This is still well upstream to us, but it’s getting closer. They released some water from Falcon Lake into the flood-ways, which has made its way here. On top of that, we had “Tropical Depression 2,” which didn’t get strong enough for a name, but is still dumping rain on us. The mosquitoes are as big as B-52s, and really vicious, and there is water all over the place. Not to mention the disgusting humidity…

Alex shredded the zucchini, broke the cantaloupe vines, and gave the Gold Bar Melon a terminal case of powdery mildew. I saved 3 cantaloupe; the rest either fell off and splattered, or split because of all the water. Got lots of Gold Bar Melons, though I still haven’t tasted them. Been eating the cantaloupe…

My arbor blew over, as I expected, and pulled some plants out by the roots. I have one surviving cucumber, which seems to have been resurrected by either the rain or the compost I put on it. The tomatoes all have blight, I think. And tomato fruit-worms…I’ve had to throw away at least 2 dozen tomatoes with icky worms eating the insides out. I’ll let what fruit remains ripen, then pull them out. I’ve got some more volunteer babies coming up in the compost I put on the containers, so I’ll transplant them and see what happens.

The jalapenos and Fruit Basket bells are doing great; The pole beans I planted a bit ago seem okay so far, too. For now!

So, not a complete loss, but annoying still! Gotta tell ya, though, it is no fun trying to garden wearing long sleeved shirts to protect against mosquitoes in this heat (in between rain storms). I’ve been using the Off clip-on thingy, but it’s pretty ineffective against the hordes of evil beasties out there now. I need to spray for aphids and icky diseases, too, but it just keeps raining. Maybe by Monday or so the rain will be gone…I hope.

So, that’s the state of the garden for now. More later…

Seriously, I have no idea what to do with all my containers and the arbor thingy. If I leave them there, they will probably end up in the next county, or maybe in the neighbor’s living room, but I really have no secure place to put them. No room in the house at all. I guess I’ll stick the ones that fit under the picnic table, as that thing is so heavy it may be okay. The rest, I guess I’ll put behind the lattice. Not gonna be of much use, but at least I’ll know I tried. Don’t really want my containers flying through somebody’s window at all.

I just hope ole Alex politely fizzles out and goes away. Hurricanes are no fun when you have to go to your BIL’s house and sit in the dark with no AC and nothing to do until it goes away. This time, I’m bringing beer (even if it will get warm!) and my bottle of rum. If I have to be miserable, I’d prefer oblivious!

If you’ve got an in with MN, would you mind asking her nicely to be gentle?

Haven’t gotten so much as one zucchini; I think it’s a pollination problem, or the heat. I do hand pollinate, but still no fruit set. No green beans, either. They either get some dreadful disease and die, or something eats all the blossoms and half the leaves before I see green bean one. I did plant some Contender bush beans that are still looking good; I’m still holding out hope. Probably futile, but you have to be an optimist to try and garden, especially down here!

The jalapenos, on the other hand, seem to be enjoying the heat. Got several fruit, which is way more than I had last year! The Fruit Basket bells in the hanging baskets even have a few fruits.

So all is not lost, but it’s still very discouraging. I think that I’m done with self-watering containers. Haven’t had much luck at all to date. I’ll probably do like Annie’s Granny and use them in the raised beds like she has. They might work for a fall garden, but the summer heat is just too much for any plant to survive.

Still house-hunting, too, which kind of messes up fall garden plans. Don’t want to start fall veggies, only to have to either haul baby plants if we do find a house, or leave perfectly good veggies in the garden. What would you do?

Not much else to say, I guess. I’m pretty much in “Survive-Till-Cooler-Weather” mode myself. I have had quite enough summer already, even though it’s just barely started. Sigh…

A growing cantaloupe

Can’t wait to eat this!
And some cukes



More tomato & cuke salad in the very near future.

The laundry hamper volunteer tomatoes keep chugging along. I’ve gotten more than 7 lbs. of tomatoes from these guys so far. Picked all of the almost ripe ones yesterday, as I knew it might rain and didn’t want the tomatoes to split.



And the tomatoes to go with the cukes…

This is a chile pequin (wild bird pepper) bush. These are really hot little buggers; you can see a ripe one if you look hard enough.



Hot stuff
This bush has quite a story. DH’s dad had a bush in front of his house that he babied for years. He used the peppers to make some wicked salsa, among other things. When he died, we dug up his bush and put it in a 5 gal bucket that we hauled around for years! I knew the bush would die when we moved back up north, so we gave it to hubby’s brother. He’s not what you’d call a gardener; he killed the poor thing!

Hubby’s been looking for a replacement ever since we moved back down here. A few months ago, we went to a family birthday in Hebbronville, and hubby found a bush in the yard. He says “We’re taking this home” as he grabs it and just yanks the poor thing out of the ground. He hands it to me and says “You can plant this, right?” I’m like “WTH am I supposed to do now?” So I wrapped it up in damp paper towels, put it in a baggie, and took it home. I cut it way back, put it in a gritty soil mix in a gallon pot, and covered the pot with a plastic bag. Kept it under my florescent lights and babied that sucker along. Much to my surprise, it didn’t die, and eventually started growing. Uncovered it gradually, and put it outside when it got warm. This spring I put it in the container, and it has done quite well, so far. It’s going to need a bigger container come fall, I think. Fascinating, right? LOL!

Had enough yet, or should I go on? Okay, you asked for it. This is my pitiful-looking Side-of-the-Stairs container garden. Looking pretty sad, aren’t they? The annual blanketflowers have just about had it, as have the bachelor’s buttons. I’m letting both go to seed so I can save some for next year. The jasmine is dropping leaves in self-defense (normal, I’m told), but there are still things growing.

Getting too hot for the Side-of the-Stairs flowers, I think.

These are cinnamon basil and a Mini-Rose morning glory I think I got from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. It’s supposed to trail to about 3′; I like the variegated leaves, too. Very pretty little plant.

Cinnamon basil and MG

This has gotten long enough. I’ll leave the butterfly garden and hanging baskets for another time. TTYL…

So far, nothing has died of heat stroke; I hope this mess ends SOON!

Okay, done whining; on to the important stuff. Have you ever watched Paul James, the Gardener Guy, on HGTV? He had the best garden show for real gardeners, but they dropped him and put on all those landscaping guys. All well and good to landscape your yard, but how do you grow all that stuff after the landscapers have gone? I found his website and went to check it out.

He mentions a book called “The One-Straw Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka that inspired his gardening and changed his life. In the course of looking for that book, I discovered a concept called Permaculture. The basic idea is to create a self-sustaining ecosystem of your own, similar to the way nature would do it, only quicker. It’s all tied up with Peak Oil, climate change, and ecological disaster. I can’t say as I believe all the dire predictions; after all, who even wants to think about the kind of world it will be if all that stuff actually happens? Just in case it is even remotely possible, I’m going to plan my garden at my new house, whenever we actually buy one, to mitigate the ugliness as much as possible. Self-sustaining homesteads can’t be a bad thing, right? If you want to find out more, you can download The One-Straw Revolution here in pdf format.

So, once I’d discovered the concept, I needed to find out how one creates such an ecosystem. The book “Gaia’s Garden – A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture” was recommended as being especially helpful. It has been an absolutely fascinating read! Download the pdf yourself and see. Gotta warn you, though, it is a big (34M) file. It tells you pretty much everything you’d need to know, in a very easily understood, entertaining style. You can buy both books, and countless more, all over the web. Gonna do that soon as I can!

If you’ve got the time and interest, a wander around all the permaculture links on the net can be very educational. Inspiring, too, when you see all the things these design principles can accomplish, like turning several acres of desert in the Dead Sea Valley into green, producing farms. Totally amazing!

Lovely, you say, but why post about it? Why not? It’s my blog, right? LOL. The point of all this is that, when we do finally find the right house, in the right place, I’m going to give this a try. I guess I’ll make a separate page for permaculture-related stuff, and try to document the process as we go along. Wish me luck!

Lots going in in the garden, as you’d expect this time of year.

The volunteer tomatoes keep pumping out fruit; I’ve collected more than 4 3/4 lbs of tomatoes so far. And they taste so good! My under-the-shade lettuce is still hanging in there, but I doubt for much longer. Now that I’ve gotten rid of the stupid little green caterpillars and the snails, we actually get to eat some of it.

BTW, that Sluggo snail and slug stuff works. I’m finding dead snails all over the place.

I have a few cukes almost ready to pick, some zucchini getting there, and even a watermelon, some cantaloupes, and another kind of melon coming along. Would have had some green beans, but bean borers keep getting into them.

Oh, if you’re still wondering…in my previous two posts, I mentioned using Gold Bond medicated powder to dust the cucumber and melon leaves to keep the cucumber beetles from killing them. It sure seems to work. We had a couple of rains, which washed it off. If I forgot to reapply, I had holes in the leaves. This reminded me very quickly, for sure. I kept the plants dusted for about two weeks, then decided to stop and see what happened. They must have migrated to somebody else’s garden, because I haven’t found any new holes in several days.

I planted another succession square of bush beans recently. One day I noticed ants crawling up the stems from under the mulch, and the poor seedling looked nearly sucked dry and dead. Next day, I noticed the ants on the next bean seedling over. I happened to have the powder in my hand, so I just dumped some down around the stems of the affected plants. Figured it would annoy the ants, if nothing else. Let me tell you, they did not like that at all. Acted like I had dumped poison on them. So naturally I dumped some around the stems of the rest of the beans too. No more problems with ants in the beans. Cool, huh? Too late for the first two seedlings, but the rest are okay so far.

I still wander on over to Gardenweb every so often. Popped in on the Organic Gardening forum recently and saw a post titled One of the best recipe 2. I figured any topic that needed two threads had to be interesting, so started reading at the beginning. The Original Poster is a girl in Russia, who uses a traditional Russian drink she calls kvas to water her plants. It’s essentially 6 Tbsp rye flour, 2 Tbsp molasses mixed in a gallon of water from which you have let the nasty stuff evaporate for 24 hrs. You put it in a closed jug, shake it frequently, and do not open for 3 days. The stuff ferments into something that Russians swear is very healthy for you to drink. Apparently plants think so too.

I gave it a try, thinking it surely couldn’t hurt. Go read the thread(s) and decide for yourself, but I gotta tell you, my garden sure seems to love the stuff. I foliar feed it at 1 cup per gallon in my sprayer, sometimes combining with cornmeal tea, baking soda spray, or garlic/pepper tea as necessary, about twice a week so far. Plants looks so much greener, seem more able to handle the heat, and seem to be making more fruit than previously. All in all, the garden is doing much better (knock on wood) than it did last year.

In conjunction with our house-hunting, I’ve been doing lots of garden-related reading to help me decide what kind of a garden I want when we actually do get a house. Yes, I’m still daydreaming about it…

I’ve come across some very interesting ideas, about which I will post soon. Until then…

Before I get on with the flowers, got a quick question. I’ve mentioned previously that we were thinking of moving into a bigger home here in the park. We’ve decided that since it’s unlikely we’ll be getting out of this god-forsaken Valley any time soon, we might as well buy something. There are a bunch of foreclosed homes down here, so we can probably find something nice that we can still afford. So, the question becomes, am I a total garden geek for spending until 3 am this morning “daydreaming” about how I want my garden when we actually do get a house? I mean, really. I have no idea at all what kind of space I’ll have, and here I am planning a garden already. What kind of sense does that make? LOL!

Pics and more

Here’s a view from the top of the stairs.

Side-of-the-stairs from the top.
This little guy stayed still long enough to get a pic while I was out with the camera yesterday.

Butterflies love gaillardia.

Butterfly garden, beginnings…
Speaking of butterflies, here’s the humble beginnings of my butterfly garden. The pots with the pipes are cleome. As I’ve mentioned, it tends to be windy here, so I expect I’ll have to stake the cleome. The windowbox has Carpet Cosmos, which are only supposed to grow 6″ tall, and in the middle, 3 red penta. Two of the seeds have sprouted, but the babies are really small, about the size of thyme when it first sprouts. Hope they make it. The black container has just-transplanted blue salvia and some Cosmos Bright Lights seeds. The round pot has blue ageratum seeds, just planted today. The seeds are so tiny, and it was so windy, that I was afraid to try to plant them until the wind died down a bit. Also want to try zinnia, Cosmos Sonata mix, and maybe even a tithonia. Don’t tell me it won’t do well in a container; I refuse to accept that until I try! More on that as it evolves. Need more potting soil first; hoping to go get it tomorrow.

One last pic and I’m done for now.

Mums and gazania
A while ago, I posted about dividing mums and gazania. Here’s a pic of the windowbox, blooming like crazy. I swear, I cut off all the buds when I divided the mums, but they would not be denied. They wanted to bloom, so I’m letting them. I think we probably have a long enough growing season to let them bloom again in fall. Seen it happen before with my mums.

I guess that’s about all she wrote, for now. Tired after staying up too late tomorrow, so g’nite, y’all.

I have a few baby tomatoes to put between the two melon towers; just letting them get a good set of roots before I plant them.

This is the container garden. See how everything is all tilted? The wind has been brutal. I keep turning the pots to try and keep the plants straight! The two SWCs on the far right are cherry tomatoes. I had to rig a wind shield for the taller one cuz it was getting beat all to heck by the wind. It had blossoms, but the wind broke them.
The wood container has two patio tomatoes, and some cilantro. On the far side, you can see the volunteer tomatoes, the cucumbers, and the green beans with the mums.



Container Veggies
The volunteer tomatoes are coming along nicely. There’s one that should be ready tomorrow; there might even be enough lettuce and spinach to make a salad for everybody. YUM!

Almost ripe tomato

Actual green beans!
I’ve got a bunch of small green beans, not quite ready to pick yet. Maybe tomorrow. Not sure what’s going on with the green beans; disease or bugs. Think it might be Mexican Bean Beetles. Need to do more research on it. But I’m still getting green beans, which is an improvement over last year.

Fruit Basket Sweet Peppers
The baby Fruit Basket peppers seem to be doing okay so far. They get quite a bit of morning sun, even in the tree, but filtered afternoon sun. Considering the summer heat, I think they’ll probably do better hanging from a tree than the ones exposed to full sun in the garden. Good thing hot peppers like heat!

I noticed yesterday that the same bugs, judging by the chewing patterns, that decimated and killed my melons last year appear to be trying to do it again. No idea what bug it is, but I don’t see any caterpillars, so I’m going with beetles of some kind. I read somewhere that Gold Bond Medicated powder worked for a few people. They said the bugs apparently didn’t like the menthol taste. I went to the Dollar Store tonight and bought a couple containers of the store brand and puffed it all over the leaves after I misted them with water to help it stick. We’ll see in the morning if there are new holes. Made some garlic/hot pepper tea, but it was still too windy tonight to even spray. I would very likely have ended up wearing more of the stuff than the plants; it’s supposed to be less windy tomorrow. I’ll try it tomorrow night if the powder hasn’t helped.
So that’s what’s going on in the veggie garden. All in all, doing much better than they did last year. And now it’s time to say good night, y’all…

Pics and more

Mouseover the thumb to see the big picture.
Click for the really big pic.


The first ripe tomato this year.

First ripe tomato from my volunteer tomatoes

The Scarlet Runner beans are running, and blooming. And they are definitely scarlet!

Scarlet Runner Beans

And so are the Hestia half-runner beans.

Hestia half-runner beans

Saw today that one of my cucumber vines is flowering, but it’s only a few male flowers. Be a while, I’m sure, before I get any beans or cucumbers. Probably be another few days until I have another ripe tomato, too. The cantaloupe and Gold Bar melons I planted are starting to run, too, though just barely. And my zucchini looks a whole lot better than any I planted last year. They just stayed sickly and puny, and expired very rapidly. This year, they look like zucchini are supposed to look, growing like weeds! Now if I can just keep the squash vine borers off, I should actually get a zucchini or two. I check the leaves every day…kind of obsessive compulsive about it, even…Do not want to see those eggs anywhere near my zucchini!


The baby peppers I planted out the other day are doing fine so far. I put the two Fruit Basket sweet peppers in their baskets, and 4 jalapenos in the garden. All are hanging in there, despite the heat. Better than me, probably! I hate hot.


Anyway, on to the U(nidentified) F(lowering) O(bject). What, you thought I saw aliens? Not lately, anyway! Well, except the illegal kind; hard to live down here and not see those kind. Ok, flowers. I had a bunch of different packages of wildflower seeds, and have no idea what I planted where. Once I started clearing out the dying California Poppies, I found this guy growing in the pot. It’s a pretty little plant, stands about 2′ tall, basically a single stem with the thin leaves, until it gets to the top. As soon as it started budding out, the flower heads grew out from the central stalk. And the blooms are about the size of a half dollar, more or less. So here’s pics. If you know what this is, drop me a comment. please…and thank you!

Unidentified Flowering Object

EDIT: Thanks to the Texas Gardening forum on Gardenweb, my UFO has been identified as Helenium amarum, common name Yellow Sneezeweed. Thanks, ladies!

On to the blanketflowers. Pics and more
I found a few blanketflower seeds (I hoped) in a wildflower mix from Wildseed Farms (see link on left bottom), and threw them in the container with my Ruttya shrub I bought last spring. Obviously, I was right, since I have blooming blanketflowers. Here’s a couple pics:

Mouseover the thumb to see the big picture. Click for the really big pic.

Always loved these colors.

Like the way the blanketflower picks up the yellow of the lantana, and contrasts with the salvia.

And last, but certainly not least, my red mini-rose is blooming. The others all have buds, but not quite blooming yet.

Such a pretty little thing.

Today I turned over the part of my raised bed into which I am going to plant all my nicely growing baby hot peppers. I’ve got jalapenos (Hubby’s fav), Joe Parker Numex peppers, Ancho chiles, and an heirloom called Pasilla Bajo. The babies are filling up the yogurt cups with roots, so in another day or two, into the garden they go.

Since you’re not really supposed to plant sweet peppers too close to hot peppers, I’m planting two sweet peppers called Fruit Basket, that are bred to grow in hanging baskets. The baskets are all ready, just waiting for the babies to get big enough. They are going to hang from my tree; we’ll see how they do.

Well, that covers blanketflowers and babies; all that’s left are the weird ideas. A while ago, on GardenGirlTV, I saw a vid about a 30 minute flower garden. She used these things called “Garden Socks” into which she planted her 30-minute flower garden. If you’re curious, I found it on her resources page. Anyway, it occurred to me that I might be able to make a “sock” out of landscape fabric, and try to plant something in it. I finally figured out how to work it; am almost done with it. When it’s done, I’ll show you what I did, and if it actually works. Figured, what the heck, it could be fun to try!

Well, that’s annoying. All day I’ve been thinking about things to blog about, and now that I’m in front of the computer, can’t remember what I wanted to say. Oh, well. That’s the way it goes. Ta-ta for now…