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.

It's in the Bag

I decided to create a raised garden by double stacking bricks and removing six inches of the existing dirt.  The ground here is very hard and rocky and vegetables do not grow well.

We then partitioned into six “mini-beds” and proceeded to fill the beds with garden soil. This worked out nicely in theory, but I had no idea of the cost of filling the beds with decent soil. 

I had heard that you can get a truckload of garden soil cheap, but you really need a pickup for that sort of thing and we have two cars.  I decided to just start buying a few bags at a time as I had the money. At this point, I still have two beds waiting for soil.  The garden is still very much a work in progress.

You may notice that the beds are not exactly level.  I know they look a little like a garden from a Tim Burton movie, but there is a reason.  If you live in the burbs, you may be familiar with easements.  Basically, this is an area where there are utility lines buried.  In our case, some of them were not buried.  You can see one of them in the second photo in my April 14, 2012 post (the orange cord) Lucky for us, Kepler was never interested in chewing on it.

To make a long story short, it is not wise to build anything you are not willing to have destroyed in the event the utility company needs to get to their lines.  We decided not to go through all the work of leveling it off, just to have it all torn up.  I actually prefer the less structured feel.