Our Backyard Homestead

Swiss chard ~ a plant everyone should grow

If there were only one thing I could plant, I have come to the conclusion that I think it should be swiss chard.  And you need not have a garden in order to grow it.  It is a beautiful and colorful addition to your landscaping.  My favorite kind of plants are, number one, easy to grow.  Swiss chard fits this bill amazingly well.  It requires next to no care and will grow year around in a warm winter like the one we are having now.  In past years when we actually had a winter, the chard died out after a few nights in the 20s, but sprang right back to life in the spring.

Here are two of my plants, picture taken in mid-January.  I have since cleaned out all of the dead leaves and it is much prettier and quite less full since we have been using the nutrition packed leaves for juicing the past few weeks.

My favorite kind of plants are, number two, pretty.  I know that I should consider nutritional value over aesthetics, however, I can't help it, I love to grow pretty things.  Pretty things that grow with little care are all the better.  And pretty things that grow with little care and are a nutritional powerhouse sound like just the perfect thing to grow! 

That brings me to reason number three for my favorite kind of plants, nutrition.  For my family this is a two fold deal, it could be the most nutritious food in the world but if it tastes terrible, we won't eat it.  Well, sadly I must admit that my first year or two of growing swiss chard this is exactly the category that swiss chard fell into.  Then one day I read an article of how to cook with swiss chard and decided that we should attempt to eat it.  Chopped and tossed into a soup in the last few minutes of cooking, it was delicious.

Suddenly we lost our swiss chard phobia.  The kids noticed that baby chard leaves were in the salad mix they were eating.  We started juicing this summer and it only seemed natural that we should include swiss chard.  At first, I was scared to add much to the juice for fear that it would be too strong, but just this week I went a little crazy with the amount of chard and yet the juice was delicious. 

It has taken me a while to mature into a well rounded swiss chard grower, but alas, if today you were to tell me I could only plant one thing in my garden, chard would be the one!

Confessions of a lazy gardener

I am not ashamed in the least to admit that I became a very lazy gardener last summer.  We set a new record for the most number of days over 100 degrees.  There was little reason to attempt growing anything from June through September.  Because of water restrictions and drought, there was no way to keep anything but the hardiest and drought tolerant plans alive.

Here is where the lazy part comes in.  When my lettuce bolted (began to flower) in June, I should have gone out and pulled the plants.  For whatever reason I never made it out there to do the necessary chores and at some point those now growing huge with blooms lettuce plants simply stayed where they were.  By July those flowers were drying up and I could see that seeds were set to go flying.  I thought I might live to regret the decision, but July was even hotter than June and I never got around to pulling the plants.

Fast forward to January and I think lazy was the way to go.  In fact, I am going to say that maybe it wasn't lazy at all.  Really I was just planning ahead!!  Here is my lettuce bed as of last Friday.

We have been harvesting lettuce all month!!  This has been an especially warm winter, so I haven't once covered anything in the garden and yet my lettuce lives on despite the occasional dips into the 20s.  There are at least 3 different varieties growing.  Now the difficult part of being a lazy gardener is knowing what is weeds and what is edible greens. 

As we were finishing up our work inthe garden for the day, the kids discovered a new area beyond the confines of the garden where the lettuce has taken root.  In this area, distinguishing the weeds from the greens wasn't as difficult!

I do wonder if I will live to regret "planting the natural way" once the soil begins to warm a little more.  We may have enough greens to feed the neighborhood soon!

Devestation

 

Gardening has brought me so much appreciation for things I wouldn't have imagined.  From bible verses to poetry to history that has come alive with new meaning.  Monday morning about 1 AM, our entire town was pummeled with golf ball size hail.  I don't know of a single neighborhood in our town of almost 10,000 that was spared.  My garden took quite significant damage but I am so thankful that I live in an era where there is a grocery store full of produce down the road.  I can't imagine how devastated I would have been to walk out and survey the damage if I had no other options for feeding my family.

I wrote to tell my grandmother about the storm and her response is so full of wisdom and a mindset sorely lacking in our country today I had to share:

I had missed the reports on hail in Tx.  I am so sorry. It is a devastating experience.  Have lived thru' several. One extremely bad when I was younger. We lost windows, siding, roofs and crops plus other things--School couldn't even start as it broke all the windows out of school also. At the time I did not fully realize my Dad's profound attitude. They had lost all their crops--our income for the year--Dad went out and checked the losses came in hugged Mom and said there's a lot of ice out there have you got some cream Ma--let's make ice cream. We kids went out gathered the hail stones and ice cream we had. A valuable lesson I have never forgotten   In those days we bought sugar and flour in 50 to 100#'s at a time. the rain water came in after the windows were all broken and ran on those supplies destroying them also.

Sadly, we lost one of our chickens.  Scared out of her mind (the very small chicken mind), she squeezed a hole in the chicken wire and escaped from the coop, only to be nearly immediately killed by the hail.  One of our cars was severely beaten but thankfully did not have broken windows.  Our roof will almost certainly need to be replaced, but it could have been so much worse.  I think of the town in Iowa that was nearly wiped off the map by a tornado and know I have much to be thankful for!

As for the garden, it took a severe beating.  My lettuce was nearly ready to harvest and it was pummeled to pieces.  The kids and I salvaged what we could and I picked out bits of gravel, twigs, mulch and who knows what else.  It was covered in dirt but after multiple washings it was edible and quite delicious.  We also lost most of the kale but were able to rescue some that was turned into several smoothies and a delicious side dish with dinner.  There were two broken off flowers from mutilated sunflowers came inside to add a little sunshine to the counter.  We did our best to make lemonade.

The floating row cover worked well for the small hail we had a few weeks ago.  I do think the tomatoes would have been a total loss if it had not been there, but as you can see, it is not effective against golf ball sized hail.

I had just planted these sunflowers a few days before.  Not too late to plant from seed.

The blackberries took a severe beating.  Nearly every branch is broken like this one.  If we get any berries, it will likely be about a third of what there would have been.

This was a new fruit tree I had picked up.  Hopefully it will recover.

We had already lost all of the peaches due to some late freezes after the fruit had set.  Now it appears we lost a better part of the tree.

All dents from the hail in a bag of mulch.

A close up of the damage to the floating row cover.  I think this one looks a little like it could be the face carved on a jack o lantern.

A baby pear from the neighbors pear tree.  I am sure that pear harvest will be minimal as well.

The dark dirt looking substance is huge piles of the shingle material that was beaten/washed off of our roof.  There are huge dents in the shingles and we have not climbed up there to inspect the chimney but I am certain it took quite a beating as well.

Leaves and twigs/branches are everywhere littering both the front and back yard.  The poor trees are looking rather bare.

 

Thrive

Last year, I heard Howard Garrett mention two things on his radio program, Thrive and Sweet Almond Verbena.   Ironically, my commercial for Thrive comes from my experience growing the verbena.  After hearing Howard rave about how wonderful the verbena is, I got online and ordered two, one for me and one for my mom.  Being mail order plants, they were tiny, not more than about 3 inches tall.  I thought for sure that it had been a mistake to order them.  I planted mine in a pot, my mom put hers in the ground.  A month or two later, my plant was double to triple the size of my mom's plant.  I had given my plant a few waterings with Thrive added and low and behold, once she did the same, her plant took off as well.  From 3 inches to over three feet our plants grew at amazing speed and bloomed all summer with the most fragrant flowers!  Unfortunately, mine does not appear to have survived the cold winter days.  However, my mom said her plant is coming back to life.

I am reluctantly linking to Howard Garrett's website but there is limited info online about Thrive.  Unfortunately, in the past year, I feel that his radio program and his website have become nothing more than a big commercial for his new organic living store.  While I absolutely commend his efforts and appreciate more and more choice in where to find organic products, it is disappointing to tune into the once very helpful radio program and hear nothing but "buy this at my store!"  That disclaimer out of the way, here is the picture of an experiment with grass that convinced me to give Thrive a try last year.  While this is a sales video aimed at retailers, it quickly explains how Thrive works.

I do believe that Thrive was very helpful in my garden last year.  I did not do any trials of my own but my plants seemed stronger and healthier than in years past.  It was enough of a change to convince me to use it again this year.  Maybe I will turn one of my growing bags into an official experiment this year.

 

Weekend Roundup 3/27

Baby peaches are beginning to appear!

Spring has most definitely sprung in North Texas.  With the unseasonably warm temps we have had, the backyard is brown no more.  Our winter rye has been growing beautifully for the past few months and with the warm days is growing quickly!  It was several inches tall and required a little trim on Saturday.  We worked in the yard for much of the afternoon, the kids helping pull the many weeds that are fighting to take over the front beds.  I worked mainly on my kitchen window bed and am quite pleased with how it is coming along.

Evidently I missed the weather report that it would be cold and rainy all day yesterday and part of today.  I discovered too late to take pics on Saturday that my corn was popping up and was quite disappointed that the weather was not going to permit me to go out and work at all yesterday. 

The corn began peeking through less than 10 days after planting.

In other excitement, we ate our first two strawberries.  Heavenly!  And the birds didn't even steal them!  They were from one the two transplants that I planted this year.  The strawberry plants that wintered in the garden are just now blooming with baby strawberries.

It also appears that we better get busy harvesting some baby greens from the garden because the lettuce is suddenly going wild.  Unfortunately, none of my lettuce from seed has sprouted.  However, my spinach is beginning to pop up.  All three varieties are supposed to be warm weather types.  This is my first attempt a spinach beyond the wildly successful Malibar spinach.

The tomatoes are doing great although there is a tiny bug that is eating up the leaves.  I need to get out and begin foliar feeds ASAP to put a stop to that!  My two Saphos are amazing.  They already have several tomatoes.  The other tomato plants are flowering so should be setting fruit soon.

The blackberries are beginning to load up with berries.  That makes me happy!!

Growing Swiss Chard is so rewarding.  It is very hard to kill and is so pretty.  I have to grow something that looks pretty even in the heat of the summer or I would give up.  My goal this year is to find more ways to cook with swiss chard.  Since I have been brave enough to use beet greens in our smoothies, I think mixing it into a smoothie will be our next experiment.

Playing with my new macro lens.  I am discovering that I still have lots to learn about using a macro.  I was rather shocked to be f7.1 and still get this kind of background blur.

Weekend Report - 3/20

It seems the garden is coming together in bits and pieces when there is some spare time to be had.  This weekend was not one with much for spare time.  We enjoyed attending the Russian wedding of our girls' violin teacher on Saturday.   A trip to the luthier (violin maker/repair) after the wedding and three extra children that spent the afternoon and evening with us joyfully took the remainder of Saturday.  We took a supper picnic to a local park in order to watch the "Super Moon" rise.  A fun time was had by all even if mom was wearing too many hats in order to get the pictures she wanted.

Despite little weekend progress, we did manage to get a few beds planted with seed last week.  We also worked on my kitchen window garden, clearing out the leaves that had served as mulch and trimming back perennials.  I am delighted to see many plants returning.  I am also delighted that the kids were great helpers this week!

Planted this week:

• 2 rows of corn (this is a first time to attempt corn)
• 3 supposed heat tolerant spinach varieties (good thing since we are having a WARM spring)
• first planting of patty pan squash, more sequential plantings to come
• several more onion sets (totally late, should have been in a month ago but we'll see what happens)
• a bed of millet (Matt's experiment to see if we can successfully grow grains)

The tomatoes look great and the strawberries are doing well.  The peas have not sprouted so I think our dry spring and my lack of irrigation (assuming spring rains would cover me) is looking like a fourth year of pea failure.  The blackberries are looking beautiful and in the past week all of the fruit trees (that I didn't kill last summer) have leafed out.  My sweet almond verbena is not showing any signs of life.  Winter may have been too chilly for it to be planted in a pot.  My mom has hers in the ground and it began putting out new growth this week.

This week, I bought two new fruit trees to replace some that have not made it.  I added a Loring Peach and a Santa Rosa Plum.  Of the first bare root plantings we put in three years ago, the Santa Rosa was the only one that did not make it.  My other little plum is doing well and needs a pollinator, so now it has a companion.  Hopefully we will get those in the ground this week.  I also am researching my options on putting in blueberries.  They do not like our alkaline, clay soil but it appears that by amending the soil in raised beds, we might be able to grow our own and save the $$ spend driving to pick them.

Though there are many projects that could and hopefully will be done, this is the first year in the garden that I feel it is built enough that it has not been a major drain of my time to make it happen.  Because of how much of my time has been invested into building the garden in the three springs past, I was somewhat dreading planting anything this year.  However, that investment is finally starting to pay off and I am glad that I didn't follow through on my threat to throw in the towel this year.  Now if I can just get the remaining bags of soil to finish off my weed avoidance plan, all will be good.

Build that soil

I have black clay soil in my yard.  It is so thick and sticky that it made raised beds a necessity in order to have a successful garden.  The first year I ordered a dump truck load of soil from a local company.  It was a mix of equal parts of topsoil/compost/sand.  We tilled the clay to about 6" below the raised beds and then filled the beds with about 6" of of the soil blend.  Every year since, I have added a new layer of compost and a little fertilizer  when I prepare the beds in the spring.  After reading about the benefits of no till methods, I am as gentle as possible when amending the soil in the spring.  At the end of the growing season, I try to cut plants out at the base rather than pull the entire root system.  The first year of "no till" I could tell a big difference!  Here is a good article about the benefits of the no till method.

Here is what I added to my beds this year:

I have no idea if this is the best choice, as a matter of fact, I may use Texas Tee in the future after talking to an employee at North Haven Gardens.  I believe this was slightly under $25 for a 40 pound bag at the feed store.  The Texas Tee was nearly $40 at North Haven.

I am quite liberal with dried molasses.  We try to spread some in the yard as well.  I believe it was about $20 for the 50 pound bag at my local feed store.

I choose this for compost this year.  This along with a bag of cotton burr compost has been, or will be, added to each of my raised beds.  This was considerably more expensive than the cotton burr compost at $6 per 1 cu ft so I am using it sparingly.  Hopefully it will prove to be a worthwhile investment.  Someday I hope to do better in the production of my own compost.  Right now my time is limited and I have to make choices of where I can cut some corners.  While it pains me to pay for bagged compost, until I can get a better composting set up going, it is what it is.

This is my staple compost.  I have used at least one 2 cu ft bag per bed per season over the past four years.  I get it for about $5 per bag at my local feed store.

This is the potting soil I have used for my growing bags.  I mixed in all of the above to the bag when planting.  The only place that I can find it is at L0we's for about $2.50 per bag.  It is a nice blend of topsoil, compost and sand.  I am quite happy with the row of soil that I dumped out of the bags I used last year.  The nice thing is that it is not full of weed seed like the dump truck load purchased locally was.  Crossing my fingers that it works as well as it did last year with my current tomato crop.

I truly believe that if you are going to be a successful Texas organic gardener, you must focus on your soil as a top priority.  I have an unbelievable amount of earthworms and I love letting them do all the work of tilling for me!  One of these days, I  will get around to having my soil tested, but so far what I am doing seems to be working so I haven't managed to make soil testing a priority.  The nerdy side of my brain would like to see that happen, but so far the right side of my brain seems to be running the show and with the right side in charge it is rather miraculous that anything in the garden has been accomplished!!

The tomato experiment

 After planting way too many tomatoes last year, I swore I wasn't planting any this year.  However, too many months with cardboard or no tomatoes made me weak when the kids started asking to pick out plants.  My compromise is to plant them in bags.  I had success with this method for some extra seedlings last year, so here is to hoping that it will work as my main growing method this year.

I decided to take a quasi scientific method with my little tomato experiment this year and set up a control plant.  I bought two Sapho plants from North Haven that come with promise of being a great choice for Texas.  One I planted in a raised bed that was tomato free last year and the other is in a bag of potting soil.  They both got a mix of fresh compost, organic fertilizer and dry molasses when planted.  The soil is covered with the same cedar mulch and they are both protected in a Texas Tomato cage covered with frost cloth right now, but soon to be replaced with floating row cover (as soon as it arrives).

Here is the control, in front of the large tomato tent that contains the experimental plants.

My control plant

My experiment plant

I mentioned in my previous entry that I consulted the 10 day forecast before planting the tomato plants on Saturday.  I am not sure what happened to the forecast in the short time since Saturday, but it was 32 degrees this morning!!  I am still rather fearful of going out to see how they fared, but hopefully with the frost cloth and the extra flannel sheet that we threw on top, they stayed warm enough for the few hours that dipped into the danger zone!

Weekend Report - 3/13

My comfrey plant went from one blade sticking through to thriving nearly overnight

Despite only having a fraction of the weekend to donate to the garden, it was a productive time.  With Matt's help I was able to accomplish so much more.  After consulting the 10 day forecast, I decided to risk putting in my tomatoes.  Every year so far I have had some mishap them.  The only mishap I can foresee this year is that growing them in bags won't go as planned or a surprise freeze will get me again.

Last year was a terrible year for tomatoes in North Texas.  We went from a very cold, wet early spring to a very dry spring to an extremely hot month of June.  However, the previous two years I did alright and was hopeful that growing tomatoes in Texas can happen.  Going into my fourth year attempting tomatoes, these are my thoughts:

• Early Girl varieties seem to be my best producers.  Sadly, I would love to grow heirlooms, but after experimenting with several the past two years, I have had little success.  I have a few in this year that I think have been more successful, but just can't waste the space or resources in the garden for plants that give very little return.
• Pick quality transplants.  This year my tomatoes came from North Haven Gardens and they are beauties.  In the past, by the time I have actually gotten them in the ground, even if they started out in great shape, the plants were suffering.  This year, I babied them until I was able to get them in the ground, hopefully without another freeze in store.
• Pick large plants in large pots.  You DO NOT want the largest plant you can find in a tiny 4" pot.  Sure it might seem like a good idea since it is already 2 feet tall, however, it will be root bound like crazy!  If you are buying 4" pots, choose smaller plants.  Mine were around 6" tall and the roots were perfect.  However, if you can find large, thriving plants in 1-2 gallon pots, that is the way to go.  If you are better organized than me, you can start with small plants and continue to pot up.  If you start early, you can have a large plant ready to go in when it is safe to do so!  But, if, like me, life gets in the way of your best intentions, I have noticed that Lowe's has some decent looking plants in a 1-ish gallon pot for $10.  It might seem steep to pay that when you can get the little guy for $2 or less, but if you take care of that one plant, your return will be at least $10 worth of organic tomatoes that you would have purchased from the store and hopefully much more.  Once the temps get well into the 90s, production goes way down, but if you can jump start with a large plant, the chance of success is much higher!
• Use floating row cover to protect tomatoes from cooler nights, strong spring winds and bugs.  An ounce of prevention just might be worth at least a pound of tomatoes.
• Cover soil with a thick layer of mulch immediately.  In years past I have waited a few weeks before finally getting the mulching done.  It is supposed to help protect from disease.  I hope this to be true as I have been troubled with what I believe to be some sort of blight every year.

If you are a successful Texas tomato grower, please leave a comment with your tips!  I would especially love to hear from anyone who is successfully growing heirlooms!!

We also got a row of potatoes planted.  This is something completely new for me and I have no idea what I am doing.  Thankfully North Haven had a handy flier on how to plant potatoes.  Next I must figure out where to find pine straw that needs to be mixed in to cover them as they grow. 

Finally we began work on taming the fence.  I am putting a border all the way around to hopefully prevent the weeds and grass from mixing with the plants.  I am all about preventative maintenance when it is 70 degrees to lessen the amount of time I have to spend outside when it is 98 and there are chiggers to contend with.

Plants in this week:

• 9 Tomatoes - 3 Early Girl, 1 Yellow Pear, 1 Rutgers, 1 Super Fantastic, 2 Sapho, 1 Cherokee Purple
• 1 row of red potatoes
• 2 strawberry plants added to the ones that have been growing for 2-3 seasons now
• a row of carrots from seed
• a row of lettuce from seed

Time spent over the weekend -

• approx. 5 hours of Matt and I working together
• approx 1 hour spent working by myself
• 30 minute trip to Home Depot for mulch and a new hose

The Tornado inspecting what we did while he was at Grandma's house

With the floating row cover pulled back to reveal the contents of the tomato tent.  You can see the black soaker hose running through the plants.  Hopefully this will do a good job keeping them watered.  I will add another soaker hose for a total of 100' and water other space as well but have not yet settled which space that will be.  Still in process of reworking the watering set up this year.

The labels so that when I forget what went where in about 2 weeks, I have it documented!

 

Starting small

For those interested in their building their first garden, I have two pieces of advice:

1.  Start small

2.  Make plans for irrigation from the very beginning

Start Small

Being a recovering perfectionist, I don't handle failure well.  I knew that in order to continue with the garden adventure, I needed to take it on in pieces.  The first year, we put in three raised beds, the blackberries and a bean pole tepee.  Every year since, we have added a little more.  I look back at this picture and amazed by how much the space has changed.  I certainly would have set myself up for failure if I had attempted more, as it was, this was a large first undertaking.  The learning curve was VERY steep that year as I learned about those cute little bunnies and how they will devour all of your labors overnight along with other various difficulties. 

If you are working with a yard smaller than mine, as most in North Texas likely will be, but you want a garden, I encourage you to use existing space or build a little bed in the corner of your yard.  Even with the most stringent of HOAs, there are several edible plants that you could work into  front yard landscaping.  Swiss chard is an obvious choice in my opinion.  I have even seen it used in municipal planters as a landscaping plant.  It will grow with little to no attention from spring until the coldest of cold.  This year mine survived well into January.  Last year, one of my plants from the previous year came back for another season.  Very small leaves can be harvested for salads or the larger leaves can be cooked in various ways.  I hope to incorporate it into our diet more this year.

Here are two swiss chard plants worked into my perennial and herb bed (with a tomato and a few annuals as well).  This work in progress bed runs along the side of the house and the driveway, clearly visible from the street.  I likely won't put tomatoes in there this year, but I love that I live in a neighborhood that I can if I want to!  But I digress, beyond the tomato plant, can you tell which is the edible plant in this picture?

Here is malibar spinach in the same garden garden with the swiss chard.  It has beautiful little berries on it and thrives even in the heat of summer.

Make Plans for Irrigation

If you live anywhere with rain patterns that can be erratic, do not plan a garden without making a plan for how you will water it.  I didn't put any thought into how I would water.  Standing out with a hose got tiring quickly and I knew without something in place, once the days really started warming up I would kill everything.  Walmart had reasonably priced drip irrigation and, while it took an investment of time to get it all installed in my beds, it was worth it once the heat of summer set in.  Last year we added an automated timer which allows me to schedule a time for the maze of hoses to run to all of the areas of the garden. 

On the to do list this spring is to re-assess my set up.  Last year I attempted to recycle some soaker hoses into my new spaces and it was fraught with complications, most commonly the soaker hoses springing yet another leak.  I took pictures of some of my watering, but evidently I have a corrupt disk and they didn't make it to my computer.  I plan to get out and work for a few hours today so hopefully I can get some new pics taken.