Greeting from the edge of Texas Hill Country

[chrysanthemum]

Hello, fellow gardeners.

I’ve read on this site off and on a bit over time, but just this week I really dug into some of the threads and decided I’d be honored to join your conversations, even though I’m not in Oklahoma and am only a baby seed-saver.  

I’m a native Virginian and grew up on a family farm where my mother (almost single-handedly) raised all our vegetables, fruit, meat, and milk.  (My father was handicapped but worked a full-time job that let my mother stay home to tend the farm.)  It was a very different lifestyle from most of my peers but one I really appreciated.  I’ve long said that it’s my aspiration to be one quarter of the woman that my mother is.  I’ve still got a long way to go.

I’m now living with my husband and four children in south central Texas (a little northwest of San Antonio).  The land is pretty much limestone rock.  Any topsoil there may have been was eroded from severe overgrazing before we came to the area.   For the past couple of years, we’ve been building raised garden beds, adding organic matter, and learning to grow vegetables in this very different climate.  We can have eight frost-free months in the year, but we don’t really have a long gardening season because the summer heat and sunlight are too intense.  It’s really more like two short gardening seasons that have to be rushed on either side of the hottest months.

I came to this board recently because my garden plan includes both okra and sweet potatoes for the summer, and I found lots of good information about Heavy Hitter Okra on a long thread here.  I have some seeds from Baker Creek (Thank you, Mr. Cook, for shelling all those pods last year.) that I plan to start in the next few weeks here once the soil warms more.

The area in which we live is quite suburban but has the highest number of white-tailed deer per acre in the country.  My garden area, therefore, is quite small because it needs to be fenced so well.  I have just under 300 square feet of raised beds, though 64 of those are devoted to asparagus.  I use trellises to grow cucumbers and tomatoes (and sweet potatoes) upward.  The garden has been expanded over the last couple of years, so this will be my first spring planting of so much space.  I water by hand from rain tanks (though I use clay pots in the soil—ollas— to help).  We are still considered as being in severe drought, and water is restricted in our area.  Even though it is a small garden space I find it is about as much as I can care for right now given other responsibilities (mostly home schooling my children).

In addition to the vegetable garden I also care for fruit trees, many of which were left by a previous owner, some of which we have added.  Some citrus and olives may have been killed by Texas’s recent hard, long freeze, despite my many efforts at protecting them.  Some came through well and are growing again.  I also have rabbiteye blueberries which I grow in pots as there is no way to amend my alkaline rock enough to have them in the ground.  My husband and I built a PVC aqueduct that drains water from our air conditioning into a rain barrel all summer long, and I use that to ensure that I have a good supply of calcium-free water near the blueberries.  We have another drain line that runs to an established mandarin orange tree that used to be eighteen feet in diameter.  We hope we saved the trunk during the recent freeze, but we’ll have to wait and see.

I’m looking forward to “talking” gardening here and just wanted to introduce myself a bit.  I’m glad to have found this group.



 

[macmex]

Chrysanthemum, sounds like you'll fit right in! Glad to have you. Your hot weather gardening will give insights which can help us all.

George

[rdback]

Hello and Welcome to GCSS Chrysanthemum. Pull up a keyboard and stay a while!

[chrysanthemum]

Thanks for the warm welcome, all.  I appreciate it.

I just wrote a reply and managed to lose it when I went to post, but maybe I’ll do a more successful job this time.

I’ve been reading lots of old threads, and it’s just so encouraging to me to read much of what I find in these pages.  I’m going to be exploring a lot, I think, as I wait for the weather to warm just a bit more before transplanting tomatoes.  They’ve been spending days (and some nights) outside, though they’re inside at the moment.  It was a beautiful, sunny day today, but nights this week have been as low as 40 (and forecast lower).  I spent the morning watering and doing work on the blueberries, citrus, and garden, the afternoon doing major pruning on perennials damaged by last month’s hard freeze.  We’ve finally finished getting major dead material removed from plants, but we’ll have a lot of work chipping and shredding what we can.  We use a lot of mulch in our garden, and we try to return organic matter to the land, but we’re going to have our hands full with palm leaves, though, as they don’t chip well. 

I’m trying to add a picture to the post, but I don’t think I can manage it.  My garden is small enough to catch pretty much the whole thing in one shot.  It’s not much to look at right now (some asparagus, lettuce, onions, and a few other things but mostly empty space), but I thought it would show what I’m working with.  I’ll work on figuring out how to do it when I’m not so worn out from pruning.

[chrysanthemum]

I think I’m figuring out how to load an image.  I hope I’ve managed to put in a shot of my garden that I took yesterday after I watered.  It has been a long project clearing cedar trees, fencing, building and filling beds, and this spring will be my first time planting this much space.  I’m excited to be raising seedlings now, and it’s possible that I’ll put my first tomatoes in the ground this coming Saturday if the forecast holds.

For anyone who wants a “tour” of my garden, read on.

In the very first bed by the gate, there is a lone cilantro plant.  My kids aren’t huge fans, but we use it occasionally, and it’s a whole lot better to pick a leaf or two than to buy a bundle at the grocery store that’s way larger than I need.  I’m pointing it out because I was amazed at how perky it was after it got buried in 8 inches of snow and ice and endured temperatures ranging from single digits to the 20’s for 6 solid days here in Texas.  It was looking poor going in to the hardest cold, so I didn’t even protect it with shredded leaves, and it came out looking like it had been reinvigorated by a trip to the spa.  Maybe it just needed a good snowfall for moisture and nitrogen.

Moving to the left.  The long bed on the side just got filled this fall in order for me to plant bulbing onions.  It was my first time trying those, and I was definitely worried about February’s freeze.  I watered them, buried them, put up makeshift coverings, and they looked beaten up when everything melted, but they’ve really revived wonderfully, and I don’t think I lost more than a couple.  Whether I can get them to bulb up successfully remains to be seen, but I’m trying.

The pot saucers, by the way, are covering 2 quart terra cotta pots that I use as my “olla” system of clay pot irrigation.  I still need to surface water, but this is like my insurance in Texas summer heat and drought to keep plants supplied.  Unfortunately I was so busy protecting plants before our freeze that I never thought of the terra cotta absorbing moisture and breaking.  A good number of my ollas got damaged, and so my eight-year-old daughter and I are carefully lifting, washing, and gluing as we can.  Thankfully the ones that were supplying the growing plants were well buried and didn’t break.

The metal planter along the side had been planted in Swiss Chard.  It all froze beyond recovery, and the one plant you can see in there now was my replacement plant that was still inside in February.  There are others now as well, but the big one has been growing since right after the freeze and doing well.

In the very back is our asparagus bed.  It has two varieties.  The green one on the south side is ferning; the purple one on the north side is just beginning.  We planted the crowns just a year ago, so we’re not harvesting this year.

The big terra cotta pots were left behind by the previous owner.  Moving them to the garden was an ordeal.  One has a huge crack down the side, but it is staying together.  I grew zucchini in them last fall, but I haven’t totally decided what to do this year.  They get hot during the summer.

In the two long beds I have a few beets and a cabbage.  I had had broccoli and cauliflower, but it died during the freeze.

In the one square bed showing green, that’s (Irish) potato foliage.  It’s my first time trying them in this climate.  Only after I planted did I learn that fire ants will actually consume potatoes.  (I had trouble with them eating corn and okra last year.). We’ll see.

Coming toward the front, the planters in between the rows are where I grew brassicas in the fall shaded by sweet potato leaves growing up the cattle panel arch.  The one on the end has some Crawford lettuce growing in it.  Last spring I let it bolt in one of the square beds in the hopes of it reseeding.  In December I had about 25 plants come up.  It didn’t all make it through the freeze, but I transplanted a bunch to the container so that I can move it to more shade and cool as it warms up.  (The planters are about 15 years old and were our entire garden when we lived in a rented townhouse outside Washington, D.C. for years.)

I also have some Crawford lettuce growing at the end of the long bed by the gate (I’m standing at the open gate for the photo).  That’s my shadiest spot from some big live oak trees to the west, so I thought it would be good.  I had some nice transplants that I started this spring, but cutworms decimated them.  (Actually, decimation implied taking out one tenth historically, so it’s not really accurate.  They took out about half (even getting around my collars).)  I have some new “Moroccan lettuce” starting in the house now to replace it as I read that I don’t really need to worry too much about cross pollination, and I’d like to save seeds.

Crawford lettuce has some Oklahoma roots, and the Moroccan lettuce has a neat story.  I’ve already made this post awfully long, but I think I’ll try to add some information in the appropriate spot. 

[chrysanthemum]

I think you’re right about the onions and the freeze, Bon, and I really appreciate the encouragement.  They had good foliage going in and got hit hard.  They’ve come back nicely, but I saw the first flower shoot just this morning.  Well, I like keeping chopped onions in the freezer.  It makes dinner prep easier if ingredients are already chopped.  

I looked around to try to find a picture of my native soil/rock.  I don’t have a great one, except for a picture when we put up our first fencing for containers. The fencing is utility and cattle panels and a gate that were all on the property, so it’s a little odd looking, but it worked for the deer.  This area got too much sun (who knew?), so we moved it all the next year and started the raised beds.  We’ve since expanded the beds and gotten hold of more actual fencing and turned those great panels into part of our trellis system.  They were too good not to employ for plants.   The photo does show the results of the severe overgrazing that our land suffered.  Drought and erosion had taken their toll.  (It’s also probably why we could buy it and work to help restore it.) 


The 2 x 4 structure was our preparation for potted blueberries.  We ended up moving it as well to the north side of our house to shelter the blueberries from the sun.  The “blueberry cube” as we call it now has a door and is covered with bird netting.  I knew that I would have to water frequently since the blueberries have to live in pots, so I wanted an easy way to protect the blueberries without having to mess with netting all the time.  This has worked well.

The land is improving.  We’ve been doing lots of work on getting rid of harmful invasive species and improving the health of the land by keeping organic matter on the ground.  

Our raised beds are in a spot where they still receive a lot of sun but have more shade protection from trees in the late afternoon when it’s very hot in summer.  I also use shade cloth in the garden and was fortunate toward the end of last summer to get a clearance roll that can cover the whole area.  I hope to put that up in June this year and see how it helps.  Raised beds get warm and dry out faster, but I couldn’t really see a way to plant without them, so that’s why I have the “olla” clay pots to help.  I was very excited when I transplanted beets a few weeks ago into one of our original garden beds to see several earthworms.  The raised beds are connected to the soil below, and we used a mini-hugelkultur approach in establishing them.  I also used daikon radishes this year to try to drill the subsoil, and I wonder if those decaying roots and greens attracted the worms.  (Here’s a laugh of sorts.  I had been pulling some of the daikon roots to kill them, and then I replaced them in the soil.  I had been worried that wouldn’t winter kill.  Then the February freeze came.)

We’re still small-scale gardeners compared to many of you, but I appreciate the warm welcome and the opportunity to talk about my garden with folks who will encourage and educate me.  I’ve enjoyed reading many threads on here just for background, so to speak.

[chrysanthemum]

    Yes, I care a lot about soil building and soil health.  I think I’ve had trouble watering enough in our Texas heat.  I keep the plants alive and looking pretty good, but I think they need more water really to flourish.  I’ve calculated out how much each of the raised beds needs per week to be the equivalent of 1 inch of rain.  It’s a lot of watering cans, so I need to spread it out.  I love it when it rains.

     It rained last night, but it also hailed.  Thankfully there was very little damage in the garden.  My seedlings that I keep on our back deck had been brought inside, so I didn’t need to be anxious about them when the hail woke me at two in the morning.  I’m hoping to set out the first of the tomatoes on Saturday.

      I don’t have any access to manure as we have no animals except wildlife.  We live in a pretty suburban area, though there are ranches in the area.  I think our subdivision is actually old ranch land that was divided, and the family still ranches on the other side of the main road.  (That family was not the one that overgrazed our property; it was the previous owner who, from what I hear, kept way too many miniature horses on a too small lot for a period of time.)

    There is a landscaping supply store not too far from us where I can by OMRI aged manure compost at quite a good price in bulk, and we have done that on occasion when we have a large project that needs it (like topping up the asparagus bed we built two winters ago).  Our neighbors blessed us last spring when they had manure compost delivered, and it was too much.  I worked and worked and worked with my little garden cart and buckets, and I brought down almost a whole cubic yard of it.  We produce some of our own compost from the organic matter on our land, but just from leaves and nitrogen from kitchen scraps or occasional cuttings.  (We don’t have much grass to provide clippings, but we can get some maybe once or twice a year.). Our bins are empty right now, but they’re just about to be filled with mulched leaves to start another round.

       We have a lot of cedar trees on our property, many of which need clearing.  They are a native, but their growth is so uncontrolled at this point that they are considered a harmful invasive.  They take too much water and outcompete other natives, so we are cutting lots of scrubby thickets of cedar.  We make mulch and use it liberally, even on top of garden beds.  I try not to mix it in too much, though of course it does get incorporated to some degree, but it really helps retain water and keep the temperatures cooler to have a thick layer of wood chips.

    We also have a number of live oak trees (and some other species).  The live oaks keep their leaves all winter but lose them in the spring when they grow new ones.  We let the leaves lie all around our barren ground to decay in place, but we blow them off of our driveway and out of the back yard which is covered in river rock.  We then shred them with a mulching mower and pile them to make leaf mold (after putting some in the compost bins).  It was from that pile that I buried all my garden plants last month to try to protect them from the freeze.

    We would like to have more nitrogen sources on the land outside the garden, but my only real attempt has been seeding native wildflowers, including a nitrogen-fixing perennial called purple prairie clover.  A couple falls ago we went to the effort to make a huge tray of “seed balls” (a mixture of natural clay and compost and seeds) which we planted out in fall before a forecast rain.  We have seen a few more flowers crop up here and there, and I’m told that wildflower seeds will often stay dormant for years until conditions are just right, so it will be interesting to see if this spring (after so much snow) shows anything. 

Edited to add: We do have one place on our property that has some really good soil.  Most of our property is fenced, but the line on one side runs about ten feet from a neighbor’s house.  The previous neighbors and the previous owner made an agreement that the fence would be set farther back, and the neighbor would take care of that unfenced part of the property near his house and yard.  It has a number of trees, and over the years the neighbor made piles of cut wood between the trees.  Some of the wood is good, but a lot (especially on the bottom of the piles) is rotten.  We’ve been gradually clearing it out, but there’s more of it than we’ve been able to use in our mini hugelkultur.   It is exciting to see the nice soil in those spots, though. 

[chrysanthemum]

I think that 2011 heat and drought is etched in the mind of Texans, too.  We moved here in 2017 just after Hurricane Harvey hit Texas (it wasn’t bad in this area weather-wise), and people talked to us a lot about the weather.  We heard from several people about 2011, and we have several red oaks in an around our property that died that year according to the neighbors.  We also heard about an April 2016 hail storm that did tremendous damage (and caused the insurance companies to raise everybody’s rates sky high).  I think the February 2021 freeze is now going to be added to that list of disasters.  

We are blessed to have a large number of trees on the property, though we’ve needed to thin some for their own health (mostly taking out cedar to give the oaks a chance).  Trees don’t get very tall in this climate, and the particular type of live oak we have is a gnarled and twisted thing, but to us they are really beautiful.  It is a lot of work when the leaves and catkins (I’ve used those for mulch on the garden, too) and acorns fall in areas where we have to clean them, but, like you, we’ll keep the trees and keep on cleaning.

The previous owners of our house planted a number of different kinds of trees, including fruit trees, in our back yard.  Some were really planted too closely together, and some really suffered from lack of proper pruning, but we’ve tried to get them into better shape the past couple of years.  I’m worry, though, because a number are not showing signs of life after February’s freeze.  I’m trying not to be too anxious (not a strong point of mine).  It really is a situation where I can’t do anything but wait and see.

[chrysanthemum]

I often enjoy being in my garden, but this morning just brought me particular joy.  I took a picture from a distance to try to capture how it looks, and I thought I’d post it here.  One particular thing that made me happy was that the honeybees have found my cucumber flowers, and I have fruits swelling.




When each of my four children was born, my husband and I together chose a special hymn that we would sing every time the baby went down for a nap.  We call it the “night-night song,” an those hymns are still special in our household even though nobody naps any more.  The song for the youngest was called “The Heavens Declare Thy Glory.”  This morning I modified the words to “The garden declares Thy glory/ the vegetables Thy pow’r; Day unto day the story/ Repeats from hour to hour.”

[macmex]

Psalm 104 came to mind when I read your comment:


“13 He waters the hills from His upper chambers; The earth is satisfied with the fruit of Your works. 14 He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, And vegetation for the service of man, That he may bring forth food from the earth, 15 And wine that makes glad the heart of man, Oil to make his face shine, And bread which strengthens man’s heart. 16 The trees of the LORD are full of sap, The cedars of Lebanon which He planted, 17 Where the birds make their nests; The stork has her home in the fir trees.”
 
“30 You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; And You renew the face of the earth. 31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever; May the LORD rejoice in His works. 32 He looks on the earth, and it trembles; He touches the hills, and they smoke. 33 I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. 34 May my meditation be sweet to Him; I will be glad in the LORD.”

Psalm 104:13-17,30-34

[heavyhitterokra]

What a great series of posts. I really enjoyed reading all of them. I've been too stove up this morning, from trying to beat the heavy rains yesterday to do much more than sip my coffee and read about other people gardening. You guys have been a true blessing today.

[chrysanthemum]

I’m so glad that it was encouraging to you to find them, heavyhitterokra. The first time I spent extensive time on this forum was a day that I was sick in bed, and I started reading the beginning of the thread you started on Heavy Hitter Okra. I kept coming back to it after I was well again, but it was the community of the board that attracted me to join this group even though I’m not in the geographic area. My husband and I could be described as “stove up” today as well (my dad always used to use that term), so it was a blessing to have a day of worship and rest. As part of that, I wanted to add to this thread an update about my garden space and how the Lord has provided for us recently in ways we didn’t even ask or imagine.

A couple of weeks ago some new neighbors moved in down the street from us. One morning my five year old and I walked over to introduce ourselves and to offer them tomato plants (I had, of course, continued to root suckers I had pruned—I planted too close this year for the vigorous growth I’m getting) because I knew that the previous owners had some really lovely raised beds. It turns out that the new owners are not gardeners, and they wanted to use the fenced in area as a safe space for their small dogs. I was offered the raised beds for free if I could move them.

My husband and I had to do several “reconnaissance” missions for measurement and planning. It was not an easy task because the beds were so solidly constructed that we didn’t want to try to take them apart. Also the one gate was a small one at the back corner of the fenced part, and the first two sides to pass to get back to the driveway were steeply sloped. When we got permission to move the beds around the length of the (big) house across an extensive back hardscape instead of the seemingly more direct way, we decided we could do it if we could physically get the beds out of the fenced enclosure. We did manage to dig the soil away from the edges, cut the layers of landscape fabric that had been fastened in, rotate the beds onto their sides and carry them through the gate with the help of our 13 and 11 year old. At that point we used a couple of furniture dollies and a lot of exertion to get them to our trailer and drive them home. Then we did the process in reverse, though it was a much shorter distance to our garden area. (The area used to have a trampoline, so our kids also got to help us move that up the hill to a nice shady spot which will, we hope, make it better for summer use.)

We left the soil behind because it would have been too much to move it, and we really weren’t sure of its quality. (There were also mint plants in one bed as well as another plant that look like it spread by roots as well. I did warn the new owners about that.). We’re planning to do our mini-hugelkultur approach to build this soil. We’ve got tons of carbon to use, and right now we’re higher in nitrogen sources than we usually are because of all the rain this month. My plan is to begin the process tomorrow, but it will be a long time before the beds are really ready for use. I’m just so excited to be expanding the garden area for the future. (We were also given 98 feet of free five foot fencing earlier this month when we ended up with a too short 100 foot roll, and the manager I talked to at the store where we bought it gave us a free replacement but didn’t want us to bring the short roll back, so we have fencing to put up around the perimeter before we start to plant.) We will need to buy t-posts, trellis materials, and ollas, but we’ll watch for sales and do that over time. Each bed is 4 feet by 10 feet, so this adds 160 square feet to my current about 300. Wow!


Here’s a shot that I captured yesterday evening right after we finished putting them in place.

[Deleted]

Wow! Those are some excellent beds.  On an avg price range, those are a major score but with the price of lumber nowadays I am totally excited for you!  Wow.  Just wow!  

[macmex]

Beautiful indeed! We know the feeling. Though I used the tractor to start my sweet potato rows, I still have to do more than half of the work by hand. I'm working on 180' of raised ridge (hill) for the varieties I'm growing. The weather has been perfect almost perfect for this work. The trouble is that I don't dig and heavy heavy clay and rock every day of the year, so I'm not in shape to do this none stop all day. I only have about 60' to go and we can lay the drip and plastic mulch.

That's just one project. We replaced out hot water heater Saturday. Yesterday we worked on some more of the final details on that project. Though technically, I'm not part of that project, I still have to help at times. Oh, and there are other things, like redoing a flower bed in front of the house. That has been weeks in the doing. Still, when something is finished, it's wonderful. Yesterday, almost every time I walked down our hall, I stopped to admire the hot water heater, that it was functioning and not leaking 

[chrysanthemum]

180 feet of sweet potatoes. Wow!

I’m definitely one who likes to admire a project once it’s done. We recently repaired some leaky shut off valves in our laundry room, and for several days one or the other of us would just comment how nice it was to have the valves fixed. A big component of that, of course, was that it enabled us to use our washing machine which we hadn’t been able to operate for a while when the leaks grew too significant.

My husband has had some vacation time from work the last few days, and I’ve given the children and myself a break from homeschooling. We have moved LOTS of organic matter to our new raised beds to begin the mini-hugelkultur. We started with a large pile of dead oleander trimmings that we couldn’t use for mulch (toxic compounds can make it dangerous to chip or shred, but it’s okay to compost), then added lots of rotten wood and associated soil. We also had a huge pile of shredded palm leaves that we used. My husband mowed what grass we have and added those trimmings, and we emptied a 55-gallon barrel where we had rotted down tons of thistles for weeks. I had been assuming that I would use the the thistle tea diluted with water to feed plants, but I haven’t needed to surface water my garden much because of so much rain, so the barrel kept rotting and stinking, and this was a great chance to soak the rotten wood with some nice nitrogen rich sludge! We also added a few very fresh greens on top this morning such as pokeweed and hackberry leaves that we trimmed from a fence line. This afternoon we chipped a huge pile of cedar branches and began covering the pathways around the beds. We ran out of time to finish, though, but I’m very pleased with the start we got on the beds. It’s not the neatest at the moment, but I’m very satisfied with the progress.