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.