November

Once again I'm having a problem in developing winter crops. On the one hand, I hate to kick out plants that are still producing the odd food here and there, like the tomatoes, peppers. On the other hand, seed I have been putting down recently hasnt been coming up. Carrot seed harvested from the color mixture that went to seed hasnt shown much signs of germinating, although at the beginning I thought I saw something. Maybe slugs are at work. But then I find carrots really slow to germinate. I've been throwing more and more seed on top of the area, and if nothing happens by the start of December, I think I'll give up on the carrots for now.
More worrying, I threw radish and lettuce seed down a couple of weeks ago, covered with a light layer of compost, and only a few radish sprouts are showing. I'd hate to have to move to pots to germinate things.
On the plus side, the leeks are growing well and are at pencil thickness already and a foot high. Hopefully I should get a decent crop in Jan/Feb for the pot. This year I'll be testing a no-till philosophy. The general idea is that if you stop digging the ground, all the plant roots will break up the soil. Adding buckets of home-grown compost on the top will then be worked in by the worms providing a great environment for plants. Certainly digging last winter while the soil was wet didnt result in great soil, even with the stuff I dug in. I'll still be digging in the occasional pile of chicken bones though, about a foot deep. Lots of nitrogen and long-term phosphorus (bone is calcium phosphate).
At the moment, the pomegranate and persimmons are yielding - not massive amounts of pomegranates, although more than 100 persimmons on one plant, and the apple tree still has some apples on it. For value-for-effort, its hard to beat the tree fruit. I recommend everyone in the area to grow citrus (Lemon, Orange, Lime, Grapefruit, Kumquat), all of which crop very well; Apricots are easy too (ours gets little to no water), I would plant 2 or three varieties of grape, at least one persimmon, and probably 3 pomegranates. I think its a little hot and dry here for apples to do really well, but they do grow. Our peach tree gets peach leaf curl, so to avoid spraying, I'd forget about peaches. I think the pomegranate sets fruit best when it has water, so consider that aspect - the persimmon doesnt seem to need much at all.
The herbs are all still bearing fresh herbs, although by now I have cut back most of the mediterranean herbs for drying. I have a huge jar of "Herbes de Almaden" ready already for the winter.