May Update No. 2

Last week we did some major work in the yard which included planting the sastuma and olive trees in the front yard. We're hoping the satsuma grows enough to take the sun off the front of the house, especially in the morning.

In the backyard, I mulched the garden and the blueberries in order to conserve water. Without the mulch I was soaking the garden every day in the morning and by the time I got home around 4 it was almost completely dry and some of the plants were suffering. A 2 cubic foot bag was perfect for the 5x5 square, which I now water every few days:

And the blueberries:

As a side effect the mulch is going to prevent the veggies that ripen on the ground from rotting. Also regarding water conservation, its been pretty hot here and we've been running the A/C almost all the time. I put a 5 gallon bucket under the drainage pipe and by the next day it was overflowing with condensate. I've been using it to water the trees and the blueberries (instead of the rainwater), and I don't think I'll even need a rain catch at this rate.

I also built two new 2x2 boxes and am starting pumpkins and lima beans:

On to the vegetables. The Porter's Dark Cherry is growing really well also and has set about 15 fruits:

Tonight we cut the first crop of green beans, but here they were beforehand. The yield was pretty disappointing though and I don't know if I will continue to grow the green beans in the future.


The Santa Fe Grand pepper is in the foreground and the Banana pepper is in the background, almost ready to pick.

The corn has put out a few ears also:

I dipped the silks in vegetable oil to suffocate the eggs of the corn earworm, but it remains to be seen if it works. And finally, while not a vegetable, the peach tree is loaded down with about 16 peaches, including this one which is starting to blush:

May update

Flowering Cactus

This is pretty much an excuse to put up some pictures. I don't really have much to say so I'll just describe the pictures I'm posting. At Great Outdoors I bought a Satsuma orange tree. It's on the left, sitting flush on the ground. Its the most cold-hardy of the citrus (outside kumquats) and they are well-suited to Austin. We're going to try to put it in the ground rather than keeping it in pots like we have done with the lemon and key lime.

The Pomegranate tree has started to flower, putting out little bell-shaped blossoms. Actually its pretty neat because we can see pomegranates blooming all over Austin as we drive around, although I think most of them are ornamental, not fruit producing.

The blueberry bushes have also set fruit:

Now onto the garden. I took this picture about two weeks after the last picture. It gives you an idea of how well the four plants are producing:

Unfortunately the pea plants died after this crop. They may have been burned out (because its been 85 degrees without rain for a few days) or they may have just died out because that's all for this season. I had heard that it was really hard to grow snow peas here in Texas, so maybe it was a combination of the both. I ended up pulling the plants and composting them. I didn't bother to replant the square though:

I also trimmed the tomato plants (the indeterminate ones), removing the lower stems up to the ones with the blossoms on them. Some tomatoes have set, mostly on the cherry tomato. sorry for the out-of-focus shot:

The peppers are also growing, including this sweet pickler:


We planted the Mexican plum tree in the front yard this afternoon and are planning on getting the xeriscaping underway in the next few weeks. We went and checked out a rock yard the other day and I checked out a bunch of plants, so I'll try and post that when we get going on it, even though its not technically about the garden.