Growing organic & GMO-free veggies, fruit and nuts

We’ve been SO busy and I just finally posted an update with some pics of the greenhouse salad and berries at the High Desert Gardening Club site:

Next gardening club meeting on 2/1/12 at our hoophouse and gardening update

We’ve been screening the rocks out of the native dirt in the new hoophouse in 4′ x 7′ or so sections.   We hit caliche about a foot or so down and sprinkle just a little sulfur (nothing else) on the caliche and then spread a 1″ or so layer of needles with some wood chips and leaves.  And then we mix our garden soil similar to what we used in the lower garden last spring:

• 2 five gallon buckets of native dirt
• 1 large (7 gallon?) bucket of acidic organic mulch
• 1 large bucket of horse and/or cow manure
• 1 large bucket of wood chips

We’ll see how that does.   So far everything we planted grows quite well.  Night temps have been down to the low twenties occasionally, but I don’t think we’ve seen teens since December.

I was very surprised to see the purple broccoli the other day since I didn’t know we had any.  In this pic it looks like purple cauliflower, but it’s on a stalk.  I suppose we’ll find out when we eat it, probably soon.  This is a transplant from our raised bed where it got too large:

1/24/12: purple broccoli in the hoophouse

I didn’t think we’d get much out of this transplant and this is a nice surprise.  Hopefully we’ll get lots of broccoli and cauliflower from the new seedlings.

We had also transplanted some cabbage from the raised beds to the hoophouse and planted lettuce and kale seedlings.  We already harvested several Munchener beer radishes and have about 40 sqft or more ready to plant more winter veggie seedlings and salads over the next few days.