Got all my SWC’s cleaned out and mixed some new dirt, getting ready for Round 2, which should commence shortly. Got tomatoes, peppers, and some broccoli, among other things, big enough to harden off. I put them on Hubby’s picnic table, in the shade, but am slowly exposing them to a bit more sun every day. Really gotta watch ‘em, though; this wind and heat will fry the poor little babies faster than I can blink.

Got some seeds sprouting to fill a couple off my new containers, and just got an idea for another one last nite while I should have been sleeping. I’ll start the seeds in a bit.

A couple weird things, though. I was about to pull my cukes, as they just aren’t fruiting, and are infested with whiteflies, among other things. All of a sudden they have just started growing like gangbusters, so now I’m debating. The watermelons in the SWC’s are doing the same thing. For a while it’s looked like they were barely hanging on, so I was babying them along hoping the melons would ripen before they expired. Now they’ve started growing new vines and blossoms, too. We’ll see what happens.

Later…

By the time Garden Blog Death Day rolls around, I’ll have plenty to share. All the Roma tomatoes have ripened, not that there were all that many. The plants are just hanging around until I pull them out. Got some replacement stuff growing now, but it’ll be a few weeks until it’s ready to plant. I let the sickly zucchini expire, too, so that’ll be in the Death Day post.

The Heatwave tomato plants look awful, too, but they at least have a bunch of tomatoes ripening, if I can get them before the mockingbirds decide they’re ready to eat. The only thing that doesn’t seem bothered at all by the heat is the Lablab bean I planted. It just keeps growing taller, and has finally reached the top of the arbor thingy. Getting some side shoots now too, so maybe the arbor will finally start serving it’s intended purpose by the time I plant Round Two in early September.

The biggest thing I’ve accomplished is finishing the Excel seed-starting chart I got at I Wet My Plants.com. It was fine for Canada, but, boy, did it need a lot of work for South TX. Took me quite some time, and lots of tedium, to enter all my seeds, correlate the planting dates to the Texas Gardener magazine Planning Calender, and get it all set up for my area. Now, however, it is tailored to my garden, and it is really cool. Just print and plant…eliminates alot of the mind-breaking co-ordination two (well, really, 3) garden seasons requires.

That’s about it for now. Got dinner cooking and gotta get back to it…

Here are some pics I took about a week ago that show how much the garden had grown while I was in Colorado. Compare them to these pics.

Pics within

Heatwave tomatoes living up their name, setting lots of fruit even in this heat

Hubby’s picnic table, WIP

Hubby’s picnic table, another angle

As I said, these pics are about a week old. In a couple days, after it stops raining, I’ll take some more, just to see how they grew after the rain. You can water all you want, but even a little bit of rain does so much more…

So I finished my two Monster Pots, as I mentioned. Here’s a pic of the jasmine pot:

The other Monster Pot is for my rosemary. Here’s a pic of the finished pot and the rosemary for which I made it:

Here’s a pic of the baby peppers and basils sitting in their eventual garden homes, getting used to the sun. It took about an hour and a half, again, before they started looking wilty and I moved them back.

Off to Big Orange for some more. Bad, very bad! Walked in there and saw all those plants. I tried to resist, really, I did, but…

I didn’t. I bought a bunch of herb plants, the ones I had tried to start from seed, but haven’t yet. My seeds, as previously mentioned, are pretty old, and haven’t had much luck with anything but tomatoes. Ordered more, but, I guess due to increased demand, none of them have gotten here yet. Guess I’m impatient, but, given our looming long, hot summer, there just isn’t that much time to waste waiting for them.

I love lavender, and found a plant. That’s what started it all. Then I saw the rest of the herbs. Oh no! Temptation. Sigh…

I found a Blackie Sweet Potato vine, and had been wanting to try that. The color is gorgeous. Then I thought, well, if I put the lavender and the Blackie in a container, but, wait, it will need something else. So I bought a nice yellow lantana, picturing a nice contrast with the lavender foliage and purple flowers…

Then I needed a BIG container to put them in…you see what happens? LOL, you guys know what I mean.

Surprisingly, I actually did remember to get more landscape fabric. By the time I got my container potted and the herbs repotted, it was too dark (and I was providing a nice meal for too many mosquitoes) to do the landscape fabric. That’ll have to wait till tomorrow.

No pics tonight, as it was also too dark to take pictures. I’ll try to remember to do that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I’m a happy camper cuz I actually have something growing in my yard now, even if it’s only in pots.

My Lights:

I had to wonder if my old seeds were even any good any more. Much to my amazement, most of them are sprouting. I’ve had the best luck with tomato seeds. The peppers are a bit slower, but the moonflower and morning glory seeds sprouted right away. I ordered some more seeds, for which I am still impatiently waiting, to see if I can get more than a few pepper plants.

Baby Tomatoes:

Too late down here for cool-weather crops, have to wait until fall for lettuce, broccoli, and such. That’s a bummer, for sure.

DH finally went to the store and got my lumber, and started building my bed today.

Finally:

I still have to put down cardboard and landscape fabric under the bed, and, yes, I know the trellis is falling. He fixed it later…

This was my first plan:

That was a bit ambitious. I decided to go a bit smaller:

DH still seemed to think that was too much, so I downsized even more:

I also plan to use containers and Self-Watering Containers. I’m gonna have my flowers, herbs, and fragrance somehow.

Dad always had some sort of garden, even though we moved alot. His favorites were lilies; they always smelled so good. Mom liked plants, too, but she was too busy doing the usual housewife thing to garden much.

It was inevitable, I suppose, or maybe just genetic. When I had a family and a place of my own, I gardened, too. We moved even more than I had as a kid, and I left many gardens behind. Then I got older and achier, and gave it up for a while.

My Dad just recently passed, and we had to start cleaning out his house to sell it. The mountain of garden catalogs, his beautiful garden, and nostalgia, I guess, inspired me to try again.

DH and I have landed in extreme South Texas, and it appears we’ll be here for a while. Gardening down here is a whole ‘nuther animal. We’re blessed (or cursed, depending on perspective) with a long growing season. You can have a spring garden, which you start in December or January, depending on crop, then the garden just sits for the summer months. In August and September, you start the fall garden.

Besides the heat and humidity, you have to contend with an infinite number of bugs, diseases, and other assorted pests. The “soil” is really concrete, masquerading as mucky clay. Hard as a rock when it’s dry, which it usually is, and sticky and slippery when it’s wet. Oy! I’m about to talk myself right out of my garden.

So in January, I came home from Dad’s determined to have a garden. After thinking about it for a while, I decided Square Foot Gardening was the way to go. I’m too old to be digging this concrete and trying to make it into something resembling friable soil, so raised beds and Mel’s Mix it is. If you don’t know what Square Foot Gardening is, click the link. It works; I’ve done it before.

Once I decided how I was going to garden, it was off to the races.