Rain!

[started 8 April]
So it rained for the first time in what seemed like weeks today. Lazy me, I had forgotten to water the garden last night so it's a good thing that nature took care of that for me. I did shuffle my boxes of seedlings inside for fear of them drowning. Oh! And the progress report on them is quite positive! I had started flats of a bunch of different heirloom tomato seeds that I had procured through the good folks at wintersown.org back in 2008 and was terrified that, after two weeks of not germinating, that my seeds were either no longer viable or I had killed them somehow. To my surprise and infinite pleasure, one or two little seedlings had popped up. That was enough to make me happy.

[edited 17 April]

So I need to just post my entries instead of waiting for complete thoughts. I have lots of new photos but I will post them later. For now here are the photos that go along with the one I started over a week ago!


Garlic or something I think. It just sort of volunteered-- I'm excited!


Oregano that I have not killed yet-- this is a momentous occasion-- I have never ever ever been successful with oregano. I am keeping my fingers crossed!



This is kind of the salsa pasta side of the garden with tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and other stuff. I wish I had taken the time to start seeds in the winter as these aren't particularly exciting varieties. All of the tomatoes are Homestead and the peppers are all generic "Sweet Bell," "Sweet Banana," "Cayenne," and "Jalapeno" plants from Wal-Mart.




This is what should eventually be the legumes and root veggies side. I have planted all sorts of random beans, peas, and radishes more in the hopes that something will grow since most of the seeds I planted are kind of old. The viney thing that DBF's mother claims is some sort of jasmine will serve as a natural trellis. I hope that will work out.


These little guys excite me. DBF and I wanted fruit trees, but we decided to start small with some blueberry bushes. I think they are Jersey and North Bush varieties. I'm crossing my fingers in hopes that they produce!

You will notice the 2x4 in some of the photos. The previous owners built the garden plot and-- stupid me-- I should have accounted for the fact that the thing is literally inches away from the back fence when I was preparing things. I cannot access the rear half of the garden without stomping all over my nice fluffy soil, so I have to use a plank of wood to precariously balance on while I do maintenance, like weeding, grassing, and whatever else requires me to get to the other side. I will bet that it is hilarious to watch, but it's kind of scary (not for me, but for the poor plants that are under constant threat of my crushing them to death under my clumsy butt).

I will update with more recent photos are things have taken off a smidge. I'm mostly excited about the heirloom varieties that I have gotten to sprout. I need need need to get them into individual pots before their roots grow together. Since I started this post a week ago I have gotten every single variety to germinate. Now we have to find homes for all of them.

Yawn! Sigh! Bed time! See you tomorrow!

Remembrance

While I could not find any good photos of my Austin garden, I did find some of my mother's garden in Dayton. She has a pretty green thumb, but isn't a particularly glamorous gardener. She just wants stuff to grow, and grow now.


Okay, not real flowers. But pretty nonetheless.


Christmas cactus, the hyper-reproductive rabbit of the plant world.


Happy potted plants bask in the sun. I'm not sure if my mom particularly likes succulents, but my sister sort of has a fetish for them and so we've all ended up with tons, procured from her collection.


Here are the beautiful Insuk's Wang Kong runner beans that I gave my mom. The Austin heat totally fried the hell out of mine, but hers just kept making gorgeous flowers all throughout the summer and produced lots of delicious beans. Mmmm.


Zucchini are bad. They like to hide.


Almost as bad as zucchini are yellow squash. It didn't help that my mom literally threw seeds into the garden so the plants were crowded as all get out. Reaching in to harvest these suckers was not fun and they are prickly. Oh my goodness.


We were literally harvesting pounds of cherries a day throughout the late summer and early fall. I wish I had given her normal tomato seeds-- I can't imagine what the beefsteak harvest would have been like!


These were pickling cucumbers of some sort. Tiny and delicious.


The Insuk's, but with beans on the plant. These things are all sorts of ridiculous in terms of size.


This is what it looked like. I'm sorry, but it looks insane to me. Harvesting was pretty difficult, especially once the tomatoes and squash in the middle of the pile started to ripen. It was pretty fun, though. I miss waking up in the morning and hauling the latest tomato harvest in with a big bucket.


One of the early July harvests. We didn't get many bush beans or peppers because the poor plants were completely shaded out by the tomatoes, runner beans, and squash leaves. Still fun, though.

Planting Day Part I

About half of the bed is filled in with seedlings now. While it was nice that the moisture cooled the air a bit, after the second rain of the day it went from pleasantly cool to uncomfortably chilly. I managed to plunk quite a bit of stuff into the ground before the sun went down.

The damage so far:
4 "Homestead" tomatoes
2 Green bell peppers
2 Yellow bell peppers
2 Red bell peppers
5 Cayenne peppers
5 Jalapeno peppers
6 Sweet banana peppers
3 Sweet basil
3 Greek oregano
1 Lavender

Sprinkled among them are marigolds. I'll be popping some other "companion" ornamentals in between the rows tomorrow, but for today I had to stop because it got so darned cold! It wasn't really just the temperature but also the shade that bothered me. Our house faces due west and the garden, which is to the rear and is thus east of the house, is completely shaded by about 5pm. The lack of sun warmth just chilled me so much that I abandoned any thought of last-minute seeding and opted instead to wander into the front yard where the boyfriend is starting a landscaping project of his own. We pulled up weeds and tore apart some old metal landscape framing left over from the previous homeowners. As the sun dipped below the houses across the street, we called it a night and headed indoors for some oven-fresh brownies. Mmmm :9

Tomorrow's schedule is to plot out where climbing stuff is going to go, if I can manage a root vegetable area, and if there is any way I can manage a pumpkin patch somewhere in the yard. I may also have to run out for some more soil amendments as I really have no idea what the state of my soils are. There is a fancy nursery near my house-- they may have some neat things to look at, as well. I'm all kinds of excited :D

The Best Time of Year

So today is Planting Day. Well, Planting Day, Part I. During a brief sojourn to the Home Depot we grabbed a couple more herbs (Sweet Basil, Lavender, Greek Oregano, Rosemary) and some marigolds to fill in the empty spaces while the veggies start to fill out. I also bought seeds since they were buy one, get one free and I am a sucker for seeding.

It couldn't be a better day. The sun is hiding behind clouds, it's been drizzling on and off and we had a nice cool rain last night and into the morning. It's currently 60 degrees and supposed to dip just below 40 tonight, which is exciting because that means I can spend all day outside today and tomorrow without dying of heat stroke. My transplantees got a nice little shower and the beds should be fairly moist. So very perfect!

Also, this is the most amazing blog ever for veggie gardeners. The how-to guides are so descriptive and informative, and the photos are just so beautiful and inspirational!

My companion is all about self-sufficiency and his aunt has a wonderful mini-victory garden of her own so I feel totally supported by everyone around me. I don't think I've ever been this excited about starting a garden, even when I had to start from scratch all on my own two years ago.

Okay, time to stop blogging and to get outside! Yay!

AMENDMENT (1:30ish):
So about an hour or so later and it started to rain for real-- no more of this light drizzle. So back indoors it is, and since I have some new seeds (and a shoebox full of old ones) I will start some seedlings. It's all very exciting. I love today so much :D

HOLY CRAP -- She remembered her password!

So, long story short I had to abandon ship halfway through the summer to house-sit in Dayton, Ohio. I discovered that my mother's gardening skills tended to stray from the aesthetic and wandered into the prolific. While I struggled to not kill stuff, all of the seeds and seedlings that I gave to my mother were producing so freaking much that she was annoyed that she had to harvest every single day. She literally had 2-3 pounds of tomatoes every morning that she would grumpily wash and put on the kitchen counter. Perhaps she was grumpy because I accidentally gave her *only* cherry tomatoes and she likes larger ones. Oops?

Ah, but the worst part about my mother's garden compared to mine-- while I had labored for weeks to dig, dig, dig, and collect soils and learn how to tie stakes and trellises and space things properly and companion plant and water first thing in the morning and amend the soil and identify pests and pull up weeds, she dug a 6x6 hole under her deck, mixed in some chicken manure, nailed chicken wire to the deck posts, and literally stuck seedlings in the ground and threw seeds around them. And her garden produced like crazy. And I am sure that mine just withered and died in the Texas summer with nobody to look after it. That might be unfair to say-- it was pretty much withered and dead even when I was meticulously caring for it.

Fast-forward a year and a half and I am now in Montgomery, Alabama and starting anew. This garden plot had existed when we got the house, but it was messy and overrun with briars. We started work last weekend pulling up the old broccoli bushes and clearing out the weeds. This weekend we cut up the soil a bit and mixed in some humus and manure so try to make it a more nutritious snack for the plants we're putting in. To be honest, getting this garden going was a bit of an afterthought as I've got inside projects to do as well, but oh my goodness it has been so sunny and warm lately that we've been itching to get outdoors.

Unlike last time, I didn't get around to mass seedings and I am definitely paying for it as buying seedlings isn't cheap. I do wish that I had the foresight to start my own-- doh! There are still tons of seeds from my last major endeavor two years ago that I am hoping to goodness are still viable. Montgomery has a long growing season so I figure that a late start is better than nothing at all. That will be a project for tomorrow.

Ah, and I am getting into edible bushes and trees, so we picked up two blueberries last weekend. I literally know nothing about fruiting trees and bushes so this will be a fun adventure. I don't think I'm supposed to expect fruit this year (or next year, or the next) so I think this will be more of a test of patience than anything else. Oh-- I also started a Ponderosa lemon from seed. Crossing my fingers to see if it makes a viable, fruiting tree!

So far this is what we have:
Jersey Blueberry
Northland (I think) Blueberry
Red, Green, and Yellow Bell Pepper
Jalepeno Pepper
Cayenne Pepper
Sweet Banana Pepper
Some "heirloom" variety of tomato (can't recall what it was)
Lemon Balm

I am going to shove a lot more into the garden than I did the first time around. Seeing my mother's crowded, overgrown, and very tasty garden has convinced me that careful spacing is for the birds.

The Plan:
Tomatoes and Peppers
Basils, oregano, rosemary, lavender, and at least a couple other herbs
Pole beans and runner beans
Cucumbers, squash, and melons
Carrots and potatoes
Radishes, beets, and turnips
Lettuces, maybe
I also want to incorporate companion ornamentals, like marigolds, nasturtiums, and the like because I want it to be pretty. I might get into the strawberry thing, but fruit literally scares me. It seems so incredibly labor-intensive and attractive to too many pests, but we'll see. We'll see.

There is also going to be a little garden plot in the front, reserved for ornamentals. There are already some heirloom daffodils and today we got a bunch of tulips to add to it. My companion loves bulb flowers so I'll let him take care of that project. He is also going to make some kind of little retaining wall or something and plant a Japanese maple. That excites me.

Oh my GOD and have you ever smelled a tea olive? He introduced me to those-- they are RIDICULOUS. And we are going to cover our yard in them.

I will post the last pictures I have of my old garden, pictures of my mom's sprawling mass of tomato vines, and of this blank canvas that will be turned into a masterpiece (or slaughterhouse-- whichever!)

Oh also-- WHAT IS WITH THE CLAY SOIL. OH MY GOD. I can make pottery with this stuff. Yikes.

So what have you been up to? :D

In Brief(s)

(s) because I am in sleep mode and therefore wearing undies as pajama bottoms.

--Tomato plants all have flowers. The next step is for the flowers to become fruits
--Pole beans are growing strong, but the Insuk's Wang Kongs are growing stronger
--The small squash plants keep getting affected by some sort of mold after it rains
--Adapazarı balkabağı plants are obscenely huge. Now I know why people plant pumpkins on hills five feet in diameter
--Something evil nibbled on my prettiest marigold, ruffling the edges of the petals
--I need to dig another plot for a new set of tomatoes (woo-hoo?)
--Rain rain rain rain rain.

Please, God, keep the temperatures at a decent level for at least another month or two. That would be oh so wonderful.

FEROCIA HORTICOUTURA.

So like, I just watched season four of Project Runway these past two days and I have to say that I am going to get FIERCE on this garden tomorrow (awww gawd can you tell who my favorite designer was?). I have to move a lot of debris from the area and I am going to sprinkle some flower seeds to sort of fill up the empty space that makes the plot seem sad. I just want it to look not-so-messy yet accomplish it without having to either buy materials or scour Craigslist for people throwing out cement blocks or wood scraps of dubious origin and life history. I also have to fight back some opportunistic pioneers who are starting to encroach upon my space. Bermuda grass is quite persistent!

Ah, another reason to ramp up the volume early on is because I have a date with my oldest sister for dinner, circa 6pm~ish at Chez Nous. I would like the garden to be aesthetically pleasing enough for her that I'm not too embarrassed to show her around it.

Oh! I caught a big fat squash vine borer flying around the other day. Beautiful, beautiful pest, which is a shame that it had to go. They're ever so lovely, and oh-so fashionable as they have these wonderful red velvet pants and furry black boots. I'd love to keep it as a pet, if such a thing were possible.

Anyhow the hour is LAAATE and I need to rest a bit. Lovely pictures to come this weekend!

Getting Back Into the Swing of Things

Oy, so I discovered the other day that Red Robin will give you a free burger on your birthday completely gratis, so the boyfriend and I went in to gorge ourselves. As a result I am feeling quite ponderous. I probably eat two or three burgers a year, so just half of one hit me quite hard.

But I took pictures today and feel that the blog must go on! I'll start with something horrifying, then progress to the happy from there.

As mentioned a couple days ago, Choccy got attacked by caterpillars. He has new growth now, but you pretty much get the point:

Bastards.

I am not entirely sure what this thing is, but he was sunning himself on one of my Insuk's. I decided to let him be.


Just when I thought that picking off one aphid or leaf hopper at a time was bad, I discovered this guy:

Talk about a trap crop. This is one of three weeds about five feet away from the garden. I'm almost afraid to remove these guys because then the aphids might move along to the garden proper. It's a pretty chilling sight, though. *shudder*

But now for the happy! My pole beans are really climbing along.



A hand of ginger was starting to sprout in my kitchen, so into a pot he went! I hope something nice comes of it.


Two of the tomato plants that I pruned thoroughly:



And two that I did not. It's a race to see which one does better!



Unexpectedly, the first tomato to flower was one that was ravaged by insect damage. It seems to have bounced back, and while it seems a bit too small to be producing I'm going to let it try to set fruit.


Borage! I put two seeds in the ground maybe two months ago and one is finally starting to pop out of the ground.


Marigolds! I'm not entirely sure what kind, but they're bright and happy for sure. The second one is so yellow that my camera had trouble taking a good picture of it.



It's supposed to rain again tomorrow, which is great, but holy cow the temperature is supposed to skyrocket to the mid-90s by Thursday. This does not excite me as that means the mosquitoes will be out in force. Long sleeves for me in the heat, woohoo.

Ah, but something very sweet from fellow blogger, Vanilla Lotus (Priscilla) in sunny San Antonio:

She likes my blog :3 I now feel that, for both you, my dear readers, and for my own benefit, I'll update more often and with better content. In the meantime, be sure to visit her wonderful gardening blog, New Sprout. Cheer her on as she totally rocks her final exams!

Of Thunderstorming and Pruning

Late last night we had a lively downpour enhanced by some spectacular thunder and lightning. The forecast for the next three days predicts more storms, and I couldn't be more excited. I forwent watering the garden from Thursday onward for this very reason, and in any case God can probably do the job better and more thoroughly than I ever can. I hope my plants are happy.

The one thing that concerns me is the health of my tomato plants. I had decided to prune them this weekend, based on the sage advice and clear instructions of gardeners more experienced than I am. I noticed that my cherries and Burpees of uncertain variety have threatened to bloom (I see those little developing buds hanging out there, quivering in anticipation) and according to the illustrations, all branches below the first flowering stem must go. I'm both a skeptic and a chicken, so I only took the plunge with two plants, and at that only removed the lowest stems. On the plant that I attacked the most, I only trimmed him up to the two branches just below the flowering stem. Just in case.

Anyhow, the reason that I am worried is not so much that I may have hacked them to death in a fit of stabby-clippy glee, but rather that all pruning sites sternly warn the reader never to prune or tie a plant when it is wet because, like people, open wounds invite infection and diseases. I only hope that I gave the plants enough time to seal their wounds before the rains came and potentially infected them with something nasty that inhibits their growth and fecundity. I desperately want garden-fresh tomatoes.

Since it will be dreary and moist for the next few days I can only hope that I did not make a horrible error in judgment.

My Monthly Update?

Man, I am no good at documenting progress. Apparently I was nominated for a weird little blog award for having a blog that could elicit mirth both from my knee-slappingly witty writing and from my fruitless foibles. This is a catastrophe, after all, and not everything goes as planned.

I indeed have dirt mounds in the backyard, but next to them (where the dirt used to be but now is replaced by compost, organic matter, and, er, other stuff) are my two little beds, connected in an L-shape (let's not think of too many negative things that start with L quite yet!) with veggie plants in them.

I wasn't totally lying when I said that "Today is planting day!" I should have actually said "Today starts planting week" as the weather kind of hampered progress a bit. I did manage to put in tomatoes with cute little marigolds and basils around them and construct two bean teepees with trellis netting strung between them. Of course, because it was planting week and not planting day I allowed for such catastrophes as the entire teepee/trellis complex getting flattened by strong winds--which they did that very night-- and luckily waited to test the structural integrity of the thing before planting anything around it. I didn't push the poles into the ground far enough the first time, but with the aid of the boyfriend (who is almost a foot taller than I am and therefore taller than the poles) we got them into a nice, steady position and they have survived high winds and thunderstorms with ease so far. I'm strangely happy about the teepees because I went online to search for the proper way to lash together tripods and was able to follow the instructions without a problem. Of course there were straight-forward instructions and illustrations, but I was happy nonetheless at my cleverness.

Oh, you want photographic proof! I didn't take any when I first sunk the things into the ground. After all, it was sort of depressing-looking, what with 5"-tall tomato seedlings, sad-looking squash transplants, and most of the seeds for the trellis and the teepees underground. In all honesty I felt a bit embarrassed because I look at other people's ideas of "seedlings" and they have foot and a half-tall monsters growing fruit already. So in a way, I kind of avoided the blog because it was sort of like illustrating my defeat.

BUUUT. A couple weeks ago I realized that things were starting to look up. A couple rain storms had kept me out of the garden since the only reason I found myself outdoors at the time was to water the thing. Miraculously, after a week or so of neglect, I noticed that my tomatoes were orders of magnitude larger (I have found this was a trend-- as soon as I started ignoring my seedlings in cups they did better. What the heck!). Without my "help" (other than picking off aphids) they were flourishing, and it made me ever so happy.

But, I will emphasize again, this is a catastrophe, and my first real nemeses appeared last week, just when I was reveling in the progress of the garden.

1. Those little green caterpillar-on-a-string things
You all remember my lovely, lush, fragrant chocolate mint plant that I loved so much? Two days, two different caterpillars, and the entire thing is completely stripped of leaves. Completely. Stripped. Of leaves. I really ought to take a picture because it is so amazing, but the carnage is more than even I can handle. I have found them on almost every species of plant I have, including tomatoes, beans, and curcubits. I really hate them, but I'm just thankful that they are easily extracted without stinging me.

2. Aphids
Okay, these guys aren't so bad because they've only appeared in numbers that I can easily pick off by hand, but they have been slowly eroding away the leaves on everything. They're quite satisfying to squish, though.

3. Leaf-hopper nymphs
OKAY it's a little difficult for me to express how incredibly upsetting these little things are without going on a curse-laden tirade. I even have pictures if you do not know what I'm talking about:

A little family of these guys came through and literally devastated my tomato plants. How they work their evil little voodoo is by sticking their hideous little mouthparts into the stem of the plant and kill by sucking out its vital juices. One alone will make a nice hickey-looking bruise that weakens the stem at that point (usually at ground-level). But I found up to 6 of them at a time surrounding the stems of my tomatoes one morning, and they had so weakened the stems that a couple of my plants nearly died and had to be re-buried in order for more roots to form.

This is one such victim. You will notice the drinking straw collar that is now around its base. I had originally put them on when they first went into the ground to protect the skinny, tender stems from cutworm damage. After a couple weeks I removed them because I didn't want the stems to rot, just in case the collars were holding in too much moisture. After the hopper nymph attack, I had to put them right back on. The logic is this: the collar will protect them against cutworm as well as these leaf-hoppers, which prefer to feed next to the ground where they are camouflaged, and if the hoppers do end up feeding, then they will be higher up the stem and easier to spot.

This plant got pretty damaged in the attack and is also in recovery. I should have taken pictures, but there was a gash that went through almost clean to the other side by the time I got to it.

Hardcore collaring. This guy has a pretty beefy stem, so I had to employ a regular straw AND a boba tea straw.

But not everything has been catastrophic. The rest of my tomatoes have taken off, and I think I see some buds beginning to form. I may get some fruit yet! (You can really tell which tomato plants got hacked up, though. Really sad):

A different, more flattering angle:

The squashes I transplanted in don't look too hot, but I have read innumerable times that squash doesn't care to be transplanted. I ignored all warnings, but at least I have a couple making blossoms:

And the whole trellis complex doesn't look terribly bad:

I bought a little pepper plant from HEB called "Paul Grande" (whatever that means) and while nobody has been able to tell me what I should be expecting, I was able to get a neat picture of its blossom:

Of course I had to plant beans around the teepees, and I already have ones that found the poles are are starting to wind around. I find pole beans to be incredibly cute:

I planted some cucumbers and squashes on the opposite end of the net from the transplants. They will probably be crowded at first, but I intend to thin them out as they get bigger:

I recently began corresponding with a kindly older gentleman from the Seattle area who grows an heirloom Chinese runner bean that gardening friends of his have called Insuk's Wang Kong runner bean, in honor of his Korean wife, Insuk. He actually sent these to me after I requested some squash seeds that he had been keen to share on the site, but I'll get to those later. The beans are quite enormous and lovely, but the plant is so fast-growing that I'm amazed. I planted some in the garden, but the ones I am looking forward to seeing are the ones I planted next to trees in the back yard:

Jim (the kindly older gentleman) also sent me some seeds from a squash that originates in Adapazari, Turkey. It's apparently quite large and sweet like a pumpkin, and I couldn't resist the offer to try out some of the seeds. The thing popped out of the ground amazingly fast, and the leaves are astonishingly large. I am not sure what took over my camera when I snapped this picture, but it came out such a wonderfully alien green color and looks quite artsy (compared to everything else I photograph):

So overall, things are going fairly well. Things that got damaged are making a recovery, and things that are new in the ground are coming up strong and fast. I enjoy the serenity that comes with a peaceful day of gardening, and I also enjoy the feeling of triumph when I'm able to bring a seemingly dead plant back to life.

I hope that this blog doesn't turn into something depressing. Right now my garden is a happy place, as it should be.

TODAY.

Today is planting day!

I will continue with normal updating in a bit, but today is planting day! Yay!

Critters

Just a random photo post of cool critters I've seen around the place.


A honeybee of some sort. This particularly made me smile because I had just watched a PBS documentary on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)-- essentially the unexplained disappearance of workers-- in American honeybees, which made me both sad and a bit concerned. It's sort of a big deal. Anyway, here are a couple links about it:
USDA Q&A on CCD
The Wiki article on it


A little brown skink who came skittering out when I was pulling up Bermuda grass. At first I thought it was an insect because it was so tiny. Then I thought it was a snake because I didn't see the tiny, insignificantly sized legs. For scale, I put down a clothespin--

It has to be the smallest lizard I've ever encountered. Cute little thing, yeah?


Now for something not cute. I have no idea what this is-- some sort of bagworm or caddisfly or something, but essentially it's an inchworm who has decided to burden itself with a cone of garbage. I found this one hanging out on a pea plant, probably planning its destruction.



I found this guy out today doing... something. I was hoping that he was eating bugs, but alas from the pictures you can see that he was just collecting root bits for some other insidious purpose.