Summer in North Texas

Summer is here, and in Texas, it mean extreme heat and dryness, which make it very hard to maintain a garden. Its been in the mid-to-upper 90s most days, and haven't had any good amount of rain in about 2 weeks (while we were on vacation).

Pretty much all the stuff I planted in the Spring is done with.  The onions, squash, garlic are all picked. The rutgers tomatoes are done producing too.  But the cherry tomatoes, being much more heat resistant, are still producing. The plants have gotten huge, and very long, so I have started burying many of the tomato vines so encourage more rooting, so that they might produce more later on.

cherry tomatoes can take the heat better

These cherry tomatoes have been great.  The ones that escape the mockingbirds, I often pick and eat them as a snack, as they have a very good flavor.  The rutgers tomatoes are all done producing, Unfortunately the mockingbirds ate a lot of them, in spite of that we  still got a pretty decent amount of tomatoes from the plants.
 I have layed down their long vines and dug trenches, and dug in the vines to encourage more root production.  Hopefully if the plants stay alive they produce more in the fall. ( may be foolish thing to do considering the water I'll have to spend to water them) but we'll see what happens.

buried tomato vines under a sunflower (being propped up by a stick)

 In late spring my son Andrew wanted to plant something so I helped him plant some cucumbers.  It was kinda late in the season but I thought was worth a try.  He seeded them in a large pot, and later he transplanted the plants once this space was available( where the snap peas has been growing).  His plants have grown pretty big now, and are producing. These are the "straight eight" variety. We have picked 3 nice ones, and a few more are growing. There are lots of cucumber beetles on them, and a few squash bugs too, but I have not wanted to spray anything on them.  Hopefully we can keep getting some more until they succumb to the heat and bugs.

cucumbers with some basil nearby.

 There are many volunteer basil plants and some milo plants around which I water occasionally.  I very much welcome the basil.  They have been coming up every year, and I just let them grow where-ever they pop up.

New Plantings

One of the reliable hot-summer plants is okra.  I seeded a few plants a couple weeks ago, and they came up.

Emerald okra from seeds saved from last year

I have the chicken wire over them for protection since we have a small dog that sometimes goes into the garden has tried to make holes.  This is to give them a little protection until they get a bit bigger.  I have 7 seedlings, but once bigger may thin down to 4 since that should provide more than enough for our needs.


 I also planted 4 "Round Zucchini" seeds last week, and 1 has come up.  Not sure what to expect since it will be growing maturing during both the hottest part of the summer where the pest are in full force too.  But my plan for these is to:
- While small, monitor every few days for SVB eggs, and keep area clear to prevent squash bugs.
- Put some aluminum foil around base and as mulch to see of this keeps SVB from laying eggs, (I've read about this but have not tried it.
- Once plants are bigger (maybe 2 weeks from now)  do a good inspection for eggs, then cover all the plants will tulle netting.  (not doing it now since I want them to get full sun so they grow fast and strong in their early life)
- Once female flowers appear, then hand pollinate, as long as aphids don't start being a problem and force me to remove the covers to deal with them.  Eventually just remove the covers.


The other thing I am hoping to grow during the summer is peppers.  Last week I bought a packet of sweet peppers:

I just planted 10 seeds in small pots a couple days ago.  Hoping they come up soon.  I thought about just direct seeding them, but thought it would be easier to keep the soil moist by planting them in pots, and putting them in the shade, until they germinated.

Onions

Growing Onions

This year was my first time seriously trying to grow onions.  I say "seriously" because in the past I have buried store-bought onions that were sprouting leaves into the ground, and have pulled them up  and split them later, and have then grown a few new bulbs from that. 

But this year I decided to give it a serious try.  As soon as they were available (around early February) I bought 2 bunches of onion plants from Home Depot. They were about pencil-wide small stalks.  I planted them immediately.    A few weeks later I noticed onion sets (miniature onions) at a local feed store, so I bought some of those too.   I bought a variety, including white, yellow, and purple onions.

They came up quick, and were pretty unaffected by any cold we had.   I planted two patches of them.

They got pretty big, and a few of the plants started to send up flower heads.  I cut those stalks off because that can sap the energy off of the production of the bulb.  But most just grew, and week by week I could see the width of the stalk growing, and a bulb starting to form.

These are almost ready to pick

When almost ready, the bulbs get bigger and seem to push themselves out of the ground.  So half of the bulb is above the ground.  And when ready to pick, the neck gets very soft and the greens just flop over.
I picked a few already but there are still a lot of them at various stages of development.  None of the purple ones have formed any good sized bulbs yet...not sure why, but the yellow ones seem to be doing the best.

Harvesting

First ones picked in late May

About 2/3rds of them have been picked already and are drying in the garage (June 8th)

Spaghetti Squash

Although I had mentioned my spaghetti squash in various posts before, I wanted to do a topical post this time describing my experience growing spaghetti squash in the spring.  I got the seeds from a store-bought squash from a year ago.  Last year I tried growing it in the fall but it didn't do to well because I didn't plan the garden very well, and it got too crowded, plus I was not able to protect the vines from squash vine borer as well as I normally am able,due to the crowded condition.  I got a few though, but this spring I wanted to give it a better effort.

Early Start!

I started my seeds around mid-February.   It was very early, but the winter this year seemed very mild at the time, and I thought I would start some seeds very early and see if I could keep them in pots until at earliest mid-March, and put them in the ground then. Our average last frost here is late March, and I thought I could just cover them whenever we had frost.  I started them indoors, and when we had nice sunny weather I would bring them outside, and back inside into our sun-room when it was cold at night.

in late February

I started two of these cup "pots" with two seeds each, which would become my two hills.   Around early March, I decided to risk it and just put them in the ground.  If they died due to a cold snap, I could just plant more, since I had plenty of seeds. So I made a large double-wide hill, which is basically a mound of dirt, and some compost from my chicken coop (I use the deep-litter method where I throw leaves and other compost in their coop, and then later after its composted use it in the garden).   After mixing the dirt from the garden, some of this compost, and some bagged "garden soil" I had a good rich soil for starting them.   Once planted in the garden, I did have some plastic tarp handy, and I did have to cover them a few nights when we had frost, but they survived.

Hail!

After a pretty mild March, the spaghetti squash were off to a great early start, and were actually just starting to lean over and start "running".  Then one night at the end of March, we had a pretty violent hail storm.  It left lots of small dents on our cars! Some of the hail was a bit bigger than quarter size!  It did a number on my 4 spaghetti squash plants.  One had the main vine broken off but fortunately right above the first node where there were side runners starting to form.  Two other ones had the main runners bent badly but not completely severed.   So I gently piled mulch and compost around the damaged vines, to help support them and encourage more rooting.  The leaves were all ripped up too.   I was worried they were not going to recover well so I sowed a couple more seeds in the hill nearby just in case.  The original vines recovered very well the following weeks, I think for most of them the secondary runners took over as the main vines, and some just healed up.  The extra seeds I planted came up too, but I think were overwhelmed by the original plants.

A few weeks after the hail the vines had recovered very well

In order to both protect the main vines from future squash vine borer egg laying, plus to encourage rooting along the leaf nodes of the vines, I also began to cover up the main vines with dirt and compost, or just leaf mulch, whichever was a hand.  Every few days as the vines kept growing, I kept covering them up.  This also helps develop very large root systems at different point along the vine.

Early Flowers

Around mid-April. I was very surprised to see a female flower forming already on one of my vines.  I was a little worried because I could see a bunch of female flowers developing but very few males.  This is opposite of what I am used to! Usually the plants produce bunches of male flowers first.

female flower view from top

 The female flowers have a small squash below the blossom.  I did find a male flower that had opened just in time, and was able to hand-pollinate the first female blossoms.  Below is a female blossom the day after its been pollinated.  The small squash will begin to swell, and a day or two later, the dried up flower falls off.

Pollinated flower

Maturing Squash

In the past, I've had damage to my squash either from bugs or maybe rats or some other pest, so I have made it a practice to cover my maturing squash and pumpkins with some netting to help protect them from getting chewed on.  I have about 8 squash forming now, at different sizes and stages.  The female blossoms that come since these had shrived up and died,  probably because the plant cannot support too many.  The plant stopped producing female blossoms for about a week and a half, but just the past couple days more started appearing again.

Three medium size squash maturing.

This is the first one to develop, and its also the biggest one I have so far. Its almost ready.

I'm hoping as these first fruits start maturing the plant will then think it can produce a second batch.  I've been very pleased so far though with what I have.

Pests

Since I got a very early start, the vines have not gotten attacked by anything yet!  This is certainly the best way to beat Squash Vine Borers (SVB) if you can start them very early.  The typical pests I have to deal with are the SVBs, squash bugs, and cucumber beetles.  Have not seen any squash bugs yet.  Have seen  one or two cucumber beetles so far.  Unfortunately I've seen that  the SVBs have also gotten an earlier start than usual.  I've actually seen a few moths already (first one was end of April).  I think this is due to the very mild winter.   I've picked off a few eggs off of the tips of a couple vines, but their heavy egg-laying has not begun yet, since I have only seen and picked off about 6 or so eggs the past couple of weeks.   With my vine covering efforts ongoing, its not a big concern yet.  I typically start injecting BT into the leaf stems and exposed vine areas as a preventative when I start seeing damage, but I have not started that yet.

Harvesting it

I decided to start picking some of the ones that seemed ready.  From reading about it, most recommended  a hard skin ( resistant to fingernail  puncture)  and a yellow or buff coloring.  They also recommended the stem starting to brown, but I decided not to wait that long since the vine is still growing a lot, and I have also picked pumpkins and other squash with green stems before and they finish riping quite fine anyway.  I also want to encourage the vine to keep producing, so maybe removing the fully grown ones might help.  So I picked the first two.  Their skin was definitely hard, and the coloring was right, plus they have stopped growing for a while now. These are around 5.5lbs each.

First spaghetti squash of 2016, picked May 11th

As of June 8th, picked 11 so far (we ate two of the smaller ones already).
There are about 4 other on the vine at various stages of development. The vines are getting hit by SVB, and much of the original base of the plant is dead or dying, but the vine tip and runners are about 20ft from the base, still growing and looking good. I've been occasionally covering up exposed vines with dirt, and checking for SVB eggs occasionally but I'm not too worried since I've gotten such a good harvest so far. The acorn squash have not done bad either. Those are Table Queen acorn squash.

Postmortem July 3rd

Just today I picked up my last spaghetti squash, which bring the total to 17, of which 6 have already been eaten. They have been of various sizes, some very nice size, and some smaller.  Been extremely please with this harvest.  The one I picked today was on the last remaining vine, which has long since separated from the main base, but has been growing through roots along the vine.  The rest of the vine I have pulled out, and have seen much evidence of SVB, but also of Squash bugs, which I think are also a major reason the rest of the vine died off so much.  I have squashed lots of squash bugs and found many eggs on part of the vine that I have pulled off. Aphids were never much of a problem, but there was some powdery mildew, especially since we had such a wet spring.  

So I think the key for success for this was:

- Started early to beat the pests to the punch.  

- Covered vines with dirt as they grew.

I never really spent much time ever picking off eggs, or never sprayed anything for the pests, or tried to do much else.  

Late April Update

Wanted to give a quick update of my garden:

Volunteer Flowers

This year I had 3 poppies come up.  I had spread some seeds a couple years ago, but some seeds must have been dormant and woke this late winter as I didn't remember any last year. I looked these up on Google and saw they are called "Peony Poppies".  They are also called Opium poppies!  These are very beautiful flowers. I intend to save a bunch of seeds again from these.

volunteer peony poppies

 A few years ago we grew some German Chamomile, and the cool thing is that every year since they have always reseeded themselves. Here are some from this year.  These are so pretty,and smell so wonderful.  We had some fresh chamomile tea last night from some of these.  When they first come up they are tiny plants, but have very distinctive foliage, so I recognize them, and weed around them. This year they grew mainly around my lettuce and spinach.

German Chamomile

Squash

My spaghetti squash is doing very well!  But what is really surprising is the amount of female flowers that have shown up first!  Usually with squash, the male flowers come up first, and then later the female flowers come. But this time I've had tons of female flowers, and just a few male flower.  But there are about at least 4 squash now that are pollinated and have set fruit, and more on the way.  

lots of female flowers on my spaghetti squash

female blossom

My acorn squash has not done as well.  I have three hills planted, but two hills are on a low area of the yard, that collects a lot of water during rains.  I think these got drowned out with the last heavy rains, because the next day after the rains, many of the leaves were wilted on many of the plants.

Most of this acorn squash is showing signs of drowning due to poor drainage in this part of the yard.

 The other hill is on a raised bed, so is doing much better.  Here is the plant, with a female blossom open. Like the spaghetti squash, surprisingly there are female flowers first. I am thinking this is because of the time of year and cool temperatures they experienced earlier on.

Regarding the SVBs (squash vine borers) I actually saw one resting on my pea plants, and killed the moth. But I have not seen any eggs laid yet. (I have been checking since I saw the moth last week).

Other Veggies

Here are my snap peas.  They have gotten very tall, and are producing well, but as expected, are beginning to get hit by spider mites, and also powdery mildew, due to the rain and wet weather.  Every time I plant these they get afflicted once the plants start producing pods. Must be that the plants get weaker focusing their energy on producing the pods. Also we are mostly in the lower 80s now... getting a bit warm for these plants.   I wish I would have planted more. They are so tasty, I always wish we had more. Next time I will hopefully plant 3x more plants.

sugar snap peas

 My tomatoes are doing pretty well, but don't look quite as healthy. I notice some of the leaves have a few spider mites.  I do have lots of ladybugs around, so I hope that they start attacking the spidermites too. There are a few tiny tomatoes forming on them now.  To their left are the sweet-pea flowering peas.  They should start blooming soon.  I really like them as cut flowers since they have a wonderful fragrance.

sweet peas (left) and tomatoes (right) in the back, behind the spaghetti squash

The onions are almost ready.  Some of the bulbs are about golf-ball size now

Broccoli still growing. But getting hit by aphids.  Some small flower heads have formed.

Early April 2016

Hello again!
Being early April, wanted to give an update of my garden.  It was a pretty mild winter as I said in my previous post.  Since my last post back in the end of February, we've only had a couple days that were barely below freezing.  I took a risk and planted some of my warm weather plants into the ground real early (the tomato and squash seedlings I had shown before that I was growing in pots). I'm glad I did because that let them get a great head-start.    I've only had to cover them twice, due to the threat of frost, but that's all behind us now.
There was one set-back back in the end of March.  We had a big hailstorm!  Some of the hailstones were quarter-size, and they really tore up my onions, spinach, and my spaghetti squash, and busted a few heads of cabbage. The other stuff was not hurt much fortunately.  Since then the weather has been very nice, lots of sun, and rain occasionally.

One thing I noticed this year is that as the aphids showed up, many of the beneficial insects I had towards the year of the season last year have been showing up in good numbers too!  I've seen lots of ladybugs and ladybug larva around, plus some hoverflies, and lacewings too. Its nice they have shown up early because last year it was a struggle with the aphids!

Below is a picture of the broccoli patch.  Last post they were just a couple inches tall, but now they are getting pretty big.  Still no flower heads forming, though.  Also the cilantro next to it has bolted already.  Right next to them are three "Popaver" poppies.  These came up by themselves (I had spread some seed early last year, but none came up then!). They are about the bloom.

Here are the onions I planted this winter.  I didn't mention them in my previous post, but they have been steadily growing since late January.  There are some garlic in there too, elephant garlic, from cloves I had saved last year.  These I also planted back in the early winter.   And some more broccoli plants mixed in among them.

Below is the spaghetti squash.  And behind them are the tomato plants.

 There are actually 4 plants, 2 per hill.   They got clobbered by the hail, and two of them, their stems broke or bent badly, but fortunately above the leaf nodes, so that the plants were able to develop the runners below as their main shoots. So these have fully recovered and have started growing very quickly now.   The tomatoes are the "rutgers" variety.  They have recently started growing pretty fast, and in fact, one already has a couple of blossoms!  I'm sure glad I've gotten such an early start on these.  With the tomatoes, its important to be able to get a good harvest before the heat hits in full force.  And for the spaghetti squash, to get a  good head start on the Squash Vine Borers, which usually show up late May.

Below is the acorn squash I mentioned last post too, the Table Queen variety.  I have 3 hills of these, and they are not quite as far along as the spaghetti squash but they are starting to grow pretty fast now.

My first spinach patch, which I started late fall last year, has bolted already, and I've let it go to flower, for seed-collecting. Since spinach seed have a short shelf-life, I like saving seeds for the fall or next spring.
Below is the second patch I started in February.  They took a hit from the hail but have recovered pretty well, and are ready for picking.

Right above the spinach above are the Sweet Peas.  They have been growing slower than the snap peas,but are doing well though.  I don't see any flowers forming yet, but I'm expecting some great flowers around early May, and will post pictures.  I applied some "Bayer Systemic Rose" fertilizer and insecticide/miticide to them, because since they are not for eating, and they get hit by spider mites often, I'm hoping that will let them last further into the year.
Below are the snap peas. They are in full bloom, and there are bunches of small pods beginning to form.  I need to provide some more support as they keep growing because they have surpassed their tomato cages.

The yellow flowers at the bottom are the turnips which have all bolted. We did get some very nice turnips, and enjoyed some greens too, but I've pulled out most of them except for a few plants I've kept for collecting seeds.

Below is another section of onions, and the third small spinach patch next to it.  And on the right is the catnip plant which survived the winter, and is growing very nicely now.  I've also noticed some new catnip plants around it too.

Here is the remaining Cabbage. It did very well,and we've eaten lots of cabbage. Most of what you see is the remaining plants, what has grown after the head has been picked. I'm planning to use these like collards, if they don't form small heads, or don't bolt. Some of the cabbage has bolted, and I've had to pick it and feed it to the chickens.

Will post again soon!  Happy Gardening!

Late Winter, 2016

The winter of 2015/2016 has been a very mild winter so far, compared to the past years.  We're at the end of February, and we've only really had a handful of mornings with much frost, and only about 3 mornings that have dipped into the upper 20's.  We've been with highs averaging around 60 lately.. the weather has been beautiful.

Cool Weather Stuff:

From the fall, we still have the cabbage and spinach:

Ferry's Round Dutch cabbage and Spinach planted in fall from seed

Because we've had such mild temperatures, these plants have been doing very well this winter.  We've picked about 5 heads of cabbage already, and I've left the plant stumps to see of they form smaller heads later. (you can see at the bottom right one of these, next to the bricks.  I haven't had to cover them at all.  The spinach has been growing very slowly, and still recovering from the flea beetle damage earlier in the fall, but with the warmer weather recently have started growing again nicely.  

At the beginning of February, I had also planted some more seeds,  including more spinach, and also snap peas, and flowering sweet peas (not edible, but for the beautiful fragrant flowers).

In the picture below, you can see the sweet peas, and below it, the patch of spinach I started about a month ago from seeds.  These spinach are all from seed I saved from last year, so it might be a mixture of different spinach types.  The sugar snap peas are on the other side of the garden and are about the same size too. 

sweet peas (top) and spinach seedlings (below)

The turnips I started in the fall have also done very well and have gotten to about baseball size, and we've picked a most of them already. I started a new patch too, just in case the winter would be mild, and it worked out good.  These are the newer plants, doing very well, and are definitely ready for picking and eating the greens.

Here is some lettuce I planted about 2 months ago. Notice the large glass above it.  Since lettuce isn't as cold hardy, I had them covered during cold spells, but lately haven't needed to cover them, plus the plants are getting pretty big too.  There are some volunteer German chamomile plants in there too that I am letting grow. 

 

And I'm giving broccoli another try.  Last few times it hasn't done very well.  (weather problems mostly) But the last time it was successful I had saved a bunch of seeds, so I sowed a bunch of them to see if they would sprout, and they did!  I probably should thin these out soon, plus weed some of the area.  This is the "di Cecco" variety which doesn't produce the large heads but produces multiple smaller one.  

Broccoli (di Cecco variety). Can you spot the volunteer cilantro plant?

Warm weather stuff

I started some tomato seeds indoors about a month ago.  I'll bring them outside and inside depending on the weather.  I probably will wait another 3 weeks until I can try to plant them permanently.  These are the rutgers variety. I also planted about a week ago 2 pots of spaghetti squash, and 2 of table queen acorn squash. (the larger yellow "Dickey's" cups...you'd recognize them if you are from Texas) The spaghetti squash has come up fast, but the acorn is coming up too.  I'm doing this to try and get an earlier start.  Like the tomatoes, I might wait 2 or 3 weeks before I put them into the ground, but in meantime I'll bring them outside on nice days and inside during cold nights.

Happy Growing!

First Freeze 2015

Tonight we have our first freeze forecasted, and so I had to go out and pick many of the warm weather crops, including the rest of the green beans, and the peppers.

Peppers

The peppers have done awesome this year.  The plants are just huge, and still loaded with peppers.  Here is what I picked this morning, and there are a lot more that I need to pick before the day is over.  I need to figure out what to do with all these!

hot peppers of 4 different varieties, picked before the freeze tonight.

I am planning to let the red peppers dry out, and maybe freeze the green one. I may try and pickle the jalapenos too.    When I planted these, they grew so slowly at first I thought they were not going to make it.  It was only until mid-June that they started taking off, and have grown like crazy.  Next time I will thin to fewer plants, since I think it was way too much.  I think I will also focus more on sweet peppers, and do much fewer hot peppers.

Pumpkins/Winter Squash

2 Sugar Pie Pumpkins, 1 hubbard squash, and 2 spaghetti squash

The winter squash and pumpkins yielded much less than I was hoping this year, but at least I got something!  Lets discuss what happened and what I learned:

Spaghetti squash -  I had planted 2 hills, right close to 2 hills of sugar pie pumpkins, right at the back corner of the garden.  I think the big issue was lack of space.  The plants were too cramped together, so I was not able to get in there and take care of the vines, and bury them as I usually do to promote more rooting.  So the Squash Vine borers damaged much of the vines.  Much of the original vines were exposed, and since they are much thinner vines than pumpkin vines (reminds me of Acorn squash), they were less resistant to SVB damage.   Next time if I plant in the fall, I will maybe plant them about 2 weeks later, and give them much more space.  Planning on letting them run underneath the peppers didn't work very good either since the pepper plants were very dense.  I just need much more space planned for these.
Pumpkins - My 2 hills ended up producing just 2 pumpkins.  I think it was the same issue as the spaghetti squash, not enough space! The vines were way to cramped, and I didn't have a chance to bury them and take care of them as I usually do, so they got attacked by SVB and caterpillars, and later powdery mildew.  But thankfully I did end up getting 2 very nice pumpkins.
Hubbard Squash - I got one very nice one.  I really hoped to get more, and many of them had nice fruit set, to only stop growing a few days later, and then eventually die off.  Same thing happened a couple years ago.
I'm not sure that its normal to have low yields on this, or maybe the Texas weather is not really well suited for these.  But these are such cool looking squash, that I still want to keep trying in the future, and will definitely be saving seed from the squash in the picture above.  I think as is always the case, these also could have benefited from more space, because it seems only after the vines had gotten to 20 feet long did they start making female flowers.

Beans

I think I timed my pole beans perfectly this year!  Last year I was too late and the frost got them before I had significant production, so I planted a few weeks earlier this year (seeded around 8/19).  The plants came up and grew well despite the heat, and then started producing well in the early fall.  We've had  about three or 4 weeks of very good production, but this freeze will most likely do them in.

Pole beans growing up fence, next to basil bushes

Cool Weather Plants

In the previous post I had mentioned the cabbage, spinach and turnips we had just planted. They are doing very well, except for some holes in the turnip leaves.  Hopefully the frost will get rid of the bugs doing that,which I suspect are flea beetles, which are a big pest for turnips for me.  The cabbage are beautiful, and I can see the leaves are just starting to form heads.  The spinach is doing well, but growing much slower than the cabbage.  I have a newer patch of cabbage too ( bottom right of picture.)

These can all take frost and freezes fairly well, except if it gets down to the mid-20s, then I'll need to cover them.