mid-summer update

Due to some serious commitments in my other life, I've been unable to post about the goings-on in the garden. I did some work in the yard today, including taking out the brick walkway because it looked like shit. contractors. When we get around to doing some more serious landscaping for the front yard I've got some plans for a path. I also dug out the front bed to about 10 inches and lined it with weed cloth. I plan to enrich and acidify the soil then fill the bed with blueberry, blackberry, and strawberry plants. I'll do that over the winter though:

The citrus trees are doing well. There's a few small limes, the lemons are growing pretty well, and the Satsuma has one large fruit on it:

We also have grapes (wild) growing across the back fence. Based on the taste and look, I think they're concord but they aren't as sweet as supermarket grapes.

These sweet banana peppers (in the pots) have been producing ok and the melons in the box (watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew) are growing well and putting out runners. They'll probably start to fruit in a few weeks. The pumpkins were a disaster- they started off amazingly well and were the fastest growing plants in the garden by far. Then their stalks started to die and hollow out. I don't know if it was bugs or disease or what, but after a few weeks the main trunk of the plant was detached from the root. I tore them out. The fourth square is lima beans, which are also truckin.

The cucumbers (these are the pickling cukes) have taken off and basically gone up the cage for the cherry tomato plant:

I picked the biggest one a few days ago but I have to take a look at how to pickle things, although I need alot more cucumbers to run a pickling operation:

The peppers have been pretty disappointing. I've gotten some good banana peppers, but only one Santa Fe Grande and a Jalapeno is growing now. No action from the bell peppers, cherry bomb, anaheim, or habanero, and no action from the sweet pickler either after getting a few of them a couple of weeks ago. The exception is the Cayanne peppers, which are growing like mad (I'm drying them for spice):

Specifically on the tomatoes. The cherry tomatoes are producing really well, still. I've gotten about 50 tomatoes off of the plant so far and it is still setting fruit, but now its only fruiting at about 4 feet off the ground (you can see the plant has exploded out of the top of the cage).

The Porter's Dark Cherry have been great and I'll add a bunch more of these plants next season. They grow fast, have a good taste, are prolific and heat tolerant, and are a nice size.

The Roma's have also come in and, despite the weak start, they've been putting out some pretty good fruit also. They aren't as prolific as the dark cherry (nor are they as pretty, they're kind of mottled red and yellow). Because I have alot of Romas and Dark Cherry I've been making tomato sauce and freezing it until I'll have enough to cook it down and make a sauce proper. I get this many tomatoes about every week and a half:

The Black Krim tomatoes were coming along beautifully and were about the size of baseballs, but now they have all cracked (there are about 6 on the plant). Its been because of the weather here- we'll go for a week or so of 100+ temps and no rain, then we'll have a torrential downpour or three in a few day period. The plants take up water faster than the tomatoes grow, so the skin splits. Some of the splits are are only cosmetic (they look like cork), but others have split wide open, like this one:

One thing I've learned is that its necessary to have a bunch of plants going to get a good amount of fruit. Excepting the Cayanne, I'll need multiple plants of each variety and, based on what I've seen so far I think I will focus on the Dark Cherry, Cherry, and Roma tomatoes (and maybe a crack-resistant variety). For the peppers, I'll probably try to grow more banana peppers and maybe another type of jalapeno. I've been happy with the cucumbers also, but I need to add more if I want to have enough to make some pickles (I also plan on pickling the banana peppers).

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.

Next Season's Plans

So as things have gotten established in the garden, I have been thinking about what I should have done differently and what changes I will make next season. This is a first cut and will probably be altered throughout the season:

Overall I am pretty happy with the whole process, so I plan on growing even more veggies and fruits next year. With that in mind, the 5x5 box was too big because its too hard to get at the veggies in the center, and also because the density of the crops means that the middle veggies don't get as much light as they could. I will probably leave the center square empty next planting, regardless of what I put in the rest of the squares.

One problem is that when I planned the squares I only took into account only the final height of the crops. What I didn't account for is the staggered start times. For instance, corn gets much higher than the peas, but the peas go in earlier so they block out the corn as it grows. Next season I'll plan according to final height AND start time.

I also plan on building maybe 4 2x2 squares and putting them next to the existing bed. One of the 2x2's will be specifically for strawberries, because I am starting to see the strawberries take off now that the potatoes are out (more in a minute). I also want to take a stab at some homemade strawberry wine... (I can also use the juice of one of my lemons for it.)

Another 2x2 (maybe a long 5x2) will be strictly for corn. I'm not sure how my corn will turn out. Its been growing extremely well but I have read that corn needs to be planted densely in order to be fertilized, and I'm not sure my 4 plants per square, in 3 squares, staggered about a month apart, will be dense enough to fertilize each other. We'll wait and see.

Other 2x2's will be used for tomatoes, because by putting all of them together they will be easier to stake out.

I will also build a potato bin, maybe 18"x18." I finally gave up and pulled the potato plants a few days ago because they were just blocking out all the light for 3 or 4 squares around them. It turns out I got a good amount of potatoes:


I think this is pretty encouraging and I'm sure they would grow faster and bigger if I hadn't been cutting the foliage back for about two months (I wrote how long they had been in the ground when I pulled them so I could calculate in the future). I want to be able to disassemble the bin at the end of the season so I can get the potatoes easier.

Regarding the specific crops:

• The snow peas are tremendously prolific, putting out a good sized crop about every two weeks. I will probably plant a couple of squares of them next season.

• The carrots are also growing well:

• I also liked the spinach, but the mesclun and buttercrunch didn't really live up to my expectations. However my options for what to grow during that time period are pretty limited, so I may just end up growing a bunch of spinach.

• I think the green beans were planted too densely, 9 to a square. I followed Mel's instructions, but the way the leaves spread out (and they're big leaves) causes problems with light. I'll dial it back to four per square next planting,
  

• I'm happy with the tomatoes and peppers. The cherry tomato I've raised from seed is the biggest plant in the garden, although none of the tomatoes have set fruit yet (but they have flowered). Next year I will probably start the tomatoes and peppers about a month later than I did this year (mid-Jan), and I will start them directly in black nursery pots instead of in the peat pots.
  

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...

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.

Early Starters

Before I get to the dirt, I've got something a little more interesting. I figure on roughly two waves of planting: late January and early March. I'll do the January plantings this weekend and post about it in a week and a half or so. However some of the veggies (the peppers and tomatoes) need to be started indoors and transplanted into the garden when they are a couple of months old, in March. As of right now, I am starting:

• Habanero pepper
• Jalapeno pepper
  
• Bell pepper
• An Anaheim-type pepper
• Hungarian wax pepper
• Pepperoncini pepper
  
• Roma Tomatoes
• Beefsteak Tomatoes
• Cherry Tomatoes

I bought a simple Rubbermaid 24 x 12 shallow container to hold the trays. I planted the seeds in peat strips which will decompose when planted (50 individual pots in 10-pot trays). Each 5 pot strip held one type of plant, in Ladybug Seed Starter mix, which you can see labeled on the side of the container:

This is about 2 weeks after planting. All the tomatoes have sprouted, just now the peppers, especially the Habanero, are coming up.

I also bought a grow light rig (which I am quite happy with) so I can make sure the seedlings are getting the correct amount of light:

Pepperoncinis are in the regular pot

I try to give them about 10 hours of artificial, direct sunlight daily. I keep the soil fairly most with a spray bottle. Shortly after I took the above picture, I began to snip the seedlings so that only the strongest-looking one survives in each pot. Then I will choose the strongest looking plant of the 5 pot strip to put in the garden. I will give the weaklings to friends to plant. pwn3d.