Winter crop planting - weekend two

Thanks to my loving husband, I've been able to spend amazing amounts of time every weekend tending to the garden. He knows there are intense weeks and then weeks with nothing to do. This was one of those intense ones. He whisked off our daughter for lots of fun time with dad while I plugged away at mostly installing irrigation in the new beds ... my poor fingers and my back! This weekend started a little early with a Friday to myself planting the root vegetable beds, H and I. But first a check on my lovely olive tree, which I really, really need to repot. I naively bought a Mission olive when we first bought the house (one of the biggest olive varieties there is!) because I've always wanted an olive tree. I quickly realized I had no great place to plant it without blocking out all the sun. So for the meantime, it sits in a pot to keep it under wraps. It's so beautiful, I can't part with it!

Back to the beds. And the irrigation lines. So, so many irrigation lines to install. I wasn't too thrilled with the circular nature of the main tubing the gardeners laid out for me as a base but I'll have to live with it for this season. It really eats into my planting areas around the edges as you can see below. But at least no more tripping on tubing, it's all underground now!

These diagonal beds hold carrots, turnips, daikons and french breakfast radishes for now with more coming soon.

And then I moved onto the legume beds, well, two at least. The teepees will support even more english peas (I can never have enough of these): purple podded and Lincoln. Plus some spinach on the south side of the beds. My spinach grew so well last winter so I'm hoping I get lucky again. Favas will grow in the other legume bed and will be planted next weekend.

And my seeds from last weekend are already peeking their heads up. The Komatsuna I planted alongside the bok choi is doing well so far. It's sometimes called a spinach mustard and is a member of the turnip family. Throw the crop rotation out the window trying to classify that one!

We have two more figs ripening on the Black Jack fig tree this year.

And then there's the flower beds. So barren right now with only some baby agave and a leftover planting of Tall Telephone english peas around a teepee. There is so much work to do here and ideally, perennials and natives need to be planted right now!