Some late bloomers in the garden

So my wife and I just got back from a trip to Hot Springs, AR and I returned to find a small black diamond watermelon about the size of a softball.  It's the first of hopefully more to come, as I can see a few flowers and small marble size melons elsewhere on the vine.

The basil is continuing to do great in this Texas summer heat and it even looks like the parsley is trying to make a comeback.   I bought some organic plant food to spread out to help my tomatoes and covered my beds with the remaining 3yr mulch I had made.  I went ahead and emptied out this years mulch to the open container to let it cook up in the heat, and start the new batch in the closed container to keep out the rodents.

Pretty much everything else is just barely hanging on.  Watering every morning, a few hours before the sun rises, there's not much else I think I could do.  I believe the biggest problem I have is that my raised beds are exposed to to much sunlight to long.  Its about time to start planting for the fall garden, so I think I am going to move it over more in the shaded areas of my backyard.  I was reading an article in the latest Urban Farm magazine about shade gardening, so I think I will give it a try.  The writer said that his cherry tomato plants did well in partial shade along with some variety of beans, leafy greens, and carrots.  Herbs also do well in partial shade, so I think I will do more container herbs so that I can move them around if needed.

Here are a few of the books and magazines that I like to use to help me with my gardening adventure.

 
This time of year you will find hundreds of cicada shells.  I came across these on the underside of a leaf.  Wonder what was going on here?

camera on phone has the worst macro

Get dirty and keep on gardening!

The Summer Heat is just killing everything

The garden is starting to look grim lately due to the Texas summer heat.  I have now changed my watering time to 4am instead of 7am, just so that the plants can absorb more of it before the sun comes out to suck it back out.  After cutting the zucchini off, the plant has more or less just withered away, along with my two cucumber vines.  My tomatoes this year are just on producing much and its probably because I waited to long to plant them.  If I had planted them around mid-march, things might have been a lot different.  The one thing that still seems to survive are my jalapeno plants.  I'm sure those hot little dudes just love the summer heat!  My onions are currently the size of golf balls, but they still require another two months to reach their full potential... I can't wait.


As an experiment, I hung up two Topsy Turvies outside, one with a tomato plant and the other with some strawberries and mint.  The only problem is that the only place to hang them only gets a few hours of sunlight.  So we will see how well they do.

This past weekend, my wife and I made a trip up to the Fort Worth area for our nephew's 2nd birthday, which also gave me the opportunity to check out their little urban homestead.   They have a nice sized backyard garden with many tomato plant varieties from grape to Big Boy to new ones that I had never heard of before like a Golden Zebra tomato.  They had enough onions, Swiss chard, and ground cherries to share with everyone there.  What they are still waiting on though are the strawberries, watermelon, cucumbers, and zucchini.  To add flavor to all their produce, they have a pretty good herb garden filled with mint, dill, basil, and other herbs I can't remember.   Along with the gardens, they have, I think, 5-6 chickens that average out about collectively 2 eggs a day.  For a family of 4, it's enough for them.  They also have a rabbit, which with the help from the chickens, provides a good source for their compost piles.
 I will say that he has better conditions for gardening than we do down here.  The soil is not as rocky and they have actually had rain in the past few months.   Plants just do better with natural rain water than with city municipal water.

Get dirty and keep on gardening!

Another small harvest

As May comes to an end and the hot summer weather returns, I am hoping that my garden produces more produce in the next few weeks.
I went ahead and cut the two remaining cucumbers from the vines.  I think I left them on a little to long though, as they were turning a pale greenish/yellow color.  The thing about cucumbers is that the more you pluck, the more they will produce.  I also cut the zucchini, which reached about 11 inches long.











Some friends of ours already gave us two big zucchini earlier this week, so my wife and I are trying to find different ways of cooking it.  I grilled it on the grill with a little olive oil and salt and pepper.  My wife made a cucumber sauce and it was quite tasty.  We also made some kale chips in the oven, which were good.














I also picked two jalapeno peppers and two tiny little cherry tomatoes.  Besides waiting for the rest of my produce to grow, I am having a small battle with some squirrels, who have already eaten the first of my strawberries.  I had bought a squirrel feeder when I first planted my seeds, hoping it would divert them away.  I guess my little friend just loves sweet strawberries.

Get dirty and keep on gardening!

First cucumber harvest of the season, zucchini almost ready, and regrowth of the bib lettuce

I checked the vines today and decided to cut two of the cucumbers off.  The other two I am going to give a couple more days on. Can't eat that many cucumbers at one time.

What's really surprising to me is how fast zucchini grows.  One day it was about the size of a baby carrot and then the next day its about a foot long.  This is my first time growing zucchini and so far, its doing quite well in the raised beds.

I guess we will be making lots of salad in the next few days because the bib lettuce is really growing.  The plant that I cut off about a month ago has already grown back to a nice size.   Need to start a crop rotation calendar to efficiently use all the produce this year.  Saw another decent size strawberry the other day too, but I guess a critter had a juicy snack because it was gone.

 

Get dirty and keep on gardening!

Homemade birdfeeder

Care for a spot of tea?

So I saw some of these homemade bird feeders down in Wimberley, TX and thought I would give it shot in making one for myself.  So I made a trip to the local Goodwill to find some colorful saucers, plates, and small bowls.  To drill a hole through the middle of the porcelain dinnerware, I had to buy a tile drill bit at Home Depot.  Making sure to keep the drill bit wet, I was able to drill through the 3 pieces but either the drill bit became dull or the next plate was just way to thick.  I used a extra long bolt and washers to connect the pieces and a small piece of green chain to hang it up.  Not that bad for my first attempt.

The cucumbers and tomatoes are starting to grow

Today I found 3 more little baby cucumbers starting to sprout.  The large one will probably be ready to pick in about a week.  I also have a few green tomatoes now,  a few on the grape tomato plant and one on the Big Boy plant.  Hope the bugs leave alone this year.  Speaking of bugs, something has been destroying my two broccoli plants. The leaves are full of holes.

First harvest of the spring season

So far, we have got to enjoy a nice portion of some of the bib lettuce and one nickle size juicy strawberry.  The tomatoes have started to grow now thanks to the recent rain and I discovered a cucumber under the leaves a few days ago about 6 inches long.  I have a few herbs growing too (parsley, basil, dill, and cilantro) but for some reason have never had any luck with the herbs. 

yummy bib lettuce

Time to start the Spring garden

This is my 3rd year in attempting to have a garden in my backyard.  Because of the rocky soil,  I built 4 raised 4x4ft squared beds and two 2x4ft raised beds with a trellis between them.  So now in my 3rd year, I have been able to find a few plants that will grow well for me.  Last year the only thing that produce anything were cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and jalopenos.  This year I have added a few more things to test out.  I have 3 different tomato varieties, jalopenos, bell peppers, California peppers, red and purple onion, cucumbers, yellow squash, black watermelons, strawberries, kale, and bib lettuce.  Most of these were started from seed in the garage and transplanted outside in the beds in early April.