Homemade tomato cages

Week 5, Day 28: April 17

So my attempt to crowd in my tomatoes this year like my brother did last year has me wondering.  There were a few of them that were being overshadowed, so I had to transplant them to an open area.  With the remaining ones, I decided to make a grid of sorts to help keep the tomato plants growing upward and not intertwining with each other.  I used some 36" stakes and some jute cord to create a grid pattern.  Hopefully this will work, only time will tell though.  I have used tomato cages in the past, but its been a 50/50 success.  Most of the tomato plants either grow to tall or the branches break off from the cages.

The potatoes continue to grow, so I planted a few more spuds in the front of the bed a few days ago.  You can see a few little shoots.  Funny too, is that I have noticed a few baby shoots of basil pop up in the potato box and with the Lima beans.

 The peppers are getting a little bit more growth to  them along with the onions in the back.  The kale "tree" has been my longest success to date.  That thing just won't give up.   In the lower left side of the box, you can see a few leaves sprouting from the rhubarb that I had planted about 4 weeks ago.  I wanted to experiment more with some perennials so this was my first.  I want to plant some artichokes and asparagus as soon as I find some to buy.

    

The zucchini now has some flowers on them and hopefully they will make their way to the trellis behind them.  I will most likely have to force them since the sun will be out in front of them.

The new 8x8 bed has had the least amount of new growth.  Mainly because everything was planted about two weeks later than the other beds and I hadn't set up a irrigation system for this one until today.  The 4 4x4 beds have two soaker hoses on them so allow for deeper root absorption and less water evaporation.  As you can see in this pic, I had a soaker hose but upon turning it on, found that it had a hole in it and wasn't quite effective.  So for now, I will be using a simple fountain style  sprinkler, early in the mornings.

 

Get dirty and keep on gardening!

Off to a good start

Week 4, Day 21: April 9

Finally finished the new 8x8 bed.  Planted some cucumbers, peppers, and a few different beans and peas.  This is my first attempt at the peas and beans.  I have always grown them with my students in school but never once thought to actually grow some in my own garden.

 

The potatoes are beginning to sprout and the tomatoes are gaining some height.  For the zucchini boxes, I had to saw off where the old trellis was and reposition it to the back of the raised bed.  Its a little shorter than last time, but I think it will still work.  

Spring has Sprung

Week 1, Day 1: March 20

After failing at my first attempt of a fall garden this past year, the garden received a much needed vacation.  We did however continue to get plenty of kale, cilantro, and scallions throughout the winter, even with several days below freezing and some mornings of frost.

Spring Break is usually my first opportunity to get things started and this year I have decide to expand my little backyard urban farm.  In addition to my existing 4 four by four raised beds, I have added some 8x8ft tilled ground areas.

 The back bed is ready... tilled soil with compost and to loosen up this central Texas rocky soil.  The front bed still needs to be tackled, but am going to wait until I have an idea of what I want to plant in it.   Another reason I had the urge to expand was that my backyard neighbor also expanded his garden. 

Over the break, I also reconstructed my leaf compost bin with some pallets to make 2 storage areas.  They don't look to shabby either.

So what did I plant this year...
Well I visited several of the local nurseries to see what was out and prices of each.  I ended up purchasing several from pretty much all of the nurseries, mainly to do a comparison between them to see which one will yield the best crops.

Seedlings:
Peppers: 6 Camelot green peppers, 6 Aladdin sweet peppers, 
Tomatoes: 6 Brandywine,  6 Phoenix, 6 Red Cherry Large, 6 Super Fantastic,
Onions: bunch of white and red
Vines: 2 zucchini, 2 cucumbers

Roots:
2 rhubarbs
@10 potatoes

Seeds:
Lettuce: Romaine, Bibb, Black Seeded Simpson
Melon: Honeydew
Pepper: Red Bell
Peas: Sugar, Green, Snap, Green Beans
and an some unknown seed.

This will be my first time to plant peas and beans.  Currently I have some round tomato cages for the vines to grow up on, but will eventually create some tripods with some cane poles.

I have plans to build a folding panel for the cucumbers and zucchini to grow on, lifting them off the ground that I found in Sean Conway's Cultivating Life book.  Not only will this help keep the fruit off the ground, but will also create a somewhat shady area beneath it to grow my lettuces.

As a precaution to Texas impending summer heatwave and drought, I wanted to come up with a better method for watering my garden.  In true luck fashion, as I was walking around my local Home Depot, I spotted several raised bed water irrigation systems on clearance for $14 a piece.  Each system will cover a 4x8 bed, so I picked up 4 of them just in case.  

I still have a little more room to plant some things so I will probably head back out this weekend to pick up a few more seedlings.  If anyone has any good ideas or suggestions, let me know.

Get dirty and keep on gardening!

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!