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.

trimming trees and eating peas

I have quite a few other things I should be doing right now but I would rather do this post. This past week we had two big trees in our yard trimmed. The first tree is the giant elm which dominates our backyard (the tree guy estimated it was about 70 years old). Its obviously on the backside of its life but, since we bought the house when everything was dormant, we weren't sure of the actual condition of the tree. It turns out there is quite a bit of foliage on the branches, but there were alot of dead branches, and most of those dead branches were overhanging the house. I have also been picking up branches from that tree out of the yard since we bought the place.

Secondly, there was a big, totally dead tree between our house and our neighbor's and, if this one came down, it would hit one of our houses. You can see the stump on the left side of the picture. This also gives me a ton more light on my garden during the morning hours:

If you click on the picture and enlarge it, you can also see the huge piles of firewood in the background, by the fence.

The plants have all been growing well, especially the tomatoes. As you can see from the pictures below, I picked up some tomato cages and staked out the Roma and Black Krim (which are growing next to each other) and the cherry tomato, which is growing by itself. The cherry tomato in particular is really big with a ton of branches and needs the extra support.



You can also see in the bottom left hand corner some new plants, where there used to be spinach, mesclun, and buttercrunch lettuce. In fact, a few days after my previous post I went out and saw that the mesclun and spinach had bolted and were unusable. I dug them out and added them to the compost heap. I also ate the rest of the buttercrunch (and gave a head (shoot?) to some friends). Instead of letting the squares lay fallow, I decided to try and plant some other crops in them. I picked up a Porter's dark cherry tomato (where the spinach was), a Santa Fe Grand pepper (where the buttercrunch was) and a Cayenne pepper (where the mesclun was). I turned over and heavily enriched the soil with some of my own compost and, in the case of the tomato, used some organic tomato fertilizer I have been feeding to my other tomatoes. I don't know if the plants will set fruit or develop, but it will be neat to see the results of growing two crops following closely on one another.

Since St. Patrick's day I have been eating some of my crops, namely the cold weather greens (lettuce, mesclun, and spinach) and some green onion. But recently some new crops have been coming in, particularly the snow peas. I picked some of them earlier today (along with an onion) and am planning on making a snow pea/ szechuan pork stir fry for dinner tonight.


I picked the large and medium sized pods, but there are still many small and baby pods left, particularly towards the top of the plant.

In the front yard, the pomegranate has sprouted and is doing well. I do plan on cutting back some of the overhanging hackberry tree branches to help it get a little more light, but that will probably have to wait until school is out.

You can see in the background, and here more closely, that the giant cactus is budding:


This is exciting because these put up a bunch of prickly pears. At the very end of the season last year, right after we moved in, I picked about a dozen of the pears and made some syrup, which is now in the freezer. This summer/fall, I hope to get more, and fresher, pears to make better syrup.

A few days ago we went to Austin Natural Gardener and I bought a dwarf key lime tree. I have been searching all over for a key lime, but due to some stupid restrictions on shipping fruit I could not get one. This guy was kinda expensive, but I was happy to finally find one:

For the time being I'm keeping my citrus (the key lime and meyer lemon) on the front porch:

The Mexican Plum tree is on the right, in the black nursery pot. We are going to plant it when we xeriscape the front yard in May. And speaking of xeriscaping, at Austin Natural Gardener we also bought an Arbequina olive tree, which will be an excellent fit in the front yard, opposite the pomegranate tree (we'll plant it at the same time as the Mexican plum).

Stay tuned for a first cut at a reassessment of this year's crops and preview of next season's plans...

Do-Over

Back in January I sketched out a plan for what I wanted to plant in which square. Of course, you know what they say about best-laid plans. Because I had a good number of seedlings die off and because some of the early/late crops either didn't work out or I figured I could do them in the same square, I had to do some rearranging. This is the new grid, followed by a picture of the actual garden (everything is planted, except the yellow corn, which will be planted in a month or so).


And, how it looks as of today:


Ive trimmed down the spinach and the mesclun greens and pulled one head of buttercrunch lettuce. I'm trying to get the strawberries enough light, and I'm also concerned that the yellow bell pepper might not get enough light. Its bracketed by the onions, the potatoes, and the peas on three sides.

I've got two closeups from the box. First, the massive cherry tomato I've raised from seed:

Next are the four snow peas:


I put a bamboo rod in the center and tied twine from the corners of the square to the notches on the bamboo to train the peas to climb.

I also have a little natural experiment going down at the bottom of the yard. Throughout this whole process I've had excess plants, seedlings mostly. First, I had the peat pots which didn't sprout, or the leftover seedlings which didn't make it into the nursery pots or the garden, or which were not as promising as the others who came out of the same hole in the box. Instead of throwing them out, I've just stuck them in the ground down at the end of the fenceline. I've also been dumping soil and throwing out peat pots down there. Its been pretty interesting. Ive got about four pea plants, a bunch of seedlings and some pretty vigorous tomato plants (I have no idea which kind), and today I planted some excess pepper plants I had. I don't water these plants or anything. I essentially want to see what will happen just by the process of nature, versus being in a tended garden with special soil.


The peach tree has set fruit also. There are probably about 30 of these little guys all over the tree:


In addition to the peach tree, the pomegranate (which I thought was perhaps dead) and the Mexican plum are both blooming.

Finally, I added two links to the section at the right. The first is the show "Central Texas Gardening" and the second, "dissertation to dirt," is by a former PhD student who now interns or something at Johnson's backyard garden (our CSA).

Plant Sale

Given my seedling die-off and, on advice from mom, I decided to check out a few plant sales yesterday and today to buy some seedlings. I still object to this, because I want to grow things from seeds and buying young plants feels like cheating, but I want tomatoes and peppers and this might be the best way to get them, at least until I get better about starting plants from seeds.

Apparently these sales are quite a big deal, but I just randomly found them on craigslist. Yesterday (Friday) I went to a sale at one of the local Austin schools. I can't find a link to it, but it turned out to be pretty small- it was basically a vocational thing. I bought a habanero seedling and a jalapeno seedling.

UPDATE (March 8): I misremembered...I bought a Habanero seedling and a Cherry Bomb pepper seedling.

Today I went to a much bigger sale, at Sunshine Community Gardens. I showed up towards the end of the day, but the amount of peppers and tomatoes they had were massive (you can see a sample by clicking on the list at the above link). I bought two "new big dwarf" tomatoes, which I figure I'll grow outside in containers, not in the garden. I also bought a sweet pickling pepper, an Anaheim, and a "mucho nacho" jalapeno.

So here the new setup of the growing tray:

My grand champion cherry tomato is still totally dominant (its a good 6 inches tall and pretty bushy), and the black krim are coming up nice (bottom row, second from left). I am also getting some action on the other new varieties I planted a little bit ago, so hopefully that will continue.

Two "master gardeners" from the extension office had a table and I asked one of them what was going on with my seedlings. He told me that it sounded like the soil could be too dry or too wet. Big help (I'm being sarcastic). He also said that the grow light should be as close to the plants as possible, which I was confused about (I'm serious). He also told me that the extension service has an email address where you can send pictures and descriptions of your problems and experts can try to answer, which might be more promising.