Excuse Me, Please

A Gold-Laced Wyandotte caught in action

We finally find our first blue-green egg, which means an Ameraucana is laying, too!

If You Were a Squash, Which One Would You Be?

As we transplanted our squash seedlings into bigger pots, we lost track of which type was which. We started 4 varieties: Yellow Squash, Zucchini Squash, Butternut Squash, and Acorn Squash. Today we took a closer look at the characteristics of the plants to see if we could group together those that were alike. This is what we determined:

Summer Squashes:

Yellow Squash - has a more yellow look overall with brighter green leaves and lighter green/yellow veins.

Zucchini Squash - longer, thinner leaves with less fuzz. Veins radiate out from the stem with less distinct crossing veins.

Winter Squashes:

Acorn Squash - very distinct contrast between leaves and veins, reminds us of the distinct lobes of the mature vegetable

Butternut Squash - much more fuzzy (pubescent) which gives the plant a whiter look (like winter snow)

Nature's Miracle at Work

The warm weather has plants popping up both out in the garden and in our seed trays that we move outside during the day to take advantage of the warm, strong sunshine.

The thrill of life in the seed trays:

Seed trays enjoying the lovely sunshine

Blondcopchen Tomatoes, a variety given to us by a family member! Already showing their first true leaves.

Rosso Sicilian Tomato, another gifted variety

Sun Gold Tomatoes

Cubanelle Peppers, cotyledons looks like those of tomatoes and eggplant.

Cucumber with shiny leaves

Squash, the biggest sprouts of all - they already required bigger pots.

  New life out in the garden:

garlic

Asparagus just beginning to emerge (purplish bulb on the left)

An asparagus that is already growing well

A broccoli or cauliflower, we lost track of which one it is

Peaking through the primrose jasmine arbor as it begins to bloom

Primrose jasmine flower

Sandy likes her lips in anticipation of all the good food to come!

Wildflower Meadow

Last November, we made another drastic change to the yard. By hand, we spent about a week raking and maddocking all the mostly dead St. Augustine grass off the leach field, a little over 1,000 sq ft of area. After removing all the plant material and loosening the soil in the process, we raked the soil level. Finally, we scattered both native grass and wildflower seeds. We had to water it a few times during the hot dry weather to get the seed going, but we have been fortunate to get enough rain showers this winter to keep things moist. A green haze is finally covering the bare soil so we went out to investigate what has come up.
So far we have found:

Spurred Snapdragon

Baby Blue Eyes

Bachelor's Button

Bluebonnet

California Poppy

Corn Poppy

Dwarf Red Plains Coreopsis

Indian Blanket

Ox-Eye Daisy

Rocket Larkspur

We are still figuring out how to identify the grasses without mature seed heads. I'm not completely sure that the grasses have even germinated yet. It may just be weeds so far as the grass seed prefers warm spring weather to germinate.

Diving In To the Cool(?) Season Garden

We have been so fortunate to be able to take in a lot of the beautiful, unusually mild winter weather out in the garden. During the holidays, we were able to sit down and "finalize" our design for the backyard. The truth is that we've already made some adjustments on site as we implement the plan, but it's exciting to have an overarching idea in mind. One of these days I'll sit down and draw up an illustrative of the design but for now, we'll show pictures of the design coming to life!

Because we are dealing with a large space that needs lots of soil amendments (compost), we are taking it a bit at a time. We focused our attention on the creation of one bed. It has become a test plot of sorts, as we discover road bumps and test solutions.

Our basic methodology for construction was to dig out the good topsoil (2-4 inches) out of the two foot wide paths. Then the mulch we had stockpiled was laid down for the path. After using a maddock to loosen the garden bed area, the dug out path soil was transferred onto the bed to create a raised bed. Benefits include a greater depth of loosened soil with greater air space for holding water and allowing roots to more easily grow. The paths ringing this bed go to the chicken coop and the compost area, two important destinations to have easy access to. After lightly mixing in 3" of compost from our favorite local organic plant nursery, we laid out the all important irrigation hoses. Then it was time for planting! Despite the warm (but beautiful) weather, we are hoping to take advantage of the tail-end of the cool weather planting season to plant some great veggies. We direct seeded root crops such as radishes, carrots, and beets as well as lettuce. We also transplanted lots of onion, cabbage, broccoli, and swiss chard that we had started in seed trays in December.

Bed Number 1 ready to be planted! A narrow path winds into the interior of the bed to ensure most of the soil is within easy planting and maintenance reach.

 Compost added to the tiered beds

 Adjusting the leaf mulch around the central persimmon tree. It is intentionally hard to reach because we don't want to disturb the soil around it too much as we replant our veggie crops. But as the canopy grows, we hope to be able to reach the yummy fruit!

Grow, seeds! Grow!

First round of seeding done. We'll do a second batch of seeds in a week to space out harvest times.

All our planting for this year will be focused in the first bed as well as the existing stone terrace beds. The other beds in the yard that had been started as we dug paths were not amended with compost. Instead, we are seeding hairy vetch as a green manure. This Fabaceae family plant will improve the soil by shading it and fixing nitrogen until we are ready to take the bed to the planting stage.

Planting the green manure seeds.

Can't Wait for Fall...In Several Years

December 28th was a very big day for us in several ways. After discovering our first egg, we also discovered the delivery of our oriental persimmon trees (Great Wall, Saijo, and Eureka) and blackberry vines (Womack). We had done some prep work, such as choosing planting locations and beginning to dig planting holes ahead of our new arrivals. We hoped for a smooth and quick planting in order to minimize the exposure of our bare-rooted trees. We were not destined to be fully prepared however, as several holes remained un-dug when the plants arrived. We ordered our plants from Womack Nursery, near Dallas, because our research into oriental persimmons led to our desire for Diospyros virginiana rootstock. Unpacking the trees, we discovered the inclusion of a fourth tree!

Although this meant the digging of yet another hole - hard work here in limestone country as this photo shows - we can't wait for even more fruit...in several years.

Two of the trees were planted in the front/side yard. We intend to link the persimmon and an oak with a bed for the thorned blackberries, which the deer won't eat. In this location, a bit of our edible landscaping will be visible for the neighborhood!

Here is the Great Wall Persimmon planted to lineup with the chicken coop door.

We ran into a little trouble planting the Eureka in the backyard where an existing sprinkler system is located. We discovered our initial planting site was right on top of a PVC line. We broke the pipe during digging and spent several days digging more of the pipe out to locate its path. Finally, we decided to patch the break and move the tree over several feet. At last, all four trees were planted. Grow happy and healthy little trees! Now it's on to homing the blackberries.

More Freedom Through Enclosure?

The number of steps requiring completion before planting can begin are ticking down. A big step was completing our fence. Our very first post discussed the vernacular Texas fence construction techniques that we hoped to reference in our design. We had just enough branches saved up from trimming around the property to use as posts! 5 foot tall, 4"x2" hardware cloth was tied to each post, spaced about 10' on center. Aluminum wire was strung at 6' and 8' above the ground to protect against jumping deer. The openness of the hardware cloth allows us to maintain a visual connection to our neighbors.

 We utilized some of the overgrown primrose jasmine to create an arbor at one entrance.

 Gates that can easily be pulled open were created from 7' tall plastic deer fencing with 1" openings. Here we are permanently securing one end to a post. The other end was wrapped around a bamboo pole which can be secured to the other post. As you can see (or not), the plastic fencing is very fine and hard to see. The second night we had it up, a deer actually ran into it, got tangled, and dragged the gate up the street.

 We promptly added strips of reflective tape to the gates and included tags from our newly planted persimmon trees, including this one, in the hopes of finally having a "great wall."