Here we go into the last month of the year—2020!  All those things we were going to do this year and only 30 more days to do them!  Well, don’t despair!  If your resolutions included having a better garden in 2020, it is too late to do much about that, so just sit back enjoy the holiday season and make your resolutions for 2021.  Planning is always easier than some of the physical work involved with gardening. 

Since there is not much we can plant in December, other than maybe some radishes and lettuce, no use trying much else.  If you have time on your hands, though, you can get planting beds ready for the months ahead.  You can start by cleaning out the old plants/weeds, add compost or organic matter, and repairing any structures, irrigation, or bed perimeters.  If you do that now while it is cool, it is a snap to plant the seeds or transplants later in the year. 

In our garden right now, we have been enjoying the work from the past months.  As the recent picture shows, our table is seeing lots of fresh organic veggies.  Lettuce, spinach, broccoli, eggplant, hot and sweet peppers, cucumbers, radishes, a few small tomatoes, various herbs, and several types of citrus are now being harvested.  We also planted some Chinese cabbage a few months ago and enjoyed that for dinner this past week.  We found these transplants at HEB for about 50 cents each.  Boy were they pitiful looking at that time, but they are beauties now.  

I can’t go without telling you, please do not send your leaves and pine needles to the landfill.  Every one of those bags sitting out on the curb waiting for the trash truck is a packet full of fertilizer and mulch for your plants.  Mulch them and use them in your veggie garden or around your trees and shrubs.  If you have a compost heap you can just let them rot and use them in the future.  If you don’t have a compost heap, ask yourself, ‘Am I really a gardener’?

Here is a head’s up for the January meeting.  Our speaker will be Greg Cooper talking about MicroLife products and why organics are so much better than chemical fertilizers and non-organic products.  We are hoping to have an in-person meeting in January, but if you are not OK with that, we may also be able to carry it as a Zoom meeting.  This program will give you all the information you will want to know for the annual OFE Growers MicroLife solicitation in late January.  Delivery will be in February.  More details after the first of the year, but mark your calendar.