sb158’s Valley Garden

sb158 | July 9, 2010

While Alex made landfall about 100 miles south of us, we didn’t escape unscathed, by any means. We got some wind and plenty of rain, but it poured on the Rio Grande and Falcon Lake watersheds. So now, we have this…

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…

Category: Garden Stuff, Personal Stuff | 4 Comments »
Tags: Alex, garden, weather, whining

sb158 | June 28, 2010

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, right? Now we’re gonna get hurricaned on. That can’t be good for gardens. Alex is gonna come along and kill the almost-ripe cantaloupes I have been babying along and salivating over for weeks. Mother Nature is a b*&ch! No fair at all!

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?

Category: Garden Stuff, Personal Stuff | 2 Comments »
Tags: Alex, garden, weather

sb158 | June 26, 2010

We’ve had three weeks of temps in the mid-to-high nineties, with humidity to match, and heat advisories all the time. You can imagine what that does to a garden. I’m babying most things along until I can harvest whatever’s still surviving out there. Cukes and watermelon in the containers have just about had it. I do have several cantaloupes almost ready to harvest, and keep checking every day to see if any are ripe. The Gold Bar Melons do keep chugging along, but even they are looking a bit weather-worn. They better taste good, because they have set a bunch of fruit. My volunteer tomatoes still have a bunch of fruit ripening, even set a few new fruits.

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…

Category: Square Foot Gardening, Veggies, containers | 2 Comments »
Tags: containers, Green Beans, Square Foot Gardening, Tomatoes, Veggies, weather

sb158 | June 8, 2010

I haven’t posted any pics in a while, so I guess it’s time for an update. Things are definitely going better than they did last year. We had a nice t-storm last night, and I think everything grew a foot overnight! More storms possibly tonight, too. Amazing what a little thunder, lightening, and rain can do for a garden.

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…

Category: Veggies, containers | 1 Comment »
Tags: basil, containers, flowers, Tomatoes, Veggies, weather

sb158 | June 6, 2010

Yea, I’m going to whine about the weather again. We’ve been under a heat advisory all weekend. It’s been miserable. Except for going out early morning and in the evening to water, the garden is on it’s own. I ain’t even going out there if I can avoid it. I even changed my desktop to rotating winter pictures for a psychological attempt at cooling off. Not working, but worth a try, right?

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!

Category: Experimental, Permaculture, design/build | No Comments »
Tags: design/build, Experimental, Paul James, Permaculture, weather

sb158 | May 14, 2010

I’ve been trying to update all week, but things have been blowing around too much. We’ve had 35-40 mph winds all week, with occasional gusts even higher. It’s hard to get decent pics in all that wind. The wind finally “calmed down” to 20-25 mph today, so took quick pics between gusts…
Pics and more inside

Category: Bugs, Square Foot Gardening, Veggies, containers | No Comments »
Tags: Bugs, containers, Green Beans, Square Foot Gardening, Veggies, weather

sb158 | April 23, 2010

Been busy all week with garden stuff, despite the lack of posts. Mostly just routine maintenance, watering, etc., but also seed starting and seedling babying. After a few really rainy days, it stopped raining and stayed cloudy and comparatively cool for a couple days. Today, however, is much more like our usual weather. Yukky hot and muggy…
Meanwhile, my daughter tells me that they had a whopper snowstorm in Colorado Springs, and her sons had a snow day. The boys enjoyed that, but the oldest one was not happy that now the last day of school won’t be until June 2.
Anyway. I’ve been germinating seeds using EG’s seed starting method, then planting them into yogurt cups and immediately putting them outside in a “nursery” spot. I figure they will start to grow in the conditions that they have to get used to, so the whole “hardening off” thing becomes a non-issue. So far, so good…

Pics and More Within

Category: Bugs, Seeds/Seed-starting, Veggies, containers, flowers | No Comments »
Tags: Bugs, containers, flowers, Veggies, weather

sb158 | April 17, 2010

I mentioned in my previous post that we’d had rain all week. Up until yesterday, it was nice gentle showers with some space between. Since yesterday, we’ve had some toad-stranglers and really loud boomers. Up to 3″ an hour; flash flood watches and warnings all over the place. I’m hoping it stops soon, before it drowns my entire garden. Feast or famine around here, I guess.
In between floods, I’ve been running out to check on things. My poor swiss chard is being consumed by snails and God-only-knows what else. I have to get some Sluggo, ASAP. I spotted what looked like a cucumber beetle (I think) before it flew away today. While I was snail-hunting, I spotted some icky-looking stuff on the backs of the chard leaves. Looks like eggs of some sort, but I have no idea what. I’m posting a few pics, in hopes that somebody knows what they are and how to fix it. Don’t want to kill them if they are eggs of some beneficial bug.

So, any ideas?
Pics and More Within

Category: Bugs, Veggies | 2 Comments »
Tags: Bugs, Green Beans, Veggies, weather

sb158 | April 14, 2010

Started on Sunday night and hasn’t stopped yet; we’ve had a lovely little storm system move through, and we sorely needed the rain. Monday it rained almost all day; yesterday, there was some space between showers. Today, too. Yesterday was my future DIL’s birthday, so spent most of the day cooking and stuff, but been out between showers putzing a bit today.
Decided it was time to put up bird netting; was looking out the kitchen window and watched one of those brassy mockingbirds fly right down and take a chunk out of a cucumber leaf. Those buggers think that just because they are the state bird, they can get away with anything. I went out to chase it; bugger kept flying just far enough away, until I ran at it with my arms waving and shouting at it. Can’t (don’t want to, really) imagine what the neighbors must have thought.
I’m glad I had the sense to put up a small bird netting cover over the pot with the green beans, or they’d probably have eaten them all by now. But, what with all the rain, the beans are growing like crazy, so I have to put up a permanent one ASAP. Put up a piece of it along the back of the trellis, and have to go out when it stops raining again to measure the circumference of the pot and height, so I can make the rest of it. Problem is, I can’t figure out a way to keep the net off the plants far enough to allow them to grow without getting all tangled in it. Doesn’t do much good if the beans grow through the net and let the birds eat them anyway. The peas did that; was a pain to take down; the net will probably have pea tendrils in it forever! Anybody’s got any ideas, I’m all ears. Still have to do the second cucumber container, too.

What else? Oh, yeah, The little pieces of herbs I planted the other day are doing well, thanks, no doubt, to the rain. I even cut off a small stem of the lavender I bought and stuck it in there, just to see what would happen. So far, it looks good. hasn’t wilted at all. I planted some common thyme seeds in there today; I hope it grows.

Here’s a pic of the “BBQ container”:

Herbs planted in a BBQ cover
Also wanted to show you how much the volunteer tomatoes have grown since the first pic I posted. Rain does some amazing things. No matter how much you water…
If you remember when I divided the mums and gazania, you’ll notice that they are looking great so far. Guess I didn’t kill them (yet!).

My, how you’ve grown.

I planted a pot of Unwin’s dwarf dahlias a while ago; planted a few seeds in each spot, not knowing how well they would germinate. I think they all came up, so I had to move 5 baby dahlias to individual pots (for now) as the container’s only big enough for three. I may use them, may try to sell them on craigslist. We’ll see.

Went out after dinner and between rain showers and got the bird netting on the beans enough, I think, to keep the birds off. Still need to do some adjusting and fine-tuning, but, for tonight, at least, I think they are okay. Would’ve finished, but it started raining again, and got dark…

Category: Veggies, containers, flowers, herbs | 2 Comments »
Tags: containers, herbs, mockingbirds, Veggies, weather

sb158 | August 26, 2009

not to get discouraged. I see all the pretty pics of other people’s beautiful gardens with all they produce, then look out the window. Dry, brown, dead vegetation, tons of bugs, and no produce. Sigh…

Thank goodness for those pics, though, and for garden magazines. They help motivate when thinking about planting seeds and nurturing the babies seems like an exercise in futility. Sooner or later (most likely MUCH later), it will stop being well over 100 degrees every d&*m day, and we will get some rain. Then when other people are shoveling snow, I’ll be picking tomatoes and eating garden suppers.

Gardeners have to be either eternal optimists or masochists. Haven’t decided which yet.

Category: Garden Stuff | 6 Comments »
Tags: garden, weather