The Spring Garden

My spring garden this year consisted of lettuce, okra, red and blue kale and basil in the raised beds.

Basil

Kepler with the sprouting Kale and Okra

Lettuce

I decided to go with containers for some plants this year.  They are easy to maintain and you can move them around if they need more or less sun.  It is also handy if you have bad weather, say an approaching hail store, to move the plants to safety.  I would not be a happy camper if all of my hard work ended up being destroyed by hail or high winds!

Black Tomatoes

Costoluto Genovese

Nice ripe Serrano Pepper

Chinese Eggplant

Banana Peppers

Habanero Peppers

Okra in Bloom

 My potted plants included seven varieties of heirloom tomatoes, heirloom Chinese eggplant, and four varieties of hot peppers.  I also had a few herbs (chives and chocolate mint) in smaller pots.  I plan on planting more herbs in containers soon.

I planted more flowers in the beds as well.  I went with flowers that do well in the shade as my two flowerbeds are under trees and receive very little sun.  Zinnias, columbines and a mix with chrysanthemums, Echinacea and twelve other shade-loving flowers grew quite nicely.  I like to make sure there are plenty of flowers to attract insects for pollination.  I know this was part of the problem when I first started the garden.  I will now make sure I always have something blooming near my veggies.  It is also nice to have a few cut flowers inside the house in a vase.

In addition to the flowers, I added a hummingbird feeder on a shepherds hook that belonged to my Grandma in the middle of one of the flowerbeds.  I love to watch them dart around the yard sipping nectar. I always think of Grandma when I see them.  She loved hummingbirds.

Everything grew like crazy!  We have actually had some rain this Spring unlike last year, although we were in Stage two water restrictions for most of the season.

I saved up my pennies last year and was able to purchase a 65 gallon rain barrel.  It was well worth the money. Plants prefer rainwater to city water and it is free.  I only wish I had about six more barrels!

The Winter Garden

Some of the items in my Winter garden thrived, this was a welcome change.  I had begun to doubt the entire project after the harsh summer we had; so much energy and effort put into the garden with such limited results.

The Swiss chard I planted grew very well.  I call it the gift that keeps on giving.  It is still producing more than enough of the yummy green leaves.  I love to sauté the leaves in garlic and olive oil and use the leaves and stems in soups.  It also freezes very well.  Swiss Chard is easy to grow.  I highly recommend it if you are just starting out.

The acorn squash I planted did well at first, but something started eating the leaves and squash before they had a chance to thrive.  I did have one plant that produced a single squash.  I watched it like a hawk and had Kepler on guard to keep it safe.  In the end, it looked too much like a ball and Kepler decided to harvest it for himself.

You can see the little squash in the photo  on the left.

The eight fava bean plants I had took a long and painful four months to produce beans.  I ended up with about a half of a cup of beans total from the eight plants.  These beans are my favorite and seem to be hard to find fresh or frozen so I will give it another go later this year.

The beets and turnips seemed to be doing really well.  There were lots of big leafy greens above ground.  Unfortunately, when I harvested them, the roots were very small.  The biggest was about the size of a golf ball.  I was disappointed, but the greens were good to eat.

I have yet to have any root crop do well.  I believe it is because my beds are too shallow.  I tried carrots, radishes, onions, garlic and shallots in addition to the beets and turnips.  It is the same result every time.  Looks great above ground, nothing going on underground.  If you decide you would like to grow root veggies, I suggest you make your beds deeper than eight inches.

I ended up with two small cabbage heads that I harvested to make into kimchi.  I hope it's tasty!

The BIG Pot

We decided to make the two beds in the back flowerbeds.  Flowers attract bees, butterflies and if you are lucky, hummingbirds.  These are good to have around to pollinate your fruits, veggies and herbs.

My hubby found a HUGE pot that he paid a minimal price for.  He thought it would look nice in the middle of one of the flowerbeds with a Mexican lime tree in it.  We set out to make it happen.  It turned out to be a nice focal point of the garden.  Of course Kepler was right in the thick of it all.

I decided in July it was time to give up until the temperature dropped and we got some rain.  I didn’t think it would take so long, but by September it started to drop under 100 degrees during the day and we got a little rain.  I decided to plant my winter garden.

I planted acorn squash, fava beans, beets, turnips, swiss chard & cabbage.   I also decided to plant some flowers in the back beds.  They seemed to like the cooler weather.  I planted zinnias, morning glories, marigolds and a hummingbird and butterfly mix.   

A few days after I planted the flower seeds, we finally got a hard rain and most of the seeds washed into the brick path.  I decided to leave them and plant more in the bed.  We now have a nice crop of flowers growing in the walkway.

Spring 2011

I started my garden in the Spring of 2011.  Thinking  this would be the ideal time, I went by the book on what to plant and when to plant it.  Burpee has a great growing calendar that you can customize to your zip code.  It can help you decide which crops are best to plant in your area at any given time of the year.

http://www.burpee.com/

I also used the Farmers Almanac online to help with which days are best to plant and when it is best to do maintenance in your garden.

http://www.farmersalmanac.com/calendar/gardening/

What I didn’t know was 2011 would be one of the hottest, driest on record in South Texas!

We did get a few very small tomatoes, eggplant, serrano peppers and cucumbers from the effort.  I made most of the cucumbers into pickles for my Mom. I figure they cost about $20 a jar with the amount of water it took to keep the cucumbers alive.  

Everything else I planted was incinerated by the sun with the exception of a few sunflowers and the squirrels had a great time eating those.

One good thing did come out of all of this.  I was able to train Kepler to chase away the squirrels and birds on command.  He makes a great scarecrow and takes his job very seriously.

Notice the squirrel climbing up the fence.