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Icy wonderland and dead buds…

Well, we got lucky today. We missed the ice storm for the most part. Roads were pretty dry this morning, and so even though it was 28 degrees, it was safe. That’s the good part.

Now for the bad part.

I don’t mind winter. It’s just a problem here because we had summer last week. With our see-saw of temperatures – 82 on Friday and 35 yesterday — our plants get discombobulated.

And, so, many things are budding and blooming and thinking,

“Hey, this is nice — lookit that sun — shining on me. I think I will grow some tender shoot/sprouts/buds/leaves…Ahhhhhhh.”

Then the next week Mother Nature comes along with an icy winter storm and smacks them upside the head. It IS winter, after all.

Sigh. So, I think the things I covered are fine, and the perennials will all be fine, it’s just hard on them to go back and forth like that. But I know that those lemon buds are goners — and our lemon production suffered a serious set-back.

Much of the rest of the nation is snowed/iced in or without power, so we’re really lucky here to be safe and heated.

We’ll just make lemonade later in the year…

By Diana C. Kirby|2016-04-14T02:44:41-05:00January 28th, 2009|Blog, freeze, ice, lemons, Sharing Nature's Garden|0 Comments

BAD gardener, BAD, BAD gardener!

Boy – o – boy, am I ever in trouble.

Surely these are not my brand NEW Felcon pruners?

Surely I didn’t leave them outside overnight when we were surprised by a little mist coming out of the sky. Surely I learned something from my misuse of the previous pruners.
Or, maybe, NOT!

Bad gardener, bad, bad gardener.

So, this morning my first chore of the day is a date with the pruners and a brillo pad. Luckily, it worked and I begged their forgiveness as I scoured away and buffed and dried them.
So, yesterday we had mist and fog all day, not much moisture, but in our drought-stricken part of the country, we are happy for anything wet.

Drought conditions worsened significantly in the past week, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor map. Seventy-one percent of the state is now in some stage of drought, up from 58.3 percent last week.

A week ago the two worst drought designations — extreme and exceptional — covered 9.1 percent of the state. This week the two categories cover 15.1 percent of the state, with a circle near San Antonio and Austin widening in all directions.

Drought conditions in Texas are so bad cattle are keeling over in parched pastures and dying. Wildlife certainly have nothing to eat.

Makes me so glad I am feeding and watering our deer.

Today’s cold front is supposed to bring us freezing rain tonight, and we have ice warnings for the morning. We’ll deal, just as long as we do get some rain.

Our temps are dropping today from the 64 degrees we have right now to 39 by noon. So I put on my garden clogs and trekked out to cover some tender things in the garden.
Little hair-like sprouts from MSS’ of Zanthan Gardens‘ Larkspur. I suspect they’d be ok, but I don’t want to take a chance.
Here are my little seedlings getting a breath of warm, moist air in the greenhouse.
Here the lettuce seedlings and the amazing strawberries are glad to be prepared for the ice. I put down some plastic first – after elevating it with some chicken wire braces – and then put down a sheet.
These are happy radishes.
And these are the two still-living tomato plants that I tried to rip out last week. Gotta save them now!

I’m sure my Northern friends are laughing at all this fuss over a little cold rain, but wait, I’ll have you laughing even more tomorrow. Austin drivers are completely incapable of driving in mere rain, much less a little ice or snow. It’s actually comic the way the whole cit shuts down as if it’s Armageddon. (Having lived in Minnesota for 4 years, I know from cold and bad driving conditions, so I have permission to shake my head at my neighbors!)

Stay warm and dry and safe.

By Diana C. Kirby|2017-11-29T23:27:50-06:00January 27th, 2009|Blog, cover, drought, ice, seedlings, Sharing Nature's Garden|17 Comments

Unbelievable…just unbelievable…

Central Texas weather is schizophrenic — one minute it’s cold and windy and miserable, and the next it’s 80+ degrees.

So, on our 82-degree day last Thursday, I went out to the garden, geared up for a work day. The plan: Rip out the 6-7 foot tall dead tomato towers that the recent freezes destroyed.

Don’t they look ugly?

I thought so, so I started the laborious process of nipping away at the dead stuff. (With my new Felco pruners, that worked like a charm.) I got two plants stuffed into the trash can and started on the third. Got about the top 3-4 feet whittled away, when what to my wondering eyes should appear?

Green.

See it? Yep – those big stalks were green and juicy down close to the ground. Unbelieveable. Even in Texas. We’ve had several freezes, I didn’t cover these guys, yet here they are, with a zest for life.

Then I went on to the next plant, and found — LEAVES! Real, green leaves, way down near the bottom of the mostly-dead plant.

Unbelievable. So, I cut them back and will leave them there. I don’t know if they will produce again – it would be their third season, since they were planted last Spring and they produced best in the Fall. I think they can make it, but the big mystery is — how many tomatoes will they produce and how will they taste?

Any guesses or suggestions? You can bet I’ll go cover ’em up if we have another freeze between now and March!

It’s like the great garden experiment for the season…I’m psyched!

By Diana C. Kirby|2016-04-14T02:44:41-05:00January 25th, 2009|Blog, Sharing Nature's Garden, tomatoes|0 Comments

Yummmmmmm~

Don’t these look yummy?

They were!

I went out to work in the garden today (it was 80 degrees), and stumbled upon a handful of these ripe, red, shiny, glorious strawberries. I left them there until Kallie came home, so she could come to the garden and be surprised. And then we ate them for our dessert tonight. I can’t even begin to describe how sweet and juicy they were. NOTHING like a grocery store strawberry. Even Kallie said so. Too bad we never have more than one little handful at a time!

But there are more coming, soon!

Sadly, one of my chores today was to cover the new daylilies in the SAFE back yard. It is safe from deer, but not safe from bunnies or dogs. sigh.

This fencing goes around the yard on 3 sides. But the back of the yard is wrought iron with wide posts – wide enough for an entire family of bunnies to come crashing through. Which I am assuming they did as they ate the lilies down to the nubs.

Here’s Mr. Burpee Big Boy tomato – growing like a …. oops, tomato!

See Mr. Radish, who popped his head up yesterday to see the sunshine?

See the lovely HOLE that Dakota dug in the back yard? I think she wanted me to plant something there and thought she’d be helpful.
Helpful, scattering little clods of clay dirt all over my rock and granite path, so that I could sweep and hand pick clods out of the granite.

So helpful!

By Diana C. Kirby|2016-04-14T02:44:41-05:00January 22nd, 2009|Blog, bunnies, holes, lilies, seeds, Sharing Nature's Garden, strawberries, tomatoes|0 Comments

January organizing and planning…

Taking advantage of the 75-degree sunshine today while my sick six-year-old took a nap, I snuck out to the greenhouse to inhale some fresh air.

This is day #2 stuck in the cave while she’s getting over a stomach bug that hit Saturday night. And, today, I think the cedar allergies were giving her a headache, so going outside was, well, out.

So I grabbed my gloves and seeds and some seed starting soil and my nifty label maker and off I went for a quick reprieve. I planted:

Heirloom Tomatoes (from Tomato Bob’s Heirloom Tomatoes):

Omar’s Lebanese
Eva’s Purple Ball
Hank
Black Krim

and

Green Onions
English Breakfast Radishes

And I took my handy-dandy label maker to label the pots. (It was given to me by my DH for my birthday a few years ago — he thought I was crazy when I told him that’s what I wanted.) But I love it – and use it on file folders, frozen food, you name it. It helps keep me organized.

And the notebook below (isn’t it pretty?) is my other organizing tool for the garden – while I love this blog, I need something that is on paper. Hard copy. Tactile. Something I can touch and feel and hold and write on and erase and in which I collect information. I love this notebook. I made sections for each bed and put all the plant lists in it. Then I add to it when I buy plants. (sometimes!) And this week I put tabs in for each bed so that I can find them easily. It’s great to be able to search my blog, but if I am looking for the name of a plant, which I often am, I can’t very well search for it, can I? So, this helps me keep on top of things.

I am what I call a binge and purge organizer. This includes the garden. Sometimes I have it all planned out and on paper and I keep track of things, and then at other times, my planting style is exactly what Pam at Digging described today as plop-a-plant! You have to go read her post. It made me laugh out loud.

While I was out there, the towering dead tomato plants were taunting me…look for them to show up here sometime this week!

By Diana C. Kirby|2017-11-29T23:27:51-06:00January 19th, 2009|Blog, seeds, Sharing Nature's Garden|0 Comments

Oooooh – little sprouts!

Not just a repository for overwintering the myriad of pots and plants that I gathered last year in the Spring, the greenhouse is also a place to start some new plants early.

Kallie helped me plant some seeds a few weeks ago, and lo and behold, we have some basil sprouts coming up and 1 tomato plant.

I keep them on the ground down close to the heater, so their soil can stay warm, and it seems to have worked. Now I’ll have to go through all my seed packets and see what else I can sow.

I have several Heirloom tomato seed packets from Tomato Bob that I ordered online. Can’t wait to see if I can get some of them to grow and start them in the ground as nice plants by the time I can put them outside.

Wish me luck (I think you know that I am officially seed challenged!).

By Diana C. Kirby|2016-04-14T02:44:42-05:00January 18th, 2009|basil, Blog, seeds, Sharing Nature's Garden, tomatoes|0 Comments

Blog

Icy wonderland and dead buds…

BAD gardener, BAD, BAD gardener!

Unbelievable…just unbelievable…

Yummmmmmm~

January organizing and planning…

Oooooh – little sprouts!

Escape in the garden