The State of My Garden

In a word...scary.  Seriously.  Take a look.  Would you want to walk in here?

I certainly haven't wanted to in quite some time and it shows.  I'm afraid of what I might scare up.  I startled a little bunny rabbit last week and I also saw a beautiful Western garner snake.  But I'm not sure what other sinister critters may be hiding out in this mess.  I only have one garden bed that is still growing stuff and that's my sweet potato bed.  And I peeked in there a couple of days ago and oh my goodness, will I have sweet potatoes!  But that's for another post :)

The current state of my garden is also very embarrassing for me.  I have Never.Ever. let my garden get so overgrown and messy.  I still can't believe it looks so bad.  But this summer, it has just been too darn hot to get out there and work it.  And it still is.  It was 99 degrees yesterday...and it's the end of September for crying out loud!

Anyway, I have been procrastinating long enough.  It's time I did something to clean up this mess and get my garden back!  And I've also done something else I've never done before concerning my garden.  I actually hired a crew to clean it out.

It pains me to admit this.  I've always taken great pride in my garden, in how productive and beautiful it is (usually), and in doing all the work myself.  But I finally admitted to myself that I needed help.  And look what they've done!

They cleaned out all the beds

mowed all the weeds down to the ground,  laid a weed mat around the entire garden floor and put down a 6-inch layer of mulch, turned over all the soil in all the beds and spread a bag and half of compost I had laying around.  I was out there yesterday morning before they finished the job and couldn't believe how much better it looked already!

Of course the puppies were very curious as to what this was all about...not to mention all these great new smells!  It was also a treat for them because my garden is usually off limits.

And see what it looks like now!  I have my beautiful garden queendom back! 

Many thanks to Mark and his crew for all their hard work!

Harry and I leave in a couple of days for two weeks in Paris and Holland.  When we get back, all I have to do is add some compost to a few beds and plant my fall and winter garden.  Yay!  I'm anxious to get back into my garden.  I've really missed it these past couple of months.  I'm also anxious to get back to blogging.  I've missed that and y'all too!  Of course, I probably lost a lot of you guys too during my lil break :/

Thank you all for your patience and encouraging words in my last two posts.  Hopefully, I will be back online by the middle of October.  Until then, bon voyage! :)

Gorgeous Compost

We gardeners get excited about the strangest things...like a pile of composted horse manure and pine shavings!  But seriously, only a gardener would think it's even remotely cool to write about something like this...much less post pictures...and then actually think people would care!  But look at this stuff...to a gardener, this is like gold!

My wonderful friend Shelly has a gorgeous mare named Izzy, short for Giselle. Shelly invited me out to the barn where she boards Izzy to pick up some manure compost for my garden.  I jumped at the chance!  Yesterday morning, I went out there and hauled back three big contractor bags full of this stuff.
 

It's been sitting in the hot sun for about six months and it is completely composted and the perfect mulch for my garden.  Yesterday afternoon I spread it on three of my beds and watered it thoroughly.  My beds look beautiful!

Maybe it will help my struggling peppers :/

 

And this stuff is full of good nutrients for my soil and is better than anything I can buy in a bag.  And the good thing is there is plenty more where this came from!

And here is the beautiful Izzy who helped contribute to this pile of organic love for my garden :)

 

 Thanks Shelly!

First Spring Planting-Onions

Yay!  Spring is almost here (well at least it is in South Texas)!   Although you'd never know it by today's weather...it's 25 degrees and freezing!  But it wasn't like that on Tuesday.  Tuesday was sunny, windy, but very warm.  The puppies were in puppy day care so it was a great day for me to prep a few of my garden beds and plant my onions!

My garden beds were in pretty good shape actually; but they did need some attention.  And I always add organic compost to each bed before I plant.  I've been using Lady Bug Soil Revitalizer for years and just love it.  It's completely organic, made locally (in Austin) and contains NO biosludge products.

First thing I did was rake away all the hay that was on top of the beds.  I put the hay on to insulate the soil somewhat and encourage worm production.  And it worked!  As I was turning over the dirt, I saw lots of worms...gotta love that!

 

  

I then dumped three bags of compost into each bed.  Now I only prepped three of my six beds on Tuesday because I won't need the others until later this spring.

I turned the dirt over and incorporated all that great compost into the soil and that was pretty much it.  Pretty simple process, really.  

Then I planted my onions.  These are Texas 1015Y...my favorite type of onion that I use in just about everything I cook. But I only bought one set...bad call.  I ran short and had to run out and get a 2nd set.  But by the time I got back home, the weather turned and it got very cold so I'll save planting the 2nd set till the weather warms up a bit, hopefully in a couple of days. 

When planting onions it is crucial to choose a site in full sun, ensuring your transplants get at least 8-10 hours of direct sun per day.  More is better.

My garden beds are rectangular (9' x 5') and so I plant my onions in rows, spacing each row about 6 inches apart.  What I did was create 4-inch deep furrows midway between the rows and spread a band of my favorite, well balanced organic fertilizer, Medina Growin Green Organic Fertilizer (you can get it at Amazon.com), in the bottom of each furrow--about 1 1/2 cups per row--then covered the row with soil.  This makes the fertilizer easily accessible to the roots of each plant as they grow.  I will continue to fertilize the bulbs every 2-3 weeks.

Onion sets are easy to plant and don't require the special attention that onion seeds do (won't ever plant onion seeds...no...no...no...not me...).  I just poked the sets into well worked soil so that the top of the set is level with soil surface...about an inch deep.  It's that's easy.

The care of onion sets is pretty straight forward:

• weed early and often
• don't overwater
• when the tips of the the foliage start to turn yellow, leave off watering.  This is a sign that the bulbs are maturing
• Fertilize young plants, but stop fertilizing about 5-7 weeks before the expected harvest date

Harvesting is easy too:

• pull young green onions if you want to use them for scallions
• watch for the plant tops to start to die back--a sure sign the bulbs are enlarging
• store in cold dry place

Last year my onion crop was great!  I hope this year is as good.  

I'm so happy to get my spring garden going!  The seeds I ordered should be here any day now and hopefully this weekend I'll be able to start some of my seedlings in the greenhouse.  I'll keep you posted :-)

Start of Fall Planting - Prepping Garden Beds

OK...the fence is built...now comes the real work, reconditioning the soil in all my beds so I can plant my fall garden.  Mind you, it's 103 degrees outside and I have to haul 15, 40 pound bags of compost around.  Hardly a task to get excited about.  But my husband and I have a couple of family events coming up that will take us out of town next week, and I *really* want to have the beds ready and seeds/seedlings planted before we leave.  So I have to suck it up and get to work...

I started very early this past Wednesday morning (the sun was barely up) and dumped three bags of compost in each of five beds.  The 6th bed is still producing beautiful peppers so I won't do anything with that bed just yet. 

Actually, the first thing I did was rake all the old mulch off the top of each bed and scatter it over the ground.  This mulch has served its purpose and it's time to replace it with fresh mulch. 

Then I dumped 3 bags of LadyBug Revitalizer Compost into each bed and tilled it in well.  That was an enormous amount of work and when I was done, I quit for the day.  I was out in the garden for about 4 1/2 hours and in this heat, that's enough.

And Friday morning, I finished the job.  I replaced all the soaker hoses in every one of my garden beds.  They (the soaker hoses) simply don't last very long.  The hot Texas sun just eats them up and if they last one season (summer or fall), I consider myself lucky.

After the soaker hoses were laid, I put 2 bags of mulch in each bed, spread it out and tada...done!

I tried a new mulch for my beds this fall.  It's made by LadyBug, a company in Austin that specializes in natural and organic products.  I love their stuff.  The mulch is called Sylvan Formula and it looks (and smells) amazing...like a forest!  It contains hardwood mulch, two kinds of composts, humate, molasses and cornmeal, among other things.  It sure was a lot easier dumping only 10 bags of mulch as opposed to hauling 90 wheelbarrels full from my cedar bark mulch pile!  Look at this beautiful stuff!

And tomorrow brings the fun stuff...I plant :)