Summer in List Form

I almost forgot that I was going to use an easy to read list form for my garden happenings -

• Harvested Cherokee trail of tears - 10 vines, good growth = enough dry beans to feed one very small person one very small meal
• harvested garlic - never made big bulbs
• no show by tobacco horn worms - apparently my tomato plants are too lame for catepillars
• turks turban squash was going like gang buster and then the main branch wilted and died. I suspect squash vine borer
• sweet potatoes holding on and alive but not getting bigger. They would like some water, I bet
• stem off my plumeria was broken off accidentally, so I am rooting it in a pot with compost - it looks to be going well. (using water from a/c condensation collection to keep it and the main plumeria watered)
• planting acorn squash, turks turbans and pumpkins this weekend to have in time for fall. I will hand water and set up western shade until they get established - if no rain in september, I'll let them go, too.
• waiting and begging for fall, football season and rain.

Early Summer

I decided to take my vegetable garden off life support. When the 100 degree days and non-stop wind started on March 1st, I knew I was in trouble. With a well as my only current water option and our area of the state in extreme drought, I decided that watering my vegetable garden every day or even every other day just to say I made a few okra and tomatoes would be a bad idea. Those few vegetables would be little consolation the day the well went dry. With my self inflicted draconian ration of one deep soaking a week, my garden was alive, but not thriving or producing. So no more supplemental water.

Of course the week I decided to let it die, it rained an inch and a half, but - too little too late. I am going to focus on getting it ready for my fall garden. I trust better times are ahead.

My cottage garden has been suffering, too. It really loved the rain and decided to not die in response. My plan is to water the cottage beds deeply once a month while the drought continues. Whatever plants can't make through that, will have to go. This summer may be especially bad, but there is no use designing a garden with mild, wet summers in mind when hot and dry are the rule.

I am starting to get a handle on which plants are really drought tolerant and which are only partially so.

The known tough guys - rosemary, succulents (duh), culinary sage, mealy cup sage, artemesias (native is tougher than powis castle - also, duh), Lindheimer senna, russian sage, mexican oregeno, bush germander, flame leaf sumac, copper canyon daisy, pink skullcap, native bunch grasses

The not as tough as advertised - lantanas, mexican sage (especially wimpy - santa barbara), lambs ears (duh again - strike three, I'm out), guara, bicolor iris

Tougher than you'd think - old roses (if it weren't for the deer, these guys would still look great), catmint (very english garden, six hills giant and all that, but still tough), bearded iris, beach vitex

This fall I am going to fill in the dead spaces with more tough customers. And I am going to plant an absolute crap-ton of poppy and larkspur seeds and hope for fall rain. Don't judge, I never claimed to be rational about gardening all the time. Where is the fun in that?

MiddleMay

1. Green Bean harvest has begun





2. Potatoes, onions and garlic are almost ready to be harvested





3. First tomatoes starting to ripen ever so slightly. No sign of tomato (tobacco) horn (hook) worms





4. First okra bloom





5. Jalapenos look ready - how does one know?





6. No courgette production, yet





7. Deer ate all sunflowers, poppies (the Shirley's were finally blooming), some of the roses and even tried my copper canyon daisy. Did not eat bachelors button, despite close proximity.





8. Fig tree is starting to set fruit.





9. Datura started blooming (at my place of business, but my garden none the less)


10. Sweet potato slips are in

In armadillo trapping news, I trapped a (wait for it!)

Fox.

Grey, I think. After a lot of very angry growling from both parties, I managed to set him free. His running buddy (I assume. How can I tell the difference between one fox and another? I can't. It just makes a better story than he was a) rabid b) had distemper or c) really stupid and just came back. Maybe it was the same fox and he was just suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. I like that ok.) came into the garden 15 minutes after I let his friend go to check on him. How cute. Stay out of my trap!

It rained, finally, 1.75 inches. I look forward to seeing if everything takes off or if my garden is apathetic and disaffected by all the drought and just shrugs in defeat. I am hoping for taking off with gusto.

The sweet potato planting is of note because every year I want to plant them and every year I forget, but this year I heard Dromgoole mention their availability on his radio show whilst plugging his own store (way to stay professional, John!) and ran over to get some. I'll try to remember what varieties. Maybe John is a pretty good guy after all. Except for when he goes off the edge of the hippidome and uses garden radio time to promote a course held in Red Rock, Texas called something like "Dentistry without going to a Dentist". I kid you not. Home dentistry. I suggest a subtitle or two , (I love subtitles) 1)" or How Take Self Sufficiency Way Too Far and Hurt Yourself and Your Loved Ones While You Do!" 2) "or You Are an Idiot and Deserve To Be In Pain, Let Us Help". Really, people. Besides needless suffering, what does that have to do with gardening, John? Thanks for the sweet potatoes, though.

Mid April Photos

Disclaimer / excuse making - photos are by me, on my iPhone. Not by my Wife, on her awesome camera. That is why they stink. Kentucky Wonder beans. The early leaders of my bean race. Also first in line for the soaker hose. Unfair advantage?

My first tomato on, appropriately enough, Early Girl.

West veg garden bed. Again, 1st for the soaker hoses.

East veg bed. Blue Lake beans already lapped twice by Kentucky Wonder.

Cottage Garden from the front porch.

Mid April happenings

So much for weekly list updates. Biweekly?

1) okra seedlings up 2) watermelon seed sprouted 3) first green tomatoes 4) green beans growing. Kentucky Wonder > Cherokee > Blue Lake 5) onions, garlic, carrots and potatoes still in and getting bigger 6) chard growing strong 7) California poppies blooming, but not Shirley poppies. (come on, Shirley!) 8) one bachelor's button bloomed

That's about it for now. Maybe an actual blog post this weekend.

Spring Pictures

Mutabalis Rose in the foreground. Bush Germander and Gopher Plant are in the bed closer to the house, steadily out growing the space I allotted them.

Bearded, German, Flag or Cemetery (is Cemetery just for the white ones?) Iris. I have yellow and purple variates, both handed down from my wife's aunt, who dug them from her mother's garden. Evergreen, drought and deer resistant, gorgeous blooms. I can't say it enough, plant some. In fact, I'll say it to myself - plant some more!

I was very proud of my string trellis design with the string buried in the ground as an anchor. I shouldn't have been, almost all the strings are now loose or not touching the ground at all. I don't know if the string just decomposes rapidly in the ground or if something like a pill bug is chewing through them. Or if the cotton string contracts when it dries and just pulls out of the ground. Any way about it, they aren't working great. Next time, I will tie the string to sticks and shove the sticks into the soil. I have no idea why I didn't think about that this time. Yes, I do, I am not that bright to begin with and I was drinking at the time. (a phrase which happens to be the working title of my memoirs.)

Our Redbud in bloom for the first time in three years here. I think Redbuds can be rather garish, ok, really ugly, when they are planted out by themselves. Especially in parking lots. But mixed with some Live Oaks as an understory tree, they are very tasteful. See mine, for example.

Pictures and vegetable news

Not my garden. Great Dixter in England. This is what my garden would look like if I were rich and it rained. Ever. Also, not my picture. I pilfered it from the world wide interwebs at some point and forgot where, so no credit is given here. Sorry photographer, you did a nice job and deserve some credit. The odd looking chimneys are on top of the Oast House, for roasting hops.

My spring vegetable garden as of last week.

The potatoes are in tubs in the background. I can tell, you like my bean trellises. That is butchers twine run from the iron trellises into the ground to the right. On the bed to the left, I wired two pieces of scrap wood together and wired them to my tomato cages (which, after the indeterminate tomato disaster of 2010, were a must) then ran the butchers twine from the wood to the ground. To the right is a can of the native Lone Star, Paupertas cervesisiae, that played a large roll in the design and installation of the trellises.

Turk's Turban, Cucurbita maxima, from seeds that I harvested last late fall. We bought the squash as a fall decoration, used it when through to make a winter squash soup and then I kept and dried the seeds. I am amazed that the seeds were still viable and now I have two seedlings. I may make a gardener out of myself yet. I know, they are early for fall production. I'll plant more in late June.

We've got a lot going on here

The poppies are coming back! The reason this is so exciting is that for the better part of March I have been given over to despair as my daily garden checks revealed no poppy seedlings. I had almost given up on them. A check of my blog from this time last year revealed a lot of drivel about potatoes and the insane ramblings that spew forth from this keyboard almost without provocation, but no mention of poppies. This brought up two salient points - 1) why did I take my poppies for granted? The ultimate cottage garden plants, red blooms, stunning seed heads and my own opium supply (I kid). I am a cliche, I had no idea what I had, until it was gone 2) how hard would it be just to note what is happening in the garden from week to week? That was one of the goals of this blog - to act as a garden notebook so I can keep track of what happens when. I have a plan to rectify both issues. 1) Poppies. I kind of lost my cool more than a little bit when they didn't come up. I asked a friend who is a landscaper if they should be up yet, and the Irish prick said "yeah, they should be, I see them all over town" (it doesn't matter that he's Irish and he is not a prick, but I don't take bad news well and putting the Irish in front of prick makes me calling him names seem more palatable). I went to Barton Springs Nursery, which was as awesome as it always is, and bought container poppies to replace my no-shows. The only issue being that the poppies they had were Shirley Poppies and California Poppies (not really poppies at all, but I was desperate), not bread poppies like mine were. They were doing well and I was watering them in with regularity to insure they got established when I noticed my poppy seedlings coming up! I think they are late, and I think that is from lack of rain and when I started to water my transplants they finally had enough moisture to germinate. The armadillos, attracted by the watering, tore up about 1/3 of them, but that is an entire other issue that I do not wish to start a rant on right this moment. 2) I plan to start a simple list on each blog of what is happening in the garden. Being in a list form will make it easier to search later. Don't worry, or rejoice, I will continue to write about how this all makes me feel, what I think about it, describe any chicken trips that should arise and all that, uh, stuff.

Late March List: A)Cottage news - 1)poppies started to sprout 2)redbud bloomed 3)mountain laurel bloomed, began to be eaten by redbugs, black bugs and catepillars 4)culinary sage in bloom first 5)rose blooms 6)verbenas in bloom B)Vegetable - 1)potatoes in and going, covered with more soil twice 2)pole beans in and trellises built 3)tomatoes in, with cages 4)squash seeds in 5)okra seeds in 6)cilantro bolting

The list will be shorter if I will do one more often. Every week seems reasonable. I have something to say about almost every item on the list, which should surprise no one, but will limit my diatribe to the highlights. Culinary sage, Salvia officinalis (my second drug reference? at least I can add somebody at the DEA as a follower) is awesome. Evergreen, deer and drought resistant, edible by humans and blooms purple spires in the spring. Get some, plant it, stand back and then thank me for telling you something you should have already known. Texas Mountain Laurels, at least mine, are the wimpiest native plant ever. Their new growth is preferred munching for every insect in the hill country. We have a line of them on our caliche drive, and the first two years here, they didn't bloom. Closer inspection last spring revealed that they were being devastated by caterpillars. I treated at some point (when?) with Bacillus thuringiensis and this year they bloomed. Very exciting, prompting me to watch even more closely this year so I could get more blooms next. A little success is a dangerous thing for me. This week I noticed damage to new growth and I hustled out with my Bt, but the Mountain laurels were covered with not only caterpillars, but two different types of beetles - one red (Lopieda) and one black (Epicauta - a bug I wish I was not familiar with). It seems they are everybody's pump. I would refuse to spray them, but they are native, already established and have beautiful, fragrant spring blooms when happy. I don't think Bt gets the beetles, so I think might have my first go ever with an insecticidal soap. Yay. And last, I don't want to ignore my native verbenas. I just transplant them when I find them in a path or the drive. Or they reseed themselves. They are evergreen with dark green ferny foliage and bloom in purple umbrella like bunches from March until November. It is hard to imagine a better garden plant for my region. To the Prairie Verbena, Glandularia bipinnatifida, Cheers! Pictures are coming soon, with more consistent list. You know you like it.

as threatened

Snow, death

Snow today! Expect pictures soon. But luckily for you, dear reader, no drawings or paintings. Yet.
My art teacher thought I was making good progress and recommended I keep up my practice with different objects around the house. I proposed that I could go outside and draw a rock wall, or an oak tree. The look of shock and horror on her face told me all I needed. Since I don't look even as bright as I actually am, she spelled it out for me, "Oh. My, no. No. Don't try that yet. You will find it very frustrating." So, still life only, still.
It hasn't been above freezing here for over 72 hours and the low has been 15 or so. I don't think many of my vegetables or perennials were meant for this. It will be interestingly sad to see what dies.

All the onions are in and I still don't know what kind they are. I think they are Southern Belle Red, 1015 (Sweet Grano) and White Bermuda. I guess I didn't tag them at the nursery. I put them in little groups of 3-9 wherever two requirements were met - a space in my cottage garden that needed some greening up and a space in my cottage garden I could reach without much difficulty. This may come as a surprise to non-gardeners, but growing things can be hard work. I wore my construction worker knee pads to keep the whining to a minimum, but planting things is still stoop labor. Lots of up and downs and kneeling, kind of like going to mass but without (insert way too easy to make catholic joke here).

The Elder (daughter) helped me plant every onion. She was very excited to get started, but surprised me how she stuck with it. I don't think I am getting more interesting or maturing, so it must be her growing up. At each planting spot, I would scrape away the mulch and she would till the designated area (sort of), then I'd add compost and fertilizer and till again and then she'd help me with the planting. It occurred to me that onions are easy plants to learn on, bigger than seed and less cumbersome than container plants. I would help start the holes and my daughter quickly learned how to place the onion right side down, or up as it were, and firm the soil around each plant. It took me twice as long as doing it myself. Owing to my own impatience and me being in a hurry to accomplish all my afternoon chores, it also took me twice as long as necessary to realize what a good time I was having and how much more important it is to be a good father than to be a good gardener. Maybe one day I'll be both.

The Elder did see the reasoning behind my knee pads. Her knees would get sore and she would finish each planting by sitting sideways on the rock borders around the beds, an option no longer available to me since about the time I was three. She thought that next time we planted, I could probably buy her knee pads too, but probably smaller. And probably pink.

Soaked beds, whole foods

I left the soaker hoses running in the vegetable garden overnight. Because I am a fool. The wailing of the younger at 4:30 am this morning must have fired my one remaining functional synapse and somehow reminded me that I had dumped a rather large volume of precious water onto my unsuspecting plants. The beds are raised, so they drained fine, but what a waste.

In addition to my perpetual foolishness, I had a couple of pints as I rumbled around the garden yesterday afternoon. One pint of Old Speckled Hen, which brought me a shameful amount of joy, and another pint of Crispin Apple Cider. The apple cider was good, but my wife wondered if it was a little too sweet and fizzy to be considered acceptable for a serious ale drinker to imbibe. I think she may be right. Not that my drinks need to confirm my testosterone level, but I do have an image to keep up. An image I already push to the limit by writing a garden blog.

I bought the two cans of drink at the giant Whole Foods in downtown Austin. The place is a wonderful temple of all things good to eat and drink, and it stays packed with hipsters, hippies, the bourgeois and people that seem to simultaneously belong to all three categories. When I go, I wish I had hair to muss up and act like I didn't mean to. Even bald, I just try to look as aloof and disaffected as possible. This proved especially difficult yesterday, as I tried to check out in the self check lane with the two beers and about 5 items of produce. It turns out that finding the little sticker on my produce, entering it and weighing the produce takes me longer than a trained checker. OK, I completely screwed it up. Twice. And the one checker assigned to 4 self check lanes had to come over and help. Twice. All this while a line of customers took time out from thinking deeply about eating locally to join together and hate me for taking so much time. I was beginning to sweat by the end and had to stifle the urge to look behind me and apologize with a wan smile at the angry mob that had gathered. I did not look hip as I thew my organic, local vegetables into my recycled paper bag and fled.

In actual garden news, I ran by the Natural Gardener and I bought my potatoes - Red Pontiac, Kennebec and Yukon Gold. I also bought onions, the varieties of which currently escape me. I'll update later.

Kohlrabi Chicken

My biggest Kohlrabi split in half. I don't know how or why - too much water after ages of none, freeze damage, was it ready to be harvested and I left it in too long? My other question, can I still eat it? And my primary kohlrabi question, how do you eat this crazy thing anyways?

Most gardening books include a brief blurb admonishing the neophyte gardener to plant only vegetables that they want to eat, which is good advice. Which I ignored. The seeds were on sale at the dollar store (1 cent a packet!), the picture on the packet was stunning, I had read local garden guides recommending Kohlrabi for our area and I figured that I was more likely to figure out how to eat it than any of the sort I saw as I glanced around the dollar store. Despite my obvious advantages - ability to read, Internet access, a full set of teeth to eat with - I have done no better, perhaps worse, than my bargain shopping brethren.

I, like most 30 something bourgeoisie American snots, abhor bargain shopping establishments. I hate wal-mart, loath costco and stay out dollar stores. Well, sometimes I go in dollar stores. OK, with some regularity. I have one addiction which draw me back, travel coffee mugs. I don't collect travel mugs, I just love to lose them. I've left travel mugs in all the best places. My wife has grown tired of me buying nice travel mugs and them treating like disposable paper cups. While on that subject, I think the new line of re-usable coffee mugs that look like disposable paper cups are stupid. Really people, you want your cup to look like you could throw it away? I don't get it. So I sneak into dollar stores and buy cheap mugs and hope my wife is not paying any attention, assuming I keep them in my possession long enough to get home and into the line-up. The real pain is that nothing at the dollar store is a dollar. The cups are like 3.99 or so. Still cheap.

I learned of dollar stores as seed depots from a client. This client is dear to me due to her having played a reasonable size role in the great chicken drive of 2009. While out at her farm, doing what I do (mysterious, isn't it?) I noticed her sizable collection of animals that are not big. She doesn't have one of every species in that rather broad category, but she does have these - chickens, ducks, geese (pronounced thusly - ba-stards) rabbits, small dogs, children, cats and guinea pigs. All pretty much running loose together. Since chickens, along with bees, are on my list of animals that fly that would make my garden nicer, I began asking her all about her flock. She has about 15 hens - 3 Rhode Island reds, 9 mixed breeds, 1 with a crazy fluffy head and fluffy feet and one chicken that once rode to Fredricksburg, Texas in the undercarriage of her minivan. The story, as she told it, is a bit choppy owing to it's telling being interrupted by her goose (ba-stard) trying to peck my testicles off.

One day she parked her van down by the chickens et. al. and left it for the night. The next morning she loaded up the kids and drove roughly 50 miles to visit a friend. While exchanging greetings in her friend's drive a rather bedraggled, and apparently hot to the touch, chicken stumbled out from under the front tire. After three irregular circles, the little gal found a spot of grass and stuck her head back under her wing where all agreed it had likely been for the last hour. After a night's recovery in the friends bathroom, she road home in a normal, civilized chicken manner - between two kids in the backseat of a minivan. Apparently it was some time before she layed any eggs again. What a chicken adventure! Think of the tale she had to share. I'm sure the bunny's bought in immediately. the other chickens stuck their heads under thier wings for the duration of the telling, the guinea pigs stared on in awe and the geese (ba-stards) tried to peck her famous legs off.

I digress. Again. So chicken lady told me to hit the dollar store for a seed sale. 90% off the one dollar seed packets (Ok so the seed packets really are a dollar still). I strolled in, picked out a coffee mug and proceeded to fill a plastic bag with 40 some odd packages of seed. Including some plants I didn't know much about, like kohlrabi. Very greedy acting, I was. I was prepared to shell out the whopping 4 dollars that these packets were going to set me back, but the clerk rung them up as 1 cent a piece. I earnestly tried to correct him (really, I did!), but he had that dollar store kind of look in his eyes and I could tell he didn't care. So I bought my Kohlrabi and 43 other packets of seeds for less than 50 cents. But now what to do with them, I don't know. I get that dollar store look a bit myself when I think about it.

Obligatory new year post

To start with, happy new year.

A quick look back at 2010 -
Best - A new, happy, healthy baby girl!
Worst - Our Dog died.

There was lots in between, but these two events will mark 2010 for me. I suppose every year will have it's ups and down, it's all arounds (trademark: Joe West), but this year has been a doozy. To those that say "things can get worse than a dead dog", I know you are right, but go and spread your life perspective and rationalism somewhere else. I know they can get worse, and will, but I'm not looking forward to worse, not at all.
And things don't get much better than a healthy baby, so I'm sticking with the idea that this year was one with some large changes of polar opposite monument.

So, here is to 2011.

I have lots of goals for 2011, most of which are too boring or off topic for inclusion here, but I need to make some goals and focus on them in the garden. In most of my life I am very goal and project completion oriented. In the garden, though, I wander about in piddle mode for hours. I accomplish a few things, invariably, but rarely are they the task I walked out to do. I am on my way to the compost pile to turn it, see some wood that needs splitting and then realize I should water my potted plants and when was the last time I fertilized them and what the hell, did the deer eat my rose again and is that a weed or a wildflower and who said that about a weed, Emerson? Thoreau? man a book and a pint and that picnic table sound nice. So ends another day. It is very different from everyday me and relaxing,I know it is a big part of why I garden, but I am accomplishing little to nothing besides a buzz and some reading I can misqoute later.

Therefore, a list is in order. Maybe posting it will hold me to it.

1) Buffalo grass lawn with raised rock bed borders to the west of the cottage garden. My wife has wanted this forever. I want her to be happy and show interest in the garden, so this is first.
2) revise master plan for garden to site future walled garden and make best use space, time and money. You think this should be first? Are you trying to upset my wife, what is wrong with you?
3) rock wall with gate and pergola in front of cottage garden
4) fountain in cottage garden
5) plumb vegetable garden

This should be enough. If by next year, I've accomplished all this, then I am awesome. And had some help.

As an aside, I start art lessons this week. I've always liked to draw and sketch, but never had any formal training. My goal is to learn to paint, so I can paint my garden and others. You guessed it, in the future, this blog will include not only mediocre writing, but mediocre art. Oh yeah!