It is that time of year and I love it. Time to plant seeds for Fall/Winter veggies and herbs. Experts don’t know if it will be cold or not, but they do think it will be dry…So, we are going to do an abbreviated garden: Romaine lettuce, Crawford lettuce, radish, Chinese broccoli and cilantro.
Planted all on 10/31. Watered every day with rain water. Lettuce, broccoli and radish sprouted on 11/3. Cilantro on 11/11. I am always amazed by the sprouting of a seed. It is really a miracle
Last year was the first year that our Moringa trees produced seed pods, but it was late in the year and was not sure if they matured completely before we had to bring them in for the winter… This year I know they did. They dried up and even split open while still attached to the tree. Can’t wait to try to sprout them next year.
Where has the time gone? We are already in November? So much to do. I said that if my plumeria did not bloom this year I was going to give up on it. Well, it bloomed (see post about it on July 17) so now I have to figure out what to do with it this winter. Not cold hearty at all and it is 6 feet tall.
This plant was given to me by a friend from work. I asked him and he said that I can prune it and replant the pieces in the spring. I’ll need to let the cutting dry out a bit and store in the shade in the garage. I did a bit of googling and jumped in. Here are the results. After letting the cuttings dry out, I put them in a cardboard box in the garage.
Here are the before and after photos. One unexpected surprise was that the pot was full of ants. I like ants. They eat chiggers. So I pruned the plant and removed all the leaves. Then I tipped the plant over on its side. In about two days, all of the ants abandoned the pot and I was able to safely remove the last two stems. I have no idea where they went.
Stihl GTA 26 – After the winter storm, we had a lot of winter damage to trim, a lot of dead branches on otherwise healthy bushes and trees. I have always used a large ratcheting pruner for small branches, but dead branches do not cut easily with pruners….and the hard work was taking a toll. Enter the Stihl GTA 26. It is a very small chainsaw, that will cut a 3 inch diameter branch like butter. Game changer. I do not work for Stihl, but if you do a lot of gardening, you need this tool. Ours came with two batteries, another must.
This part is hard. Pepper plants are perfectly healthy in October. They have rebounded since we have gotten some decent rain. Rain barrels are full, so they have even gotten some supplemental water. But it is time to pull them now at the end of October. We normally have our first freeze in November and any new fruit will not have time to grow up before then. Here is a pic or our last two harvests: jalapeno and chili pequin. Can you see the man with a beard in the photo on the right?
Note: These peppers are super hot, due to the drought and high temperatures.
Now that we have had a bit of rain, the garden is rebounding somewhat. Does not look great, but this may be as good as it gets this year. This is the driest summer I can remember since we moved here. I hope we start to get some regular rain. Rain tanks have water in them so we can go back to providing some supplemental water during dry spells. It was humbling to run out of rain water this year. One day I hope to get a really big tank, but for now, counting my blessing that we can capture some rain.
It is funny. We have a variety of birds that come to our feeders. Cardinals, titmouse, wrens, doves…But today, opening day of dove season, our feeders were full of doves and only doves…You’re safe here little fellers…
Well we finally got some rain. The last real rain we had was back in April. It finally rained once in July and now two times in August! We got close a couple other times, but it just missed us. I hope the drought is behind us.
Now that we have rain in our tanks again, we decided to mount our water hose. I love this. Our hose was always getting hung up on rocks and coiling up 100 feet of hose is a workout. It is the simple things in life that make me sooo happy! And it has a light on top! Here is a pic
Someone pruned my La Feliciana peach tree for me this year. Note, if you do not prune enough, your peaches will be very small. You know how the part of the peach closest to the pit, kind of tastes like pit. Well, that was the whole peach because they were so tiny….The drought did not help either. But that’s ok. There’s always next year. lol. You live and you learn.
A friend gave this to me 3 years ago. This is the first year it bloomed. I have never grown tropicals before. There is a learning curve. Much different than natives.
With the drought, we stopped watering all plants once we ran out of rainwater. But we still put out water for the wildlife. It was so nice to see on Next Door that we had neighbors who were doing the same. I love nature.
Aside from deer, here are a few interesting visitors…
A hawk!
A painted bunting! I saw one at our bird feeder about 10 years ago, and never since. You have to look closely to see him.
Woodpecker, Squirrel and a cardinal
Rain tank is finally installed. Now we desperately need some rain…
I did not plant enough okra this year…or I have not kept up with picking them before they get hard and woody. But we eat what we pick…okra and bean sprouts yum
Waving the white flag. I cannot justify watering plants when we have gone this long without rain. Like I said in a previous post, we have been watering following the motto of “survive not thrive”, but it still feels like too much. I’ve seen on Next door that there are people in my neighborhood whose wells are dry. Praying for rain.
Her is a last look at things as we go into stage 3 like restrictions, which is no watering at all.
Moringa beans!
More flowers and veggies. These veggies are going to get pulled early. Peppers, Armenian Cucumbers, and marigold can take the heat. Eggplant doing good too.
Armenian cucumber
Dragon fruit looking sad and hot
Moringa bean
Pakistani mulberry trying to produce a berry in July.
Rosemary and Chinese spinach can take the heat, but spinach needs too much water
Pear tomoto
Cherry tomato
Eggblant
Flowers: Zinnias and fireworks gomphrena can take the heat but need too much water. Coneflowers are suffering unless they get some water.
Here are some trees that I wanted to plant this spring: plum, jujubes, Asian pear and fig. I’m glad I did not get around to it, because they surely would have died. I read that if you hill them in, they will not need much water. Hope so.
One good thing has come from this. I have a better feel for what plants can handle real drought. I plant to make some changes over time so that our garden is more drought tolerant.
Another good thing is that we are now even more committed to getting/using more rain catching.
June – Everything is in full swing…but it is really hot and dry
June has been really hot, like August hot. Rain has also been sparse. We normally call July and August “survive not thrive” time. That is because towards the end of July and all of August is generally very hot. Plants have already given us their best show and start to get hot and tired. On top of that, we don’t want to waste water, so we water just enough to keep everything alive. It usually does not look great, but that is what July and August are in Texas.
Well, this year, “survive not thrive” started in June. No real rain in April or May. Unusually warm spring/summer. It makes me wonder why we chose to settle in Texas. lol
Here are some of the critters beating the heat:
Datura is a beautiful plant. Last fall, I started some from seed. Collected the seeds before the pods dried out. Three plants total. Overwintered on our porch and they bloomed. This plant is ranked easy to propagate.
Lemon Mint and Coneflower. My favorites.
From the garden. In this heat, there has not been a lot of harvest. Peaches were very small, tomatoes are small and somewhat thick skinned. I’ve only had one cantaloupe and I found it hiding in the shade between two planters. It was delicious though. Maybe the best cantaloupe I’ve ever had!
I picked Oregano and Mint. It completely dried outside in 1 day. So hot.
Now there will be rain water in the front and back. Everything will be able to have rain water. Plants love rain water. Vegetables love rain water. Blessed.
