Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2021 2:32:31 GMT -6
You should be satisfied. I cannot tell you how many times I've recommended people soak the older logs before building. Soaking in green manure sludge was even better. And it's a lot of work. Will be well worth it in the long run. This is so very perfect for your environment.
Chipping the cedar into the walkways? Most excellent!
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 3, 2021 14:14:55 GMT -6
Thanks for the encouragement, Bon. I appreciate it.
It’s raining now, not a frog strangler, but a good steady rain with thunder, too. (I understand that lightning provides great fertilizer in that it makes nitrates in the air that the rain brings down or something like that.). I’m guessing that will be really good for settling those materials.
We do have aged manure compost on hand (already purchased for amending some boxes in the existing garden) that we’ll put on top when we’re closer to planting time. I don’t know when we’ll manage to fence, but if there’s enough of a hot season left at the time, I think we’ll plant some cowpeas as a nitrogen-fixing cover crop. I’d love to get some roots creeping down into the bottom of the beds as they’re being established.
|
|
|
Post by hedgeapple on Jun 19, 2021 12:46:06 GMT -6
Nice to read all about your garden Chrysanthemum. I spent most of my adult life in Central Texas, but now live in Virginia!
The trials and tribulations of limestone caliche "soil" are very familiar to me. When I got serious about gardening it involved raised beds and laborious double-digging for in-ground rows. I would never remove all the gravel, but I hauled in tons (literally) of good soil and a variety of long and short-term amendments.
Don't miss the blazing summers in Texas, but my summer gardens always had ample time to do their thing. Only detail I ever had to worry about was evening temperatures for my tomatoes, but other that it was good.
Texas was very good to me in general.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 20, 2021 14:02:41 GMT -6
Limestone caliche (I don’t even attach the word “soil” to ours) was a huge shock to me when I moved here. What I found most surprising was just how quickly water disappears through it. I was used to Virginia red clay that could remain wet for days after a small storm. Here we could have seven inches of rain in one night and bone dry ground the next morning. My mind still has a hard time wrapping itself around that.
We’re getting to the blazing part of summer now. Summer has never been my favorite season, even before moving here, but having a garden really increases the joy of it. I feel very blessed that this year’s garden is producing so nicely. I can tell that some of my plants are feeling too much heat, though. I think it doesn’t help that we live on the western side of a big hill, and so the afternoon heat is really intensified. Maybe that’s why my banana peppers that are supposed to be only mildly hot can feel equivalent to a Serrano more than anything else.
I’ll take any tips you’ve got about Texas gardening.
My recent excitement is that I found a feed mill within easy driving distance where I can get 50 lb bags of cottonseed meal for an excellent price.
|
|
|
Post by hedgeapple on Jun 21, 2021 14:38:40 GMT -6
I’ll take any tips you’ve got about Texas gardening. So funny to run into you on this board - I'm currently in Virginia learning how the clay soil here behaves, with pluses and minuses. One of the pluses are that it does retain water for longer than I am used to, so I am watering a bit less but watching and testing the soil every day until I am comfortable with it. When I first turned the garden over months ago I couldn't believe how the clay hardened and cracked and I got a bit concerned so I contacted our local Master Gardeners by email and met them in-person and they have given me a good headstart on what to do here. I recommend that you do the same. Master Gardeners have minimum work hours they have to do each year and are always looking for opportunities to educate someone. Also, the County Extension offices should have good lists of tried-and-true varieties for your county specifically. Best thing I can tell you about the caliche AKA 'Road Base' soil in Central Texas is that you'll want to bring in lots of organic matter to build your own soil. You'll also want to mulch a lot and be real careful about getting water on leaves when it is 100F+ because you can burn your leaves (learned that the hard way). One thing I really wish I had done sooner in Texas was "winter" gardening of greens, etc. The winters there are so relatively mild (most years) that you can grow all kinds of greens and other things right through winter. Some gardeners down there have more going on in "winter" than any other time of year. Other thing I sincerely wish I started sooner in Texas was growing tomatillos - love, love tomatillos and they love it down there.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 24, 2021 5:53:14 GMT -6
Thanks for such a thoughtful reply, Hedgeapple.
I was blessed when we first moved here to have a next door neighbor who was a retired Master Gardener. She didn’t grow vegetables herself, but she was very generous with helping me learn about conditions down here (and helping me to identify existing trees, shrubs, and weeds on the property). She and her husband moved a couple of years after we arrived, and before they did so, she gave me a lot of her gardening books and resources.
I do use the county lists for recommended varieties as my starting point any time I try a new crop. As I get more comfortable with gardening down here, I’m trying to branch out a bit, though, especially in the area of finding good open pollinated varieties to use instead of hybrids.
We work a lot on soil building here. I would love to have enough organic matter on our own property to use only that, but we’re definitely not at that point. We’ve used a lot from our land (rotten wood, trimmings, weeds, the occasional grass clippings, lots of leaf mold and homemade compost), but we also buy aged manure compost in bulk when we need to as well as feed the soil with amendments like cottonseed meal and alfalfa pellets. That’s why I’m so excited to have found a somewhat local mill where I can get those last two items for a good price. We used daikon radishes last year as a winter cover crop to try to bring up nutrients from the subsoil and add nitrogen to the beds. I’m looking to plant cowpeas and/or sunn hemp in our new beds to help them along, but we need to do more work before I can manage that.
Last winter was the first time I had tried winter gardening in Texas. It wasn’t the best winter to start, it turns out, because of the massive freeze. I did manage to keep my onions alive, and we were very pleased with our harvest this year, so much so that we’ll try to increase our planting next year. I grew kale and lettuce as well. Some plants that I started in January (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) didn’t make it through the freeze. I tried restarting them, but ended up either losing them as transplants or pulling them out because of cabbage worms and heat. I’m looking forward to trying more winter gardening this year, if possible.
I’m really intrigued by your mention of tomatillos. I wasn’t really familiar with them, but we just picked some up at the store yesterday morning after I read this message, and I made up a batch of mixed tomatillo and tomato salsa. I’m always up for hearing about a plant that will do well down here, especially if it’s productive during the height of summer.
|
|
|
Post by macmex on Jun 24, 2021 6:04:51 GMT -6
Our family really loves tomatillos. We use them in salsa (of course), but they're also good, split and cooked with stir fries, as well as added to soups and stews. I can hardly grow them here. At first I could, but somewhere along the way we ended up with a wild ground cherry, which is nearly impossible to eradicate. The ground cherry hosts tomatillo pests and any time I grow tomatillos they're always so wormy that we can't use them.
The last place we lived in NJ was in the Pine Barrens. The soil there was straight, sterile sand. One time we had a fuel tank dug out and removed. The company which did the work filled the hole with beach sand. The next year I was amazed to find that the beach sand was better for growing things than Pine Barrens sand! No amount of rain would be retained. Within a day, everything was dry again. Still, I've seen caliche. That's taking it to a whole new level of difficult.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 25, 2021 16:28:56 GMT -6
I’m sorry to hear about the pests. That’s very disheartening.
I’m regretting now that I roasted all the tomatillos and turned them into salsa earlier this week. I was just interested at the time in knowing whether our family liked the flavor (they did), but it dawns on me now that I probably could have saved seeds. I have some very large pots in which I currently have sweet corn growing. I was thinking that I could trial a couple of tomatillo plants in those pots when the corn is done.
|
|
|
Post by macmex on Jun 26, 2021 5:20:04 GMT -6
Well, you could pick up some in the grocery store and process a bit of seed from them. I'd recommend small to medium ones, as the flavor seems better. Just cut in halves or quarters, mash in a cup and add some water if needed. Let set at room temperature for a couple of days. Then agitate. It should smell really ripe.
When you see seed floating around, pour the whole mess into a strainer and run water over it, picking out the pieces of the fruit. This should get you some usable seed. You should spread that on some paper, label it and let it dry a couple of days. Then you can plant it.
|
|
|
Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 26, 2021 15:17:29 GMT -6
I've seen a few wild tomatillos around here in years past, but as George mentioned, bugs really like them, so it's rare to find intact fruit within the husk.
This is an excerpt from: nativeplants.ku.edu/ethnobotany-research/physalis-research
Phyalis longifolia is among more than 200 plant species native to Kansas and the Great Plains that have been collected for medicinal testing through a collaboration the Medicinal Chemistry laboratory of Dr. Barbara Timmerman at the University of Kansas. After initial screenings indicated the potential for medicinal compounds, the Timmerman Lab discovered 14 compounds new to science in P. longiflora. Four of the compounds have shown potent cytotoxity against specific types of cancer.
nativeplants.ku.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Physalis-Ethnobotany-paper.pdf
An excerpt from the above research paper: In Frank Cushing’s “Zuni Breadstuffs” (based on his work on the Zuni Reservation in the 1880s), he writes: “Among the sandy defiles of the upper plains, mesas, and mountains, grow abundant low bushes bearing very juicy little yellow berries called k’ia’-po-ti mo’-we, or the ‘juice-filled fruitage’.” These berries were in high favor with the ancient Zunis as food according to Cushing. They were boiled or stewed to make a sauce, which, although not quite so acidic, otherwise tasted like cranberry sauce (Cushing 1920). The wild tomatillo is still currently used as food at the Zuni Reservation. In Rita Edaakie’s “Idonaphshe—Let’s Eat—Traditional Zuni Foods,” she gives a recipe for the use of K’e: ts’ido’kya K’yalk’osenne, or tomatillo paste, in which the domesticated tomatillos, P. philadelphica, are used to make a tasty sauce that includes roasted chiles and green onions (Edaakie 1999; Nabhan 2008). This recipe is certainly an adaptation of the previous use of native Physalis species.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 27, 2021 14:47:39 GMT -6
Thanks for so much information on tomatillo seed saving and history. I’m definitely considering growing some. Yesterday my husband and I worked on the new beds. We added some of our homemade compost that was cooking well but not quite finished, then topped off with purchased aged manure compost that we are able to buy in bulk. Since the end of our homeschooling year, I’ve taken a couple of trips to San Antonio to collect my “olla” pots when they are on sale at the craft store. They are very fragile and often have some cracks even on the store shelves, so the stores let me have what they have for an even bigger discount, and we apply some glue before setting them out. A manager at the last store I went to got so interested in what I was doing with them that she talked to me about the garden before I left the store. The ollas aren’t always spaced evenly or sunk completely because of the rotten wood chunks in the bottom of the beds, but we’ll also be adding more compost and probably mulch once things are growing. I’m hoping to plant some cowpeas and sunn hemp in these beds if we can get fencing up while there’s still enough warm season left. We were so tired at the end of the day yesterday (and a little sunburned in my case) that we didn’t take the time to do any harvesting in the garden even though I had planned on Swiss Chard for dinner. The kids cooked frozen asparagus instead. I had to harvest that chard this morning as well as some cucumbers and green beans. The weather forecast is calling for possible storms (not likely but at least it’s possible), so I also harvested a good number of my ripening tomatoes. They’ll sit on the counter for a few days to finish up. The really green looking ones are a variety called “White Tomesol.” My mother got some free seeds and sent some to my daughter this spring. We only have one plant, and I’ve been wondering what they’ll look like when ripe. These two were getting a bit soft on the bottom, so I brought them in. I’ll be interested to see what they taste like. I had to take a picture of my harvest to send to my mother today. She harvested like this all the time when I was young to feed our family and preserve, but this is probably the most I’ve ever harvested in one day in my entire gardening career (other than a “harvest everything left before frost” kind of day). While I was working, I was trying to remember the words to a hymn we used to sing in our church before we moved. I couldn’t remember them off the top of my head but looked it up this afternoon. Read on if you’re interested. Sing to the Lord of harvest, Sing songs of love and praise; With joyful hearts and voices Your alleluias raise. By Him the rolling seasons In fruitful order move; Sing to the Lord of harvest, A joyous song of love. By Him the clouds drop fatness, The deserts bloom and spring, The hills leap up in gladness, The valleys laugh and sing. He filleth with His fullness All things with large increase; He crowns the year with goodness, With plenty, and with peace. Bring to His sacred altar The gifts His goodness gave, The golden sheaves of harvest, The souls He died to save. Your hearts lay down before Him When at His feet you fall, And with your lives adore Him, Who gave His life for all. To God the gracious Father, Who made us “very good,” To Christ, who, when we wandered, Restored us with His blood, And to the Holy Spirit, Who doth upon us pour His blessed dews and sunshine, Be praise forevermore!
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2021 16:03:41 GMT -6
I am so happy for you, Chrys, and happy in the Spirit. Your new blessing looks beautiful and professional! I'm right there with ya this morning. His ways are not my ways. He blesses the righteous and the wicked fall by the way. He's been right all along and I'm gonna trust him while praising!
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 5, 2021 17:50:47 GMT -6
My husband and I worked today on putting up the fencing for the new beds. The wonderful thing was that we had everything we needed already on our property (a gate, wooden posts, various rolls of fencing) with the exception of some tall t-posts and zip ties. (Yes, we fasten the fence to the t-post with large zip ties, but we had to buy a couple packs of small ones to fasten all our pieces of repurposed fencing together). We got driven inside by a thunderstorm late this afternoon, so I’ll work on finishing up tomorrow. I won’t say it’s beautiful, but it’s a good fence, and I’m pleased. (Or it’s at least as good as the one around the other garden, so it’s keeping the deer out at least.)
The Sunn Hemp was sprouted this morning, so we really did need to get the garden fenced against deer.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 20, 2021 5:45:19 GMT -6
Here’s a picture I took the other day after my husband and I finished putting soil and the ollas in the last of the new raised beds. We have plans to install cattle panel trellises in the middle of the beds on the long axis (north to south mostly). We also have a lot of mulching to do in the pathways and around the fencing, but there’s only so much that can be done in summer’s heat. It’s still below average for July here, but it’s hot enough. My five year old has adopted the new beds as being his garden, and he told me the other day, “I’m very excited that we are growing cowpeas.” I guess he heard me say that to my husband or something. He’s a little poll parrot.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2021 7:59:01 GMT -6
Boy those beds look nice. Ya'll put in so much work after bringing in those frames.
|
|