It has already been in he 70's here and it is January!!! I have decided due to my work schedule I will focus on less garden plants. Here are the ones I am going to plant this year:
Boxcar Willie Heirloom I started 58 of these today! I will be planting them in 5 gallon buckets on bricks and will resort to spraying the bottom of the buckets to keep out the fire ants.
Sugar Baby Watermelon
Burgess Buttercup Squash
Pumpkins
I will also still be growing my mandarin orange and Meyers lemon trees because I am so happy with how they did in pots this year. And so far have been fine in my office w/out any artificial light. My herbs are suffering a little. Next nice day I will take them out for a little sun.
I will also be adding more of the orange and lemon trees.
I will also plant Beuregard Sweetpotatos.
Last year I filled my raised beds with a truck load of turkey compost that I purchased. This was not completely composted and nothing grew very well but the dirt this year looks AMAZING!!! Dark and crumbly however it had settled and was too shallow.
So I went out yesterday I took a rake and pulled all of the dirt to one end leaving about half empty. I will purchase another truck load and filling the other half with raw compost and will not plant there until this fall.
Chicken Update:
I still have too many roosters. The chickens are sleeping in the trees very high up!!! I caught one rooster but I will need to trap the rest. One rooster is a very great protector of his girls but he is a White Leggorn/Brown Leggorn mix and is way too skinny I am trying to raise meat chickens. I hate to get rid of him but I must.
The next thing I have to do is Build a bigger chicken house with a large comfortable roost. The girls are starting to lay eggs and I will be ready to start hatching meat chicks by March..
I will be keeping records when I start that because it is an experiment.
I have one Japanese Bantam rooster
I need to buy two hens for him because he is lonely! The big girls just don't like him no matter how fancy he is.
I just posted an ad on Craiglist to see if I can find him some women!