A Month Earlier than last year.

Well I borrowed a tiller from my wife's grandfather again, but did it more than a month earlier than last year. The grass is starting to green up here now but has yet to really start growing. I thought if I turned over the garden spot earlier I might be able to till again later in the year before planting the bulk of my veggies. Hopefully this will save me from a lot of the hand weeding that I had to do last year. Besides the work that goes into a garden anyway, I'm a full time student, I have a full time job and my daughter will be turning two in May. If left alone the two year old would be more than I could handle, but my wife is my greatest support! She works days and I work evenings so we don't have to pay for day care. Rambling rambling, it's a lot of work is the point.

I didn't take pictures today, but I'll edit this post later to add them when I get 'em.

I had read on the Texas A&M horticulture website that if you are left in the spring with a pile of leaves that have not been properly composted they make a fine soil treatment simply raked out across the garden and plowed under. I am trying this idea this year and I was amazed to see all those leaves disappear. I had a pile that I would guess could have easily filled 20+ trash bags, and I spread them over my spot which is 16' X 45' and I can barely see them now.

well I have high hopes for the garden and I've added a number of new plants and ideas, but I will have even less time to make it happen so hopefully I'm able to work smarter not harder.

Bushes and Grapes

Got out in the wet sloppy mud today, I wish I had the Garden tilled under already, but no such luck with this unusually wet winter we're having in North Texas. I decided to try my hand at a few new things this year and they needed to be in the ground, so I planted 2 blueberry bushes and 6 black berry, along with 2 grapevines. I plan to build an arbor for the grapes but I have a bit of time to get it done.

I had heard that Blue Berries liked acidic soil, but for a lack of peat moss, I dug my holes about 4 times bigger than I needed and turned leaves into the soil that I raked up over the yard back in the fall. If the weather was nicer I would have taken pictures of the whole process, sadly I didn't. I did take one before picture however, but I don't have it up yet. I hope to keep up with the blog a bit better this year than last... we'll just have to see.

Survival = Success

Well After many trials this year I feel confident that the plants that have survived to this point will bear fruit of some kind. For my First attempt at gardening I feel that any success will be very very rewarding for me. Most everything has now been in the ground for nearly 3 months, except the tomatoes that had to be replaced after a late frost.


You can see in the foreground of this first picture my raised beds which I made from 2x6 for my strawberries. But have been primarily used for compost so far.

The garden did not suffer much from the flood. I plan to plant my onions from sets next year instead of seed, or start them much earlier inside. I'm not too sure what the best course of action will be, I'm very disappointed in them this year as only a small handful seem to have made it this far. I've been away on a trip to Missouri so you wouldn't be able to find them for the weeds in a picture so I didn't snap one.

Here are some little bean plants struggling through the weeds, you can see how dry it was while I was away.


I had nothing on my tomatoes when I left but when I came back I had a few tomatoes! Four days made all the difference.



My Carrots are hopefully growing as well bellow ground as they are above ground. Refer to first picture of the whole garden as I've misplaced the one I edited to go here.

My lettuce continues to impress me. We have eaten many salads off this crop now and have given some away to friends and family

FLOOD

It's the day after we had a flash flood run through Gainesville.

I had to leave my car at work and drive a truck home the water over the street was over the headlights, on more than one occasion the water pushed the truck sideways a little bit but I was able to keep it on the road. When I got home, I live on the higher side of town and there was not but about 8-9 inches in the streets in my neighborhood. Unfortunately there is no curb in the ally that runs behind my back yard and I had 8-9 inches over my garden as well.
You can see the raised beds that I put in for the strawberries in the middle of the yard.. they are aligned with the left end of the garden. Directly above them you can see the rows of carrot tops and lettuce, but that big area to the right of them is submerged beans, onions and jalapenos! I have not mowed in two weeks so what looks like dry ground is really just where the grass sticks up above the water. My whole yard was standing or running water last night.

It was pretty dark and my camera tried to focus on the rain drops instead of the yard, but I took a couple pictures from the back door. I hope everything dries out and comes back up. The forecast has rain in it four of the next five days. I suppose I will be saving money on my water bill, I hope it's as much as the plants I'll have to replace cost me 8)

First Salad

Well here we are April 23 and I took the thinning of my lettuce crop inside today and whipped up a delicious salad for my wife and I. It's been a while sense I planted my seed, but I consider lettuce a total success it was delicious and I know it will only get better and better as the season goes on and I'm able to add more ingredients from my very own, very first garden.

Salad:

• 1. Bowl of lettuce from the garden
• 1. Can of chunk chicken breast
• 3. Slices of bacon (torn to bits)
  
• 1/2 cup. Cheddar Cheese
• 2. Hard Boiled eggs
• Small Can of Sliced Olives
• Carrots (peelings)
• 1/2 cup. steamed broccoli
• 1/4 cup. chopped onion

Topped with croutons and ranch dressing, served with garlic toasted french bread. This was a very filling meal for the two of us.

I have a tendency to believe that the reason this salad was so good to me is all the work that went into this tiny harvest, All the ups and downs and the rewarding nature of what I always thought of as a "simple hobby." If I only get one more salad this summer I feel like my efforts were well spent.

Couple of links

I just wanted to throw these links out there, because I use them all the time.

TheEasyGarden - Gardening Forum
Sister site to BackYardChickens Forum
Chickens have become my interest hobby, because study them all the time, but don't have any.

Helpful Gardener Garden Forum - A friendly place to chat about gardening.
Very helpful place, very informative people.
There is a section here dedicated entirely to tomatoes!

Late Frost! but I know an easy fix

Well I've lost every single one of my tomatoes that I planted from seeds due to a late frost. I think if I had allowed them to spend more time inside before plunking them into the garden they would have had a much better chance of success. I also did not harden them at all, so there was a bit of shock for the plants anyway.

Never the less I managed to save about 60% of my Bell and Jalapeno peppers and I'm thrilled about that. Yesterday while driving home from work I couldn't resist stopping at the nursery to see if they had some tomatoes, and price some Paving stones for a patio project that's in the back of our minds.

Jalapeno ^











Bell >



I bought six Big Boy tomato plants and three strawberry plants, Camille helped me put the tomatoes in the ground this morning (we are expecting rain tonight) but the strawberries are still on the table. I'm not too sure how or where we are going to plant them, because we plan to completely redesign the garden area before next year and we don't want to just have them coming up where ever they want in the yard.

You can see I put twigs around my Tomatoes to help shelter these little plants from the rain and wind of the upcoming storms.

So that's the update and the lesson is; Harden your plants and make sure they are mature enough to handle the elements before you sacrifice them to ignorance.

In the foreground of this picture of my garden you can see my potato cages, I don't know how this is going to work out, but I'm hoping to grow only a few Russets and Reds. More importantly, however is my helper in the back of the picture she's making sure I get some good shots for the blog.

I took a few pictures today just to give updates on things, the front flower bed is starting to show signs of life!


The grass I sewed is coming up in all kinds of random areas, just not around the patio where we really wanted it to.
Thanks for reading along I'll be sure to update again if anything comes up.