Texas Hill Country Garden

First thing to say here is that the weather this year has been unusual and wonderful. We have had a mild and rainy spring. Wildflowers, veggies and fruit are all doing great. I love this weather!

Below is a pic of our first 3 harvests. It is never this good. No squash vine borer! What?

Also, the table in the pic below is not only great for sitting and enjoying the day. But it is also great for washing veggies. Acts like a giant colander. I just love when things work out like that.

Before and after pics. Squash casserole, made with onion, squash and zucchini from the garden. Recipe is from a good friend.

This next dish is called Calabacita. It is a Mexican dish made with pork, squash, onions, tomatoes and corn.

Here are some pics of veggies on the vine. This rain and mild weather has been incredible!

With all of the rain we have been getting, the vegetables are overgrown

Melons are so cute when they start to form

Carrots – Nantez and a couple of purple ones are coming along. Instead of harvesting all at once, I’m going to harvest a few at a time

I won a pot of annual flowers at a gardening event. Two months later it still looks great. I’ve never really grown annuals. I’m saving this pic and will see if I can reproduce it next year. I’m impressed by the longevity and persistent color. The pic on the left is the pot in May. The right is March.

Here are a couple of annuals I plant…zinnias and fireworks gomphrena. They can take the heat and bloom all year, from April to frost

What is happening in May? With all of this rain and mild weather everything is blooming in May. Sitting outside and listening to the bees and birds, seeing butterflies flitting about, watching lizards and their babies scurrying around. You can really see God everywhere you look. Blessed.

Just when the Climbing blush rose and Anacacho Orchid tree have finished blooming, the Texas Pride of Barbados starts it’s lovely show. It only blooms about 3 weeks in May and if we are lucky, again in June…not nearly as long as it’s orange cousin…but it is more cold hardy and we need that here in the hill country. Cute little purple heart plant underneath with dainty little flowers makes me smile.

Bee balm came back this year like a champ. Hummers love this plant.

Lemon mint stole the show this year. I’ve scattered lemon mint seed in the past, but this year I think every seed I scattered took root. I think the rain washed it into other locations too. This is an inexpensive seed compared to bluebonnet seeds. Plus ten points for that!

Rock rose

Gregg’s Mistflower – a butterfly magnet

Yarrow. A good friend bought this plant so I bought one too. lol. It did not disappoint. Wow.

Rue – all parts of this plant are poisonous. Such a pretty blue gray color and tough as nails. Black swallow tail butterfly lays it’s eggs on this one and it can take it. Propagates easily from seed. This one is a volunteer.

Here are the tiny seedlings in 4 inch pots towards the end of March. I gave one to a friend and planted the other. Tiny but they are tough and were so easy to grow.

May is also when the Crawford lettuce seeds are finally fully formed and ready to put up until it is time to plant again in the fall/winter. Here is what the seed heads look like. I just cut off the ends and shove them into brown paper bags. Been doing this for the last 4ish years. Works great!
Note: The top two pics are ready to collect. The bottom two are what they look like while forming. The lettuce shoots up a tall stalk, flowers, then forms seeds that look similar to a small dandelion head. Bonus is that the bees love the flowers. Go pollinators!

Normally, we grow snow pea for the leaves. They are delicious sautéed with garlic. This year, I planted the seed around January 23rd.

On March 27th, it was just getting going. Growing it up a trellis is a good idea.

Here it is climbing the left hand side of the trellis. It is in full swing on April 21st

Normally we harvest for the leaves, and the plant has burned up from the heat by May. But because of the mild, wet weather we have had this year, the plant has produced snow peas and they are delicious. They were delicious eaten raw and added to other dishes.

Last picture is May1st. If you look at the first pic, you can see how versatile this plant is. You can eat the leaf, the snow pea….AND if you let the snow pea stay on the vine, you can break it open and eat peas. I have never had a fresh pea. They were delicious. Wow.

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Just a perfect April. Full of April showers. Everything is thriving. One good thing about the crazy hot dry year we had last year is that it makes you really appreciate the mild wet springs when we have them. Happy sigh.

Belinda’s Dream and Blush rose bloom first, then the Anacacho orchid tree joins in.

Scarlet or cedar sage

Red poppy

Sage – Mealy blue. These are beautiful and will bloom in the spring and if you cut them back in June, they will bloom again in July

Mexican sage will bloom until frost. No need to cut back. Love this one.

Agarita is teeming with fruit. I’ve never seen it like this before. I was not able to catch them when they turned red b/c the wildlife devoured them. The fruit is edible, but I leave them for the wildlife.

Coral hummingbird vine. Like the name implies, it is a hummingbird magnet. Have this in several locations and it easy to propagate in the fall

Just so much going on in April: Jerusalem sage, Mutabulis rose, bluebonnets. My cup runneth over.

Isn’t this neat? I thought these were some sort of lollypop flower? Googled and used plant identifier apps and could not find what this was. For a brief time, I thought I might have some sort of newly discovered wild flower. Turns out, this is the blanket flower after it loses it’s leaves. So interesting and beautiful.

I have a lot of irises. Some were given to me by friends. I got some at a plant exchange. Not all bloomed this year. Here are some pics:

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Lost one Texas Mulberry tree in the last freeze. Bummer. We have two potted Mulberries and one in a Hugel garden: 1 Pakistan and two Texas Mulberry trees. You know you have enough plants when you are tired of mulberries. I wish they had a longer season.

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You just have to take it all in. See God around you like your head is on fire.

With the mild spring, these pansies stayed looking great until May.

Spring veggies that is…First round of planting is done: juliet tomato, sweet 100 tomato, yellow pear tomato, sungold tomato, early girl tomato, multipic squash, zucchini, trombone squash, bitter melon and peppers. More to come still…

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While walking around checking on plants, snapped some pictures of real wildflowers that I did not plant. Some wildflower seeds I like to sow, like poppies and lemon mint, but these are the real deal.

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Pakistan Mulberry tree is starting to fruit. Love this tree and the fruit is so sweet.

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Fanicks pear blooming

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Seedlings are getting bigger. Need to work on my timing…Lost some fireworks gomphrena because Zinnias grew faster and shaded them out.

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One of the hardest parts of gardening is cutting everything back in the spring. I used to do this manually with hand tools. Now I use a battery operated hedge trimmer made by Dewalt. I use it to cut back many plants including sage, salvia, mist flower, turks cap, lemon grass and bamboo muhley. Saves a lot of time, but still a lot of work. Here is the garden after the trimming and cleanup.

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Here is what they look like after they sprout. Posting these pics so I can identify them in the future.

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Grimal Joboticaba – one day you will be covered in fruit.

We were blessed that we did not have a winter storm in 2022. Plants were able to have some much needed recovery from the big freeze of 2021. But 2023 gave us another opportunity for growth. This time it was ice, not snow. Lost power for three days. We feel so grateful that we have a fireplace. We made coffee and cooked using our camping equipment. We drained our plumbing lines so no busted pipes. 2021 taught us a lot. lol

It was also a very humbling experience. As we pulled out every blanket we owned and even bundled up our pets, we thought of those in Ukraine and other areas that are dealing with much colder weather…while at the same time dealing with war and food scarcity. Praying for all those in need.

Now with some perspective in check, here are some pics of the storm and the damage. As the ice began to melt, you could hear tree branches creaking and snapping as they broke off the trees.

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Frozen cilantro and lettuce that I probably should have covered

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Grateful and Blessed.

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Winter is one of my favorite seasons. It is cold, so hard work like composting and mulching are not as bad as doing it say in 90 degree heat. Winter veggies are great, like lettuce, cilantro, radish and broccoli

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Amaryllis blooms. Here it is in the makeshift “greenhouse”, which is a screened in porch we use to over-winter some of our potted plants

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Time to start spring seeds. Next year, I will be more careful about spacing. I planted zinnia seeds next to fireworks gomphrena seeds. The zinnias grew faster and shaded the gomphrena, reducing success rate…still had plenty for myself and lots to give away.

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Loquat blooms and we all hope there will not be a late freeze that aborts the fruit

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This little feller was hanging out in the overflow pipe of our rain tank. Adorable.

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Need less plants. In my defense, I have a couple of trees I did not plant this year due to the extreme heat and drought…Also, I propagated some plants and now have to overwinter them.

…but the good news is they are now all tucked in. In the winter we turn our screened in porch into a greenhouse by putting up 6 mil plastic. Every year we learn a little more about how to secure it. LOL. The first year we used a thousand staples and it did not work well. The plastic pulled away because of high winds and it took a looong time to remove all of the staples the following spring.

Now we use a combination of wires and staples. Getting better…but have some ideas for next year…

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So much blooming this November. This is a real treat. Some years we have had a hard freeze by now and there are no blooms. This is a nice change, especially after the brutal hot, dry spring/summer we had.

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