The garden looking at rear fence.
(Clockwise) current leader in the potato race, peas, porter tomato, onions and early girl tomato.Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Late March Photographs of the Vegetable Garden
The garden looking at rear fence.(Clockwise) current leader in the potato race, peas, porter tomato, onions and early girl tomato.
Late March Photographs of the Cottage Garden
My favorite view down the long axis of the garden.
Prarie Flame-Leaf Sumac, Rhus lanceolata, with new spring growth.
New pot for focal point, Salvia greggi in early bloom, truck tires.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Most of March in Retrospect
Where has March gone? I've been busy with my vocation, which is great and all that, but I've had limited time in the garden and even less time to blog. And most of the time I could have been blogging has been whiled away in less productive activities, which readers of this blog will be hard pressed to imagine.
In the garden, much is changing. Our last freeze has come and gone. I think. Tomatoes have been transplanted from containers to the beds. I kept one, Matt's Wild Cherry, in a bigger container on the back porch, just because.
My potatoes are all up! The biggest plants are the ones planted whole too early, dug from the beds and transplanted to whiskey barrels intact. Second place goes to - planted too early and left in. Coming in last - the ones I followed the most directions on, waiting to plant and cutting and dusting. The champion spuds in the whiskey barrel have continually been covered with new soil until the barrel is now full. I think tomorrow I am going to hill up some soil on the potatoes in the bed as well.
Without much fanfare I planted some beans and peas the same day I planted my tomatoes. I planted two heirloom varieties - Christmas Lima beans (slow in getting going) and Jacob's Cattle dry beans (apparently with very tasty leaves in the estimation of some insect). I also put in English peas. They are sugar snap peas that came recommended by Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, the package proclaimed. Since Dripping Springs and London have no similarities in climate whatsoever, I assume the peas will die toot suite. But I'll still be happy I bought them. I'd buy poison ivy if it came with a Kew label. My next career move is to become a gardener at Kew, the only real question being which will be my local, The Coach and Horses or The Bell and Crown. The Jolly Gardeners being too obvious. Back to the beans and peas, I inoculated them with rhizobia that are symbiotic with the legumes and allow the plants to fix nitrogen in the soil. I hope this does two things, increase my bean's and pea's thrift and production, while also adding nitrogen to the garden soil for other plants to use.
My other major garden activity this month is watching and waiting for my perennial plants to come back. The first year I planted the cottage garden I got it in late in November and the first freeze wiped out several Mexican Bush and Russian Sage plants. The following spring of waiting for green, giving up and then re-planting was a disappointing experience. The next year, everything came back easy and early. This year, we had the hottest, driest summer ever followed by the coldest winter in 20 some-odd years. 110 and then 8 degrees! Why do I live here? Why do I attempt to garden here? That's it. I'm moving to Kew and going straight to The Jolly Gardeners and, after 5 pints of ordinary, never coming back. I told you that to tell you this - every time I'm in my garden in daylight hours, at least half the time is spent inspecting perennials for signs of growth. I'm still waiting on 3 purple trailing Lantanas, 1 native Lantana, 1 Mexican Bush Sage, 2 Lindhiemer's Sennas. I think I will be saddest about losing the Sennas.
If the trailing Lantana doesn't come back, they will be replaced by Pink Skullcap - Scutellaria Suffrutescens. I think Pink Skullcap's evergreen and miniature shrubby nature will make it a better choice for lining the entrance walk than Lantana. They certainly handle severe heat and drought better than Lantana, something I was shocked to see last summer. Could this entire weather cycle have been sent down upon us to force me to rectify cottage garden design mistakes? Probably.
In the garden, much is changing. Our last freeze has come and gone. I think. Tomatoes have been transplanted from containers to the beds. I kept one, Matt's Wild Cherry, in a bigger container on the back porch, just because.
My potatoes are all up! The biggest plants are the ones planted whole too early, dug from the beds and transplanted to whiskey barrels intact. Second place goes to - planted too early and left in. Coming in last - the ones I followed the most directions on, waiting to plant and cutting and dusting. The champion spuds in the whiskey barrel have continually been covered with new soil until the barrel is now full. I think tomorrow I am going to hill up some soil on the potatoes in the bed as well.
Without much fanfare I planted some beans and peas the same day I planted my tomatoes. I planted two heirloom varieties - Christmas Lima beans (slow in getting going) and Jacob's Cattle dry beans (apparently with very tasty leaves in the estimation of some insect). I also put in English peas. They are sugar snap peas that came recommended by Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, the package proclaimed. Since Dripping Springs and London have no similarities in climate whatsoever, I assume the peas will die toot suite. But I'll still be happy I bought them. I'd buy poison ivy if it came with a Kew label. My next career move is to become a gardener at Kew, the only real question being which will be my local, The Coach and Horses or The Bell and Crown. The Jolly Gardeners being too obvious. Back to the beans and peas, I inoculated them with rhizobia that are symbiotic with the legumes and allow the plants to fix nitrogen in the soil. I hope this does two things, increase my bean's and pea's thrift and production, while also adding nitrogen to the garden soil for other plants to use.
My other major garden activity this month is watching and waiting for my perennial plants to come back. The first year I planted the cottage garden I got it in late in November and the first freeze wiped out several Mexican Bush and Russian Sage plants. The following spring of waiting for green, giving up and then re-planting was a disappointing experience. The next year, everything came back easy and early. This year, we had the hottest, driest summer ever followed by the coldest winter in 20 some-odd years. 110 and then 8 degrees! Why do I live here? Why do I attempt to garden here? That's it. I'm moving to Kew and going straight to The Jolly Gardeners and, after 5 pints of ordinary, never coming back. I told you that to tell you this - every time I'm in my garden in daylight hours, at least half the time is spent inspecting perennials for signs of growth. I'm still waiting on 3 purple trailing Lantanas, 1 native Lantana, 1 Mexican Bush Sage, 2 Lindhiemer's Sennas. I think I will be saddest about losing the Sennas.
If the trailing Lantana doesn't come back, they will be replaced by Pink Skullcap - Scutellaria Suffrutescens. I think Pink Skullcap's evergreen and miniature shrubby nature will make it a better choice for lining the entrance walk than Lantana. They certainly handle severe heat and drought better than Lantana, something I was shocked to see last summer. Could this entire weather cycle have been sent down upon us to force me to rectify cottage garden design mistakes? Probably.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Tomatoes!
I bought tomato transplants on Wednesday. It was very exciting.
Many people wax rhapsodic when comes to fresh garden tomatoes. A song by Guy Clark comes to mind. I am not one of those people. I like them, but my palate is not refined enough to tell a huge difference between fresh and store bought tomatoes for the most part. Maybe store tomato quality is increasing, or all the home grown nightshades I've had were poorly grown, I've just never been blown away by taste differences.
So why, if I'm underwhelmed by tomatoes, was Wednesday's purchase exciting? First, every novice gardener starts with tomatoes; so tomato transplants look, smell and feel like gardening to me. They scream spring time and sunshine from their black plastic containers. Second, this is the year that I grow a tomato that I will have no choice but to write a song about. This year I will no longer be blase' about my fruit. I am growing different varieties than ever before and I'm a more dedicated gardener than ever before.
I was planning on going to a community garden sale this morning. The sale is famous for it's tomato varieties and I was prepared to go and procure only the very best and sexiest heirloom tomatoes for my garden. Then Celelia Nasti, via her weekly radio spot on KUT's Folk Ways called "Growing Concerns", announced that while the sale is great, it is over crowded and you needed to get there at 5 am to stand in line or be relegated to buying spindly left over crap once all the really good gardeners have picked the place over. The sale is for a good cause and there are worse groups of people to stand in line with than gardeners, but her description of the event was enough to put me off. Which was probably her plan, saving all the good stuff for her and her bourgeois radio gardening cronies. I wouldn't put that past someone with a last name like Nasti.
Her plan worked and I bought garden center tomatoes. We went to The Great Outdoors on South Congress in Austin. For those not familiar with Austin, South Congress is the main road in the zip code (triumphant trumpet music, please!) 78704, the epicenter of all things hip and ironic. How could I go wrong with ironic tomatoes. The Great Outdoors is a very nice garden center with a coffee shop and one of the mangers there is also a a nondenominational pastor of some sort who once officiated a wedding I attended. 78704 indeed. They had a phenomenal tomato selection, including several of the heirloom varieties that I had researched to buy at the community garden sale. Take that Cecelia.
I bought the common hybrids - Better Bush, Early Girl and Bush Celebrity
and the heirlooms - Porter, Brandywine Black, Striped German and Matt's Wild Cherry (how am I supposed to resist that?)
It is too early to put tomatoes in the ground in Dripping Springs. The chance of freeze is still too high for a week to 10 days or so. I could plant them if I had a way to protect them, but I don't. So I put my transplants in pots on the back porch for couple of weeks. My plan is that I planted them deeper in the pots and they can grow new roots, then I'll plant them deeper in the garden beds for even more roots. For those reading this blog to pick up gardening tips (a bad idea), tomatoes are the only plant I know of that responds to be planted too deeply by growing new roots, everything else dies. Also, while in pots than can get used to cooler night time temperatures without the danger of a freeze - I'll just pull them all in if it looks too close to 32.
A brief word about Texas weather. Please note on Sunday one week it was too sunny and nice to post much and on Tuesday the same week, it snowed. I find that interesting and could bang on and on about it, but I know every region of the world is fascinated with it's own weather pattern and the rest of the world could give a damn, so I'll spare us all.
Many people wax rhapsodic when comes to fresh garden tomatoes. A song by Guy Clark comes to mind. I am not one of those people. I like them, but my palate is not refined enough to tell a huge difference between fresh and store bought tomatoes for the most part. Maybe store tomato quality is increasing, or all the home grown nightshades I've had were poorly grown, I've just never been blown away by taste differences.
So why, if I'm underwhelmed by tomatoes, was Wednesday's purchase exciting? First, every novice gardener starts with tomatoes; so tomato transplants look, smell and feel like gardening to me. They scream spring time and sunshine from their black plastic containers. Second, this is the year that I grow a tomato that I will have no choice but to write a song about. This year I will no longer be blase' about my fruit. I am growing different varieties than ever before and I'm a more dedicated gardener than ever before.
I was planning on going to a community garden sale this morning. The sale is famous for it's tomato varieties and I was prepared to go and procure only the very best and sexiest heirloom tomatoes for my garden. Then Celelia Nasti, via her weekly radio spot on KUT's Folk Ways called "Growing Concerns", announced that while the sale is great, it is over crowded and you needed to get there at 5 am to stand in line or be relegated to buying spindly left over crap once all the really good gardeners have picked the place over. The sale is for a good cause and there are worse groups of people to stand in line with than gardeners, but her description of the event was enough to put me off. Which was probably her plan, saving all the good stuff for her and her bourgeois radio gardening cronies. I wouldn't put that past someone with a last name like Nasti.
Her plan worked and I bought garden center tomatoes. We went to The Great Outdoors on South Congress in Austin. For those not familiar with Austin, South Congress is the main road in the zip code (triumphant trumpet music, please!) 78704, the epicenter of all things hip and ironic. How could I go wrong with ironic tomatoes. The Great Outdoors is a very nice garden center with a coffee shop and one of the mangers there is also a a nondenominational pastor of some sort who once officiated a wedding I attended. 78704 indeed. They had a phenomenal tomato selection, including several of the heirloom varieties that I had researched to buy at the community garden sale. Take that Cecelia.
I bought the common hybrids - Better Bush, Early Girl and Bush Celebrity
and the heirlooms - Porter, Brandywine Black, Striped German and Matt's Wild Cherry (how am I supposed to resist that?)
It is too early to put tomatoes in the ground in Dripping Springs. The chance of freeze is still too high for a week to 10 days or so. I could plant them if I had a way to protect them, but I don't. So I put my transplants in pots on the back porch for couple of weeks. My plan is that I planted them deeper in the pots and they can grow new roots, then I'll plant them deeper in the garden beds for even more roots. For those reading this blog to pick up gardening tips (a bad idea), tomatoes are the only plant I know of that responds to be planted too deeply by growing new roots, everything else dies. Also, while in pots than can get used to cooler night time temperatures without the danger of a freeze - I'll just pull them all in if it looks too close to 32.
A brief word about Texas weather. Please note on Sunday one week it was too sunny and nice to post much and on Tuesday the same week, it snowed. I find that interesting and could bang on and on about it, but I know every region of the world is fascinated with it's own weather pattern and the rest of the world could give a damn, so I'll spare us all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
