week in review 5-27

Things are picking up a little!

1. Peppers are still not ripe enough to have much flavor. I shouldn’t have picked the one I did, but I was desperate for a pepper. In that chartreuse condition, it didn’t make much of a contribution to the recipe and I should have left it alone.
2. Got my first Black Krim tomatoes. They kind of blend in with the countertop, but they are there on Thursday and Friday. The flavor is very mellow, not much acidity at all. I’m taking a couple of these plants to my dad, but don’t think they’re going to evoke memories of his childhood tomatoes. His happy recollections are mostly about the acid bite. They do make good BLTs, and one slice covers a whole piece of bread.
3. Still not enough green beans to do anything with except for a raw snack. These are all off of one vine, that I started very early. The other vines are not producing anything yet, but have lots of blossoms, so maybe starting really early is not the way to go. Already I’m pretty convinced that the pole beans are going to do better for me than bush.
4. Used the chard for an egg bake. Yummy.
5. All the squash plants are plagued with powdery mildew. This hasn’t been a problem in the past, but it’s been really humid this year. Need to find out if I can safely compost the mildewed leaves or if that will just preserve the spores for next year.
6. Grilled zucchini, stir-fried zucchini, zucchini casserole, and zucchini bread. The last one was a hit with the Spouse, but I’m too weak-willed to keep baked goods in the house…I could end up the size of said house very easily.

week in review

Started getting produce from the garden this week. I sure hope the green beans pick up. Never have had good luck with the green beans.

Los Veggies

Hey, Dad, check it out!

Veggies are in

Planting the southern peas today pretty much completes the planting of the veggie garden, except for some succession stuff.

Final layout:

And here’s a photo of how everything looks today, before the summer heat strikes.

I’m too hot and sweaty to write more right now.

veggies – 2012 edition

When you’re too stiff and sore to lift another shovelful, it’s time to put down the tools and go document what you’ve done. So here I am.

Not cleaned up yet but the grunt work is done. The deeper beds are the ones I had last year, and the green you see in one of them is mustard greens. This was my first winter garden, and I only had one crop. Will try some others this coming winter, as the Spouse does not like mustard greens. Those deeper beds also need their soil replenished, but that will get done a little bit at a time.

The shorter beds are brand new. Spouse bought the cedar for another purpose, but it was unacceptable, so it found its destiny as vegetable beds. Worked out good for me! Bonus: there’s a good chance of rain in tomorrow’s forecast.

Also for the record: here’s a diagram of what’s where. Clicking on the thumbnail should produce a larger, readable version. After I got the plan all plotted out in Excel, I realized I had left out the rosemary, which is in a pot just above the long herb bed. I am too lazy to go correct it now, but I hope I remember to include it in the updates. I love rosemary! Notice how much empty space there is left still to plan. The yellow areas represent the new beds. My vegetable area is doubled from last year!

first post of spring

Between last post and this, winter happened. It was a mild winter, but still not much to record. Spring, however, has gotten an early start and there has been lots of pruning activity going on. Also much clearing in the Forbidden Forest and I am stiff and sore today because of that!

There are gangs of robins that moved into the area this week like I’ve never seen before. We usually have a few robins come through in the spring, but I always figured that the DFW area was not on the approved robin itinerary. This week there have been flocks and flocks of big, fat birds! They have been eating well somewhere.

We have lived in this house 3 years now, and there are still surprises to be found. Some, like incomplete plumbing, were not pleasant. But look at this cute little iris! The flower is about 2 inches across. I did not plant this, and haven’t seen it before this year. I wonder what else might show up?

Roses began blooming the first week of February, so I had to hustle up and give them a mighty whack back before they got carried away.

Rose cuttings stuck last fall did well! I rustled cuttings from the unknown-maybe-gallica that has naturalized around the corner, and have three of those ready to go in the ground. And in the front rose bed, I took cuttings from the grafted roses that were growing there before digging them out. They also rooted well, so now I have many little own-root plants for myself and for my dad. He wants to have a rose bed and I’ll be taking some babies down to him next month.

Veggie Report: Mustard greens, bok choy, and broccoli raab seeded directly in the beds last November grew all through the winter and we are starting to get a little harvest from them now.

Another trip to the rose nursery….OR….Hope springs eternal

In spite of this summer’s abuse, and the promise of another year of the same, I had another trip to Chamblee’s Rose Nursery. Spent lots of time doing my homework, thinking of the view of the house from the street, unifying the home landscape, and coming up with lists of possibilities, only to be persuaded to abandon them all by a fragrance.

First off, I knew that I wanted four more bushes of Louis Philippe. That little rose has been just great throughout this summer. I planted enough for a short hedge last spring, along one short end of a long rectangle of concrete. Irises run down one long side, and the other long side has the italian cypresses interplanted with some annuals. I decided to place another Louis Philippe between each of the sypresses, which will give a little unity and formality to that area. It also means that area is DONE, except for slowly removing the irises that I don’t like and replacing with others that I do. I stuck to my plan in buying more Louis.

It’s the rose bed where I’m replacing the grafted Austin roses that caused me to do all the research homework. I had kind of decided that I wanted a crimson rose, same color as Louis, but with larger flowers for that area. I also curbed my “Why choose? Let’s have one of everything!!” tendencies and decided to plant that bed with just one variety. So I made lots of lists of roses that I thought would have the right color.

When I got to Chamblees, my first move was to check out their discount area where they have really good markdowns on varieties that they are discontinuing. There were a few reds in there, but none of them seemed just right. Still, I checked them all out, and smelled every variety that had a flower. One stood out…but I still needed to go through the full-price greenhouses to get my additional Louis plants and see the rest of the selection.

I looked at lots and lots of different roses, each with their own individual beauties, but the scent of the rose from the bargain bin stayed with me. Nothing else could distract me from that fragrance. So in the end I went back and picked up 3 of those smelly roses. They are Buck roses, so they should be tough, and the word on the internet is that they have a pretty constant bloom. Buck roses are meant to be good landscape plants, not prize-winners at rose shows.  I didn’t see any good photos on the internet of this particular rose, so I took these this morning.

The second photo shows how the darker pink is stippled over the lighter color. The light shade is still a medium pink – this is not a pastel colored rose. They are normally semi-double (my favorites) but I guess their petal count is down right now because of the heat. Louis is doing the same thing. And check out those stamens! I loves me some stamens. Note that I did at least limit myself to the single variety for this bed. Yay, me.

The fragrance that made me forsake all other roses and cleave only unto it is a distinct clove smell – that and the old damask scent are my favorites of all the rosey odors.

Made a couple of other impulse purchases…

This one is called Quietness, another Buck rose that is inspiring a lot of chatter on the rose boards and is reputed to have fantastic fragrance. There weren’t any blooms open on any of the plants yesterday, so this one is a gamble….and at full price, too!

Another one out of the bargain bin is Felicia, an old  hybrid musk. For some reason I’m thinking that hybrid musks would be good for naturalizing – I plan to do minimal pruning on these, just letting them pile up into big shrubs. This spring I got Prosperity for that purpose, and Felicia was planted over by her. Quietness and Felicia are both light pink roses, but the flowers of Felicia are smaller. She’s fragrant, too.

The garden chore list is long – there are lots of things I want to try making cuttings of this fall, some from plants in the garden I want to increase, some of native plants I’ve spotted elsewhere and want to try.  When it cools down a bit I’ll venture out with my nippers to gather materials.

Meditations on 2011

No photos…who needs pictures of drought-stressed plants?

60+ days of triple degree temperatures and record drought have tested the garden this year. Hasn’t helped that the record heat followed a winter of record cold. It has been hard on established plants and harder on ones that were planted in the spring. There were lots of things I relocated this spring to what I thought were better locations, but this would be a bad time to evaluate those decisions. Next year will be the time to review whatever has survived.

Lawn – The Spouse likes to have a lawn. I would prefer grass as a small defined area surrounded by shrubs and other plantings, but he likes an expansive lawn, and it fits in with the rest of the neighborhood, so we have one. Right now it is almost totally brown and crisp except for some areas that get shade. I hope we’ve kept it alive. Maybe I’ll show it our water bills so it knows how hard we’ve tried.

Ornamentals – after this summer, I know which flowering plants are going to be reliable no matter what. Three have stood out: Lantana, Russian Sage, Asclepias, and the Louis Phillipe rose. The butterfly garden, henceforth, will be built around the lantana and Russian Sage. The sad thing is, I haven’t seen butterflies this year. Maybe the caterpillars all dried out. The ruskie sage was the surprise. I only have one plant, but will be looking for more. Another surprise – today I found a decent-size beautyberry (too lazy to look up the proper name right now) growing by the area we call the Forbidden Forest. That’s not something I ever would have purchased, but it’s there, it’s a native, and it clearly has the will to win. It stays.

Roses – funny that the 1 gallon roses planted this spring fared better than the more expensive 3 gallon size. Hmmm. Louis Philippe has been such a champ, blooming constantly through the most awful conditions. Yes, it looks scraggly, but I wuv it. Been thinking of what new roses I am going to put in this fall, and am nearing a decision. Going shopping for them next Saturday, so more on that later.

replacement roses

Braved the heat this morning (must have been merely 95) to prune the roses in the front rose bed. They needed shaping badly and the trim also helps them put on a good fall show. Made a discovery as I was trimming – most of the gangly growth was suckering from the rootstock. It was thornless, but vigorous. Some of the canes were over 6 feet long.

This is one of the reasons that I really prefer roses grown on their own roots. It takes them a little longer to establish but there are no suckers, and if a really nasty freeze kills the top they can come back from the roots. Besides, I think the shape of the shrub on its own roots is nicer than grafted ones.

So…when it cools down this fall I want to replace them. There are 3, and they fill the space perfectly. So I know when, and I know how many. The only agony left is deciding which variety to put in their place. One problem with getting involved with roses is that if you have a speck of collector’s DNA, you are getting yourself in trouble. There are thousands of varieties and you have to battle the urge to try every one. If you have a hobby farm, you can get away with it. But if you’re trying to put together a pleasing home landscape, you have to battle your urges constantly. That’s the situation I’m in.

The ones getting the boot are all David Austin roses. One is Abraham Darby, which is a very favorite of mine. I haven’t been able to absolutely identify the other two, but the distinctive myrrh fragrance makes me think they are Austins, too. As much as I like Mr. Darby, he is apricot, and pink or red really looks better against the brick in this location.

This spring I planted some china roses by the gate and in another location in the front yard. Got myself to stick to only two varieties: Old Blush and Louis Philippe. More of either of those types would be a good choice – bringing a bit of unity to the yard. China roses are troopers. Louis Philippe has been blooming constantly throughout our incredible string of 100-degree-plus days. Another nice feature: they are almost evergreen. They wait till spring to drop their leaves and replace them immediately. Chinas are strong contenders for the job.

Another possibility is a tea rose – an old tea, not a hybrid tea. (There’s a cutting bed planned for hybrid teas that is still a couple of years out.) I get a kick out of growing the historic roses. Mrs. Dudley Cross would probably be my choice of the teas.

Mrs. Dudley Cross

Teas like this are evergreen like the chinas, and Mrs. Dudley is almost thornless which is nice. Some people say that this was the “yellow rose of Texas”, which makes a nice story. Teas only bloom spring and fall, but I could live with that.

Then there are the Griffith Buck roses. Dr. Buck developed these roses at Iowa State University to withstand extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. They are generating a lot of interest here. A Buck rose choice would be purely fun, and maybe worth a blog post or two.

My mind needs to be made up by about the middle of September in order to be able to buy replacements before the nursery closes its doors for the year. Meanwhile, I’ll give the condemned shrubs a last meal so they can go out in a blaze of glory.

Fall Planting

Cedarita of the future, here are your planting dates for fall veggies:

Tomatoes, pumpkins: early July

pepper and eggplant (transplants): mid-late July

corn, pole beans: mid-late July

squash, bush beans, cucumbers: August 1

cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower (transplants): mid-August

leaf and root vegetables: late August

Wish List for drought tolerance, Mary Beth recommends Cherokee Purple tomatoes

Other suggestions for veggies that take the summer heat: yard-long beans (but pick when 12-18 inches), tomatillo, Verde da Taglio chard, and okra. I don’t cook much with okra, but in a post-apocalyptic food shortage it would be good to have.