Halfway through summer

I had the amazing opportunity to spend 16 days of June in Ireland with my wife and her family.

 While there we visited my FIL's 5th cousin and their farm.  His wife had a huge greenhouse that she said was her "little project". I was a bit jealous of the magnitude of it. I'm in the orange checking out the gooseberry plants.

  

Meanwhile back in the states I was fortunate enough to have rain on many of the days that we were gone. I had picked about 10 huge green tomatoes and left them on a plate for them to ripen. Our house and dog sitter ate the tomatoes and said they were delicious.  My neighbor looked after my garden and picked two zucchini squash to enjoy for his family.  When I gat back the tomato plants had lost most of there leaves, cucumber vines had grown to the top of my 10ft trellis, and the mystery tree (maple) had grown to about 5ft tall.  

So as of the first of July,  I have harvested a ton of jalapeños, about 3 bowls of various tomatoes (@ 10lbs), 5 zucchini, 3 straight eight cucumbers, and about a dozen bell and sweet peppers.  Not a bad season so far.  Thanks to the aboundance of rain this season, I have used very little city water.  I also think though that the rain drowned out most of my plants too.  

This year's homestead project has been my grapevine pergola.  It has taken me a few weeks to work on.  I just have a few little things left but it's pretty much done.  

I built a table and used some scape wood found on the curb to build three benches.  It's been a fun project.  

Lately I have been into growing fruit trees.  Here is a sapling of a mango tree I started from a grocery store mango. 

One of my three Bradford pear trees is producing fruit. 

If you haven't started your own garden it's not to late.  Get those beds ready for a fall garden or even plant a tomato plant in a bucket. With our summer heat usually lasting until almost October, you still have time for a late summer harvest.  Either way, as I always like to say..... Happy gardening and Get Dirty!

First produce of the season

The benefits of watering your garden with pure natural rain.  

The radishes are looking good and tasting even better.   With a nice bite to them, they have been the perfect addition to a real "garden" salad with the butter Bibb lettuce that is still growing from the fall.

Some jalapeños and Aladdin peppers are here thanks to the bountiful rain we have been blessed with for the past week.  For cast predicts two more weeks of rain which is wonderful for the garden but even better for my watering expenses.  

Tomato plants are a good three feet high and have several green fruits on them.  Maybe in a week or two some will be ready for picking.  Can't wait to make some roasted green salsa.  

The beets from the fall are likely as big as softballs, but can't decide what to do with them.  Roast them and put them on a salad and pickle the rest.  May try eating the greens as chips or sauted.  

Transplanted mint is doing well, but the cilantro and basil are not. I think the zucchini plants and tomato plants are blocking out to much sun for them.  Will just have to wait and see.  

The mystery tree is growing rapidly. The leaves look like a maple tree.  Need to do some research soon to see if it's a tree I want to keep.  The only trees I like are ines that give me something to eat.  Speaking of trees, the peach tree has a a couple of fruits on it already.  

Picked up a fig tree thanks to a student who gave me a gift card to Natural Gardeners.  Planted it in my new butterfly garden beside the future pergola.  

I finally got the three pergola post in the ground and planted three of the five grape plants beside them.   Not sure where to put the remaining two vines.  One of the ground vines as tiny little grapes on it.  Can't wait for it to grow and cover the future pergola where we can sit, enjoy the weather and view, and share a meal with family and friends. 

On another note, just returned from a trip to Boston where a visit to Fenway Park , I got to see a rooftop garden in person.  It was pretty cool. 

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!