊) and San Diego Seed Company is local. But honestly, last year I did better with seedlings.
Other good resources for research and learning:

• Wild Willow Farm
• San Diego Sustainable Living Institute
• City Farmers Nursery
• The Water Conservation Garden

Prep

Amend hugelkultur beds with compost. Rake out chicken area for mulch. Let the chickens into more areas of the yard to eat grubs and dig up all the grasses that have grown back (after I spent so much time trying to remove that bermuda grass! 😠)

Plant
Broccoli seedlings from City Farmers interspersed with garlic cloves from Schaner Farm did so well for me last year, I'll do it again this month.
artichokes (mine's already a big healthy plant from last year's planting), asparagus (maybe next year), beets, broccoli, brussels, cabbage, carrots, celery, cilantro, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, peas, potatoes, radish, parsnips, garlic, wildflower seeds, natives (I need a cleveland sage - it's my favorite), cover crops (fava & peas)

Feed
Feed passion fruit 3 pounds of fruit tree fertilizer. I can't believe it's still flowering and fruiting.

Water

Water deep in the morning every 10-14 days if it doesn't rain. I'll continue to blast my fruit trees with water a couple times this month to help control ants, aphids, white fly & scale.

Prune

Prune grapes (I'm going to weave trimmed vines in the shade structure over the windows to create more summer shade) and blackberries. Deadhead the lavender and aroma sage. Trim back mulberry (one of the big branches will be repurposed for passionfruit vine support), guava and pepper tree by mid-December so as not to disturb the birdie nest building that will start soon. Chop up trimmings (if not used in other projects) for mulch.

Harvest

copious guavas, passion fruit, calamondins, the last of the tomatoes, winter squash, basil, parsley, thyme, chives, lavender, lemon grass, rose geranium leaves