Our Backyard Homestead

It's Harvest Time Already

Let the record show that we picked our first ripe blackberries on May 8!  This is at least three weeks earlier than ever before.

We have also been harvesting zucchini, cucumbers and onions for two weeks now.  I have three large-ish zucchinis in the fridge that will hopefully be turned into a successful attempt at grain free lasagna for dinner tonight.  The above pictures is the 3 squash and 2 cucumbers harvested last week.  Below is the 3 zucchini and 2 cucumbers that marked the very first harvest of the season!

My lettuce is finished and I finally pulled the long been flowering cauliflower and cabbage plants that once again produced nothing more than butterflies.  Maybe I could be successful at growing this category of cruciferous vegetables in a fall/winter garden?

We have not had any measurable rainfall for about two weeks now and the cracks are forming in the back yard.  Our watering restrictions have been changed from twice a month to once a week, but I am still glad to not have much planted this year.  I am hoping for the kind of summer that we had when we first moved back to the North Texas area.  It started raining in July and I believe set all kinds of records for how much rain we had in July and August.  One and hope right?!

The chiggers and all other bugs are pretty much TERRIBLE thanks to our very mild winter.  We need to get the yard treated with sulfur ASAP so as to cut down on the number of chigger bites that is growing by the day.  I have found that if you treat a bite with apple cider vinegar immediately after discovering it, this will almost completely eliminate it.  I have also been taking Epsom salt baths after working in the yard. 

Scenes from the Garden - End of April 2012

The garden is full of life these days, both good and bad.  The great news is that I have baby cucumbers and zucchini!  The tragic news is that chigger season has started.  I consider myself an expert on chiggers now.  Did you know you gain expert status once you have weathered over 250 bites?  Surely I must be there in my fifth season of battling chiggers.  I am making note that it seems they make their appearance when temperatures begin to hover in the upper 80s for more than a few days in a row.

I am in love with all of the blooming onions in the garden right now.  I believe that I read that it is not such a good thing when your onions bloom, but we have already established my weakness for all things beautiful.  I did not plant any of these onions, they came back from last year so I consider them a bonus and love their beauty.  Hopefully they will taste good as well.

The onions aren't just beautiful, they are HUGE! 

My cucumber trellis seems to be working great.  I planted three different cucumber varieties and it won't be long before we are harvesting!

Behind the chiggers, my second place nemeses in the garden would be squash bugs.  Hurry up little zucchini, grow quickly before the squash bugs come to get you!!

This little guy makes me so happy!  Sauteed in a little coconut oil, patty pan squash are about the best variety of summer squash ever!!

It was quite windy, so I had a difficult time photographing the blackberries, but they are loading up with berries! 

And finally, yes, one more onion picture.  But we will call this one the butterfly picture instead.  Considering the number of chigger bites I sustained to get these pictures, I think it is only right to post as many as I can!

 

 

I Have a Confession

I love beautiful things and that makes me a pretty terrible gardener!  Why, you ask?  Well, see that adorable little ladybug?  The ladybugs were thick on the weeds that desperately needed to be pulled from the garden.  I left weeds, spilling seeds that will in turn create more weeds because I didn't want to destroy the ladybug habitat. 

I noticed that the caterpillars have taken up residence in the garden and are munching on some of my greens.  I have BT spray that would take care of the caterpillars and is supposed to be a natural and safe for humans treatment.  I haven't sprayed a single plant.  You see, while I am washing dishes, I watch those beautiful butterflies dancing over the flowers.  If I kill all of the caterpillars, how will I have more butterflies?

Some of my kale and my cilantro have bolted which any "real" gardener knows is not a good thing.  I, however, find the flowering plants too pretty to pull and make space for another vegetable variety. 

Evidently, I once again missed the window to harvest the cauliflower but I am too fascinated by the transformation of the plant to pull it.   I should have pulled the plant about a week before I took this picture when it was all still snowy white, but seemed too small to be ready to harvest. 

Thankfully, my children seem to share my appreciation for beautiful things and while I was working in the garden, The Chicken Whisperer decorated our cracked up driveway for Easter.  She amazes me with her artistic ability!!

The State of the Garden - April 2012

I believe I have mentioned that I am full of pessimism about the prospects for a garden this summer.  Watering restrictions are severe and the last I heard, summer drought conditions are expected to prevail once again.  My children are involved in many activities this spring and there just isn't much margin for the garden, so we are keeping it to a minimum.  However, the weeds are far too willing to take over, so I am spending what time I can to get a few plants in and attempting to keep the weeds from ruling the world.

Last week, we made a stop at our favorite nursery, North Haven Gardens.  Yesterday was my first opportunity to get the plants in.  I have never seriously attempted cucumbers, but I put 6 plants and three different varieties of cucumbers in the ground.  Also in are 3 tomato plants and several summer squash plants-mostly zucchini, but also one flying saucer variety.  I noticed that I have self-seeded basil beginning to pop up and some malabar spinach sprouting as well.

I have attempted many different trellis options, most using bamboo and none all that strong or permanent.  We shall see how this year's experiment goes.  We were doing a little spring cleaning in the yard and the swing that was severely damaged by last year's hail was headed to the curb for bulk trash day when one of the kids suggested that we should use it in the garden.  Low and behold it fits nearly perfectly around my raised beds!  I wire-tied a trellis/net around it and it appears we might be in business.  Our green juicing operations would certainly appreciate some nice organic, homegrown cukes!!

 The blackberry plants are in full bloom.  They seem a bit skimpy this year and I am thinking that maybe last year's hail did more damage than I realized?  However, they are tossing up new plants left and right so if I let them, they will be in a decent competition with the weeds for who shall rule the roost!  I love using that phrase having witnessed exactly what ruling the roost entails.  Our new chicks are in quite the battle over who will rule.  But, back to the blackberries, I am digging up new plants every time I am out there, so local friends, let me know if you would like one.

 

Scenes from the backyard

Tis the season for spending time in the yard and soaking up cooler temps before another hot Texas summer is upon us.  Sadly, March temps have felt more like May.  However, I have been telling myself for months to expect 100 degree temps by Easter so that I won't be disappointed when we have a warmer than normal next six to nine months.  I am not planning for a big season in the garden because with very severe watering restrictions in place and the potential for another scorching summer, I just don't think it is worth it.  I am thrilled with the outcome of my cool season garden and will work harder in the fall to have a better planned winter garden for next year.  We have been harvesting lettuce since January and if I had put in kale in the fall, I think we would have had a bumper crop.  The Swiss chard has been amazing and the cilantro that I planted in February is providing quite nicely.  If anyone has suggestions on drought tolerant ideas for the garden, I would love it if you leave a comment with your ideas!

I have quite a bit of work to recover from the fact that I ignored the weeds in the garden for the warmer half of the summer and fall.  In an effort to be completely "real" I thought I would post a picture of the true state of terrible mess the garden was in before we went to work on spring clean up!

Last spring, I mulched the other side of the garden with the chipped mulch of a Bradford pear tree that we had taken down.  I ran out before getting to this side and the thin layer of mulch I had down was no match for the likes of Johnson grass and other invasive weeds.  We lost another Bradford out front (no loss as it was planted much too close to the house) and I now have another pile of mulch to put to use on this half of the garden.  I also requested that if the tree service needs a place to drop off another pile of mulch, I would be quite grateful for one more load.  A little extra effort to prevent weeds and make my space pretty is what I am all about!

It appears that I might be evening up the score in my kale wars with the rabbits.  It makes me a little nervous that I may be jinxing myself to post about it, but thus far the rabbits have left my new kale plants alone.  Unfortunately, at the rate that spring is heating up, the growing season left for kale will be very short.

In other exciting news, we bought a new mower for the homestead.  We were quite appreciative to benefit for several years from a riding mower passed on to us by my father in law.  It was a great mower, but it has been in use for at least 15-20 years and we were finding that every spring we were putting enough money into fixing it up and keeping it running that we could have nearly paid for a new one of the same model by now.  Our kind neighbors previously let us borrow their John Deer when our mower was in the shop and it was amazing the difference.  With the new mower, Hubby was able mow our yard in about half of the time that the old mower took!  We planted winter rye and with our warm and wet spring, we are beginning to get a taste for why many people are quite against winter rye.  Given the right conditions, it grows amazingly fast!!  Now that we have the new mower, hopefully our neighbors won't be hating us quite as much. 

But this reminds me, I must get off of the computer and go move my pile of mulch.  Not thinking, I had the tree service dump it right in front of our gate.  There will be no further mowing of the front yard until I get that pile moved!!  It is only about 100 wheelbarrows worth....no need for the gym this week!  Hopefully, there will soon be pictures of a much improved, deeply mulched and weed free garden.

Weekend Roundup 4/3 - part 2

When I said that I wanted to get up early this morning as I went to bed last night, 4:30 am was not exactly what I had in mind.  However, since that 4:30 wake up call came with over an inch of rain, I will deal with early.

I took a big gamble by planting my tomatoes early this year.  There have been a handful of nights since planting that were down in the 30s, but covered with frost cloth, they have done very well.  I was concerned that the frost cloth was not allowing enough light in to keep them covered around the clock so I finally got around to switching out to floating row cover.  The two look very similar, but the floating row cover is much lighter and allows more light in.  I will leave them covered until they outgrow it. 

Tonight I will put the frost cloth over the top of the row cover because temps are predicted to be about 40, which means at our house it will more likely be around 35.  The other benefit of using the row cover is for protection from the elements.  Yesterday and today, as the winds blow fiercely, the tomatoes were spared from spending the days blowing about which can stress the plant.  They were also protected from the powerful thunderstorm and hail that we had last night.  If you are going to be successful with tomatoes in Texas, I firmly believe that row cover is a necessity!

Here is a shot of how the tomatoes are doing.  I am quite amazed at how big they are.  It appears that my potting soil experiment is so far quite successful as the tomatoes in the bags are about double the size of the plant in my raised bed.  I am not sure what that means other than I need to get around to soil testing.

For someone that said they were not growing tomatoes this year, I sure have a lot of tomatoes planted.  I believe I am now up to 11 plants.  On the left in the above image is another early girl.  It took some significant freeze damage soon after I bought it and I thought I had killed it.  It has been sitting on the back patio for the past month and after being much neglected, had recovered so well that I decided the determined little guy could have some real estate in the garden.  On the right is a Black Cherry heirloom variety.  I am crossing my fingers it will do well.

The corn is continuing to sprout, some of the plants are now about 2-3 inches tall.  The carrots are finally sprouting.  No sign of any of the lettuce I planted by seed.  The New Zealand spinach is sprouting well, but the other two spinach varieties have not sprouted yet.  I am afraid that I killed my potatoes.

We harvested our first lettuce from the garden last night.  It was quite yummy.  Evidently I will need to get better at planting it from seed so that I can have succession plantings.  So far I am failing with the seeds.

It makes me very happy to see basil popping up all over!  I believe the plant on the left is borage...or a weed.  Now that I think about it, I believe it is a weed.

This seedling makes me excited too!  The Malabar Spinach is popping up.  It is not yet coming up in the bed where it was planted last year.  This is where I had it two years ago.  I plan to trellis and let it grow in both places this year.

Blooming blackberries is another sight that makes me happy!  I have been digging up blackberry plants and have several to give away.  The are proving to make good on that warning on being invasive.  However, as long as you dig up the new plants, then the invasive nature is not a major issue.  And, it gives me plants to share!

I also worked on my kitchen window bed for an hour our so.  I have some serious affection for perennials.  I think it is just amazing to put in a plant and then see it return year after year.  I may live to regret this decision, but in the half of the space that is still empty, I am planting several varieties of mint.  I have had peppermint and spearmint in for two years now.  Now that I have a dehydrator, my plan is to begin drying it and making my own mint tea.  The new varieties include chocolate mint, ginger mint, apple mint, English mint and mountain mint.

Weekend Roundup 4/3

Wow, how did it get to be April already?  It seems the more I cross off the gardening list, the longer the list gets.  Of utmost importance this week is to address my irrigation.  After three seasons, my drip irrigation is beginning to fall apart.  Since it looks like we are in for a drought kind of summer, I must figure out watering very soon.  So far, neither Walmart nor Lowe's have had the drip irrigation sets that I have purchased in the past.  If I can't find replacement pieces, I am not sure what I will do.  I am not happy with the current fan sprinkler I have been using since it is wasting way too much water.

We spent a few hours working over the weekend.  I was out there a total of about 4 hours and Matt helped for about an hour.  However, the help he provided saved me at least 2 hours and likely a few bruises and a sore back!  My goal is to keep the garden as weed free as possible.  Last year when we had to add a fence to keep the dog and chickens out, the weeds around the fence were a nightmare.  I have slowly been adding bags of soil to kill the grass/weed mix along the perimeter of the fence. 

This year, I bought some edging bricks so that we can weed-eat around the bags and not instantly destroy them.  My goal is to eventually have a pretty little growing strip around the fence both inside and out that we can use to grow veggies (on the inside) and flowers and herbs (on the outside).  There was one corner that was overrun with extremely deep rooted weeds combined with fire ants.  Awesome combination!  Thankfully, Matt was able to get enough weeds out so that we could get cardboard laid down under the fence and then he set the soil bags on top.  As you can tell from the picture above, there is still more to be done, but the area he completed was by far the worst!

Here is a view of the side fence.  The good (though inexpensive) potting soil is going on the inside of the fence.  The bags on the outside are very cheap topsoil and are going on their second season of weed killing in new locations.  I was pleased that the plastic held together when we attempted moving them.  I planted zucchini in the first bag and eggplant in the second.  I am not sure why I wanted to try eggplant because I have never cooked with it, but maybe we will like it?  In the background you can see how we are slipping cardboard under the fence and the putting the bags on top.  This should prevent the weeds from growing in between the bags like they did last year and thus the mess of bags, weeds and fire ants that Matt had the pleasure of working on today.

I began planting in my mini retaining wall planter today.  I put in four banana peppers, alternating with marigolds.  The kale and mustard greens seem to be doing quite well.  I also planted beets and peas just beyond the greens, neither of which sprouted thanks to our lack of rain and my lack of keeping the soil moist in the absence of rain.  I am about to plant beans where the failed beets and peas are.  I just need to finish the debate in my brain whether to plant pole or bush beans in this space.

It appears I will need to break this into two parts since it is now past bedtime.  I have more pics of the tomatoes and how well they are doing as well as a few other odds and ends I want to make sure to get down since I am trying to keep a weekly journal.

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 - 3/13

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!