Not too long ago my wife and I got a change of plans handed to us. She is about to become a Doctor, and with those letters after her name came a residency program. New town, new job, new lifestyle. We are moving to Austin and in a splurge of urban desire, took an apartment (wtf?) downtown on 5th street; land of the hip, cool, and plant challenged.
So no more gardening for us, we will soon be relegated back to orchids in the window, and a basil plant if we're lucky.
The bright side is that we're moving to downtown Austin, I mean, DOWNTOWN AUSTIN!!! We can't wait. The excitement is palpable over here.
I'm leaving the blog up until the domain registration expires, just in case anyone searches and finds something of any value in here. I will keep checking in on all of the other gardeners around whom I have stumbled upon over the last year or so. It's been real.
If you desire to find out where I am at and what I am doing, you can find me on my other blog for Austin wedding and portrait photography. Lots of great wedding, bridal, engagement and portrait photography there. Well Hell, since we're just throwing links around like it's no tomorrow, if you would like to visit my client site for Austin Wedding Photography, it's in the keyword laden link midway through this sentence you are currently reading. :0)
Ciao!
Eric
Thursday, May 7, 2009
fin
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Rule number 1 of skunk fight club: There is NO skunk fight club
Have you ever heard two skunks do battle?
And I don't mean some little hair pulling match, I mean each skunk intends to leave the other skunk for dead, to stink to high heaven, literally. A skunk death duel.
Well last night a skunk demanded satisfaction.
At... you guessed it, four in the morning we woke to the most horrible sound ever heard, EVER. Think donkey being fed into a sausage grinder... yeah, that's about right. There were shreaks, snarls, scratches, hisses, and howls.
First thought upon waking from what was the tail end of a fill-your-cart shopping spree (in my mind's idea of the ideal store comprised of beer, cameras, music equipment, tools, and fried food, all set to club lighting, with lingerie models serving champagne) was, "SHIT, something large is being gravely injured on the other side of this window next to my head."
And just like some 80's "B" horror movie, I saunter outside in my underwear to inquire. If I were some nameless extra I would have been a dead man.
Right as I am rounding the corner of the carport I see the ensuing match. I never thought I would see the real life version of the looney tunes tasmanian devil dust tornado. But there it was: two skunks goin' at it Fight Club style.
Now lets pause for a bit to let this moment soak in while I remind you of some facts:
Weird shit happens at four in the morning.
I am standing three feet from and have just startled two very agitated and infuriated adult skunks.
None of the present party knows what the Hell is going on.
I am mostly naked.
WOW!!! Tense huh?
So I make quick for the door just as one of the little buggers figures he'll pick a fight with me since I just broke up the last bout. He starts running after me as I am clumsily and sleepily lurching for safety. It was last second. It was skin of the teeth. It was threading the needle. The door closed right as the skunk was turning around to spray me (I know it, I didn't see it, but I know it). I survived. The only smell coming off of me is the smell of relief. Oh, and relief smells a lot better than the alternative.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
End of Season Tally: Carrots 13 lb 1 oz.
Too warm now to get any more carrots going, so I'm calling this crop closed for the year. It was a pretty good haul. Market value, however, is low on carrots so in comparing to store bought, it ended being about break even to pay for the seeds if we completely disregard the added benefits of doing it ourselves. We have more seeds for this coming winter as a plus. Mine were not big carrots, mostly around 5-6 inches with a bunch of teeny ones, but that is fine by me since we're more concerned with flavor. I don't know where those gargantuan carrots come from that show up in the grocery store but they scare me and don't have the great taste I am now accustomed too. Mine may have superior taste and texture, but I will freely admit that in an all out carrot lobbing fight, I would not stand a chance.
We used little space for carrots and didn't overdo it at all, making just the right amount for our needs. It has been a great addition to the cole slaw we have been making from all the cabbage Susie planted (I say Susie, because I would not have planted cabbage).
I have to say there is nothing quite like eating a carrot fresh from the ground. You don't know carrots until you have had garden fresh carrots. Moist and sweet, a far cry from what comes in the stores.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The little pepper that could
Sometimes your garden will surprise you. Last fall we trimmed our bell peppers down to stumps to plant a very quick green bean crop before winter frosts arrived. Rather than pull them out, we decided to cut them to stumps to let the roots break down in the raised bed rather than the compost pile; you know, lazy gardeners, less to carry around. Well we weren't all that surprised to see them leaf back out after the severe pruning. This development was shrugged off as we were sure the winter would do them in. Weeks later we also shrugged off the flowering and later the setting of fruit thinking that winter would end the charade. So off we go, wandering around Europe for a few winter weeks and we return to some decent looking bell peppers. Winter bell peppers?
We routinely had temperatures drop several degrees below freezing during this time. The freezes wiped out the green beans, wiped out most everything else that shouldn't survive freezing temperatures. Yet this guy kept chuggin' along, looking absolutely ragged, but still doing his business. I should add it got no direct sun. I know that peppers can be kept as a 2 year plant that won't do all that much its second year, but even now I marvel at its fruit production. I've decided this dude is officially "out to pasture". I am not going to pull it up until the very end. It's earned its last happy days and can let me know when it's ready for the great compost pile in the sky.
So here we are, it's February, and we are about to harvest some bell peppers from a tiny stump of a plant that is now almost a year in the ground. Ain't life grand? Now we can have summer salad, in February.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Spring is HERE!!!
More or less it seems. Yesterday it hit 80 degrees, the grass is greening, as you know the peach tree is blooming, no more frosts in the immediate future (crosses fingers). I guess this means winter is winding down. So here is the scoop from the garden.
The peach tree is now in full bloom and feeding the bees. Last night we had some hail and there doesn't appear to be much damage to the blooms, so i think we are good for maybe setting some fruit. Of course, this hinges on not having any more frosts; possible, but still not a sure thing. We have decided to prune it to make more of a yard piece than a fruit bearing tree. This means rather than a squat, easy to pick from tree that is more of a bush, we will have something akin to a smallish Bradford Pear. It will still bear fruit, but it will just look better. We are doing this in anticipation of selling the house later this year. 
So far this year we have harvested almost 7 pounds of broccoli from about a dozen plants. I absolutely love broccoli. Raw, steamed, boiled, dried and used in soups, it is all wonderful. We had staggered the set in for the broccoli plants and have harvested regularly since December. The greatest thing about broccoli is the continued floret production after the main harvest. These little guys will shoot up for weeks after you take the main stalk and they are the perfect, no fuss, size for use. NO PREP!!!!
Lettuce is the Shiznit! 4ft by 4ft of garden space dedicated to lettuce and sundry greens will feed two people well all winter in the south. We have not been weighing our lettuce but we eat several salads a week from it without worry. No matter how much we cut from it the patch seems to fill back in quickly. Here is a shot of the patch:
Several different kinds of cut and come again are in there, some spinach, and boc choi, of course. You'll notice the front of the patch is co-planted with onions. I wish I could say this was a well thought out plan for quick succession planting from crop to crop to let the lettuce and turnips mature while the onions didn't need much space, but in reality this was done because we overbought onion starts and ran out of room to put them all in.
I need to do a post just on boc choi. I am so enamored with this green. When we got back from Europe in mid January we found our boc chois blooming and the bees working it hard. We left them there for the bees during the day and would harvest greens from the plant during the evenings. No bitterness from the age or warmer weather. It is the dream plant. If only we could grow it during a 105 degree summer. 
The onions are on their way, but still need some weeks before we can start to harvest them. Here is hoping the weather does not warm up too quickly and leave us with a bunch of small onions for harvest. This happened to us last year with an early January set in time. So this season we set in mid december to get a head start on the spring time heat. That will be the last crop from the winter garden.
We haven't gotten going with spring planting yet, but should in the coming weeks. Planning for spring in Texas is such an iffy proposition. For one, you don't know how long the frosts will keep coming. This can delay your planting time in the spring directly or may keep your space tied up with lingering winter plants. Two, you don't know how quickly things will heat up. This can cause a crash in an onion crop or early bolting, or whatever. Third, you don't know how these first two issues will cooperate with each other. It is not uncommon to have a frosty morning end with t-shirt weather by the end of the day here. Just the same your "starting to feel the heat" 80's February day can turn into an ice storm in a matter of hours. Fun stuff I tell ya. Plants get confused during this time, very confused.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Umm, it's late January, and my peach tree is budding
This kind of kills our chances of fruit this year, which sucks. That is, unless the weather just happens to stay nice and pleasant for the rest of the winter, which is unlikely. I read up on pruning and started today with the superfluous branches to remake my triple branch pattern. In a week or so I will be taking back the top growth and selecting which fruiting branches to work with. Here is a good link for peach pruning wisdom.
Last year we lost the crop due to a late frost in April that came with a hail storm, busted most of the buds off the tree and froze those lucky enough to remain. So again this year it looks like the weather has tricked my tree into thinking all's clear.
In related news the mild weather has not served the cabbages well; we lost several to bolting while we were gone. The boc choi we were growing bolted, but still tastes great and feeds the bees as well as the people for now. I am ever amazed at this plant.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
1 lb, 6.5 oz.
Many pleasant surprises greeted us on our return from Europe, this lil' guy included. Five more like him waiting in the wings too. Even some bell peppers jalapenos, and serranos felt the urge to say hideedoo this month and we were more than befuddled when we noticed them on the stumps from last summers peppers, now all in shade and somewhat protected from the cold. More on that and the other comings and goings for the next post.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Merry Christmas from the South
Here is a quick snapshot of the garden this Christmas season. The picture is an infrared image made from my recently converted IR 30D from lifepixel.
The onions just went down, all 700 of them. 1015's, Southern Bell Red, Yellow Granex, Bermuda, Candy Apple Red, Candy, and Big daddy. All were from dixondale farms a local Texas distributor.
There is enough lettuce, spinach, and boc choi to eat a salad on most days, just about all you could ask for. Boc Choi is a recent discovery for the two of us and it has completely revolutionized the way we think about garden to table meal prep. We try to put it in just about anything that will take lettuce or spinach. It grows quickly, and doesn't get overly bitter as the leaves age.
You can also see the cabbage and brassicas in the background.
Not to thumb my nose at all you northern gardeners, but it's nice to do this all year, with a different palate each season to work with.
We just recently purchased a kitchen scale, so please look forward to a running tally on garden production.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
The quick bean crop
One of our raised beds sits between two structures and lies east to west, which means that it becomes pretty useless as the fall progresses and it gets draped in shade. The first year we had the bed we watched to see when it would lose all of its light. It gets half light from early march to mid october, and full light from late march to early september. That's enough for two crops in my book, so after the peppers were cut down, we set in this half bed of green beans to get a quick few side dishes before the bed went to sleep for the winter. It's worked well, as you can see, and the beans are still happy despite the shady situation they now find themselves in. Good for a side of boiled, buttered beans every other day or so. YUM.
We decided to do beans because they are considered a refresher crop and fast to produce. And being nitrogen fixers (inoculated at that), leaving the root nodules in the soil over the winter will do good things for this bed. We planted half of the bed because when the seeds went down, the shade was already beginning to take the southern half of the bed. It doesn't look apparent in this picture, but the beans did most of their growing in full sun.
There are also a few sweet turnips hidden in there that go great raw on salads or boiled with the beans. Plus, the pepper stumps are at it too, giving us a few last chance seranos and maybe some jalapenos too.
Oddly, this bed has not been affected by the pill bug massacre I suffered earlier this year with the spring green beans. With that in mind, the green beans will be back in this bed for the spring run. I think corn will follow after that to close out the season next year.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Pepper Powder: The Anti-Dig
Our recent varmint problems have led us to use repellant as a preventive for further digging, uprooting of young bean plants, turning of freshly seeded carrot plots, etc. Though we have rid ourselves of raccoons for now, we still have the occasional skunk crawling under the fence and feasting on our soil fauna, not cool. The last thing I want to do is trap and relocate a skunk, so repellant it is. We tried two methods, the powdered pepper method winning out for several reasons.
As the raccoon trapping extravaganza was winding down, we tried garlic-pepper tea. For those who haven't heard of this, it is a bunch of hot peppers and garlic blended into water, strained, then placed out on plants and soil. Producing the product proves a difficult task that will leave you with watery eyes. That on top of the cost of the garlic cloves and hot peppers (free for now, but not during the winter months) and it just didn't seem worth it. The yard smelled too... rather bad I should point out. And And And... when using it you will splash yourself, then unknowingly touch your face, not good. So on to plan B.
We found ground cayenne pepper powder for an amazing bulk price and bought a pound of it. After each watering you go out and dust the plants and soil you would like to protect from the grub hunters. No smell, no watery eyes unless its very windy, low cost, and effective.
Both methods require reapplication after watering, but the powder method, lacking in preparation requirements, is the simpler of the two methods.
Last night we watched a skunk saunter up to a bean plant, sniff around the ground, and walk away, YES! We still need to patch up the areas under the fence they are using for entry, but that will take some time. For now, just keeping them away from the beans and carrots is sufficient.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
And they're gone
Well, the traps were returned today, WOOHOO!!!
We caught and relocated 5 raccoons. After two nights of not catching anything, the traps went back to the feed store.
Lessons learned:
They like peanut butter on bread.
Wear gloves! Even in a cage, they will still find a way to scratch at you.
Place the trap on a hard to damage surface, because they will do their damnedest to tear your shit up. This includes grass and up to six inches of soil beneath it.
They like to get caught at FOUR O"CLOCK IN THE MORNING.
They will not get caught until you are fast asleep.
They will not get caught in pairs, just one at a time.
One will not get caught until you have released the other one and just fallen back to sleep.
Don't expect to sleep much when you are trapping.
That road that is completely desolate at 4:00 AM, might just be the busiest sum'bitch at 6:00AM when you have to make a return trip to drop of sis'.
There is no real ideal location for a drop off unless you are semi-rural. If you're in a city, sadly, your problem will become someone else's. This is why we tried to find undeveloped areas nearby streams to maximize the chance of them staying away from homes, but you can only drive so far at FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING.
If I can find some links to actual, practical advice, I will, but the main take home message from my research was:
Don't trap in the spring and early/ mid summer. This is when raccoons will be rearing young, and abandoning young can be fatal for the young as well as the mother, who might make a frantic and dangerous attempt to return. Other than that don't do anything stupid.
We have now had several nights with no losses in the seedling department. Victory is sweet.
And, for all of the four in the morning talk:
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Rocky Raccoon checked into his room... only to find his ASS DEPORTED!
Two down, who knows how many to go.
This is part of a recent eradication project championed by my wife and I. The situation had been worsening, more holes to cover up each morning, torn grass, broken veggie stems, etc. But last night it boiled over. Sometime around 2AM we hear this loud racket and open the front door just in time to see a skunk, two raccoons, and an opossum, nonchalantly saunter out from the back yard, in file, tossing loose nods up to us as if to say, "whah, djoo wanna piece o'me?"
Back Story:
So, I live in what could be politely referred to as...THE GHETTO. Not that I mind this, it is far better than apartment life. But it is the ghetto. Not bad ghetto, as in no hookers on the corner, no gunshots, no murders, just ghetto as in a older low income neighborhood that is starting to show its age. People fix their house when they can, with what they can, making for an eclectic mix of well trimmed, nice houses, corrugated roofs, converted garages, a few bare slabs, a few more bright blue houses, and some dilapidation. These houses are also duplexes.
So my attached neighbors have some problems with good judgment. Would you buy a brand new car, or patch the huge gaping holes in your garage? Well, new car showed up, and huge gaping holes were left alone. Well, all except one that was covered with a dry erase board held in place by an inverted laundry basket. Classy, huh?
I am sure the rest is pretty easy to piece together. Once the holes opened up, the 'coons moved in. For a while things were semi-tolerable. The raccoons would eat occasionally from the yard, hitting up the compost, stealing the cats food, etc. These were things we could work around by covering the compost with leaves and bringing Princess McFurBucket's food inside. But not long ago they found the grubs, and have since made sowing seed virtually impossible. It was the loss of the carrot seedlings and the utter decimation of our quicky green bean crop that brought this whole thing to a head.
So a short drive and deposit later, and I had two have-a-heart traps.
Our first night netted two 'coons, one at midnight and one early this morning, which is why I am up blogging right now. We relocated them outside of town, near several creeks and streams. We can still hear a few more up the rafters scratching, but once we get them all out mothballs and some clever partitioning (oddly absent from the shoddy original build job) should keep them away, we hope. If not, at least the traps are not all that expensive to rent. Sadly though, they will still be able to live in our neighbors' side, just not ours, so regular trapping might have to occur.
Fare the well, Rocky 1 and Rocky 2. I will drop off your brothers and sisters tonight or later this week.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Today we dry basil
This stuff is always a treat during the wintertime. It is great in soups. We shoot for having several jars of dried basil before the first frosts take out the plants. This year we will exceed that and have plenty to spare. So for now we are going to have to eat plenty of pesto and let the rabbits have the rest. Oh yeah, rabbits LOVE basil. Of all we feed them from the garden, they will hit the basil first. Over carrots even.
Basil is just one of those plants everyone should grow. You don't need much space, soil, water, nutrients, etc. It just grows. As easy as it is to grow I am continually astounded by the prices our grocers charge for fresh basil. It boggles the mind when you feed 20 bucks (super overpriced grocery value) worth of basil to the bunnies. If you have sunlight, soil, or even a pot, grow basil.
We use an Excalibur dehydrator for this. Six or so hours at 120 degrees and the whole house smells like basil, yummm.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Whoa, it's been a while
My most humble of apologies for not posting more often. It never fails, right around late summer, the garden gets busy, and that is where we have been. The summer garden is out and the fall / winter garden is going in currently. Fun times and we can't wait for the winter harvests. Since this is a pretty hard edged transition and our production is nil, we decided it was a good time to get a scale and start keeping track of our urban farms output. I know, shoulda'ben done sooner.
What's for dinner this fall:
Snow peas, Atitlan, Johnny's seeds
Broccoli, Romanesco, Seed Saver's
Snap Peas, Amish variety, Seed Saver's
Bush Bean, Purple Queen,
Pea, Green Arrow, Seed Saver's
Various Spinaches, lettuces, hybrid and true lines, too numerous to list
Turnip, Hakurei F1, Johnny's
Carrot, Hercules F1, Johnny's
Onion, Rosa Lunga di Firenze
Beet, Touchstone Gold, Johnny's
Surely some others, but our seed box is in serious disarray and I am tired of looking through it.
We also put down numerous starts of cauliflower, broccoli, bok choy, cabbage, brussel sprouts, etc.
The beans will go once we have a frost, but should give us plenty of side dishes until that happens, and then the peas can take over, as they will most likely sulk a bit until we stop hitting the 90's. Turnips and beets are going in single lines until everything stops for a few weeks in January and February. Onion starts will come in January; we plan to purchase several hundred this year. Still need to get some garlic in the ground, just waiting on a few more peppers to produce a bit.
I'm guessing it will be a productive garden this coming winter. In preparation for an impending vehicle sale, we have really been dumping the compost on the garden like it's going out of style. Once the truck is gone we are on our own with no way to just swing on down the road and pick up a yard of compost. Sigh, it's ok, I'm ok, everything will be ok. Wait, what...
To digress a bit, I'm gonna miss my truck, it serves us well and got a lot of use AS A TRUCK, not just a large version of a minivan; I swear, Texas is like that. It hauled compost, helped build our garden, got us to some wicked places in Big Bend, helped me steal countless bags of leaves from my neighboors. But it must go. Goodbye Lurlene, goodbye.
And if anyone is interested in a shiny red '02 Ranger, lemme know. Picture of it in service here.
Anyhow, we are wrapping up the pepper pickling and hot pepper jelly making. The jelly is really effing good, and hot too. It hits you fast and then mellows with the sugar in the jam as well as the cream cheese it's served with; it's a very pleasant taste. With all of the jelly, strawberry preserves, pickled peppers, and dried herbs we have made/harvested, the gift giving season will be tasty, and mostly free, except for the grunt work, but that is what makes these gifts special.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
End of season Mandala
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we got rid of the peppers recently in preparation of the winter garden vegetables (lucky southerners, I know). We had a lot of peppers to pick as some of the plants had grown over six feet tall.
Some lessons learned:
A family of two only needs one serrano plant, not six.
Sometimes the worst soil might be too rich for peppers. We had some bells out in the vegescape and maybe got two fruits off of five plants, too much nitrogen from the nearby bunny poop mulched rose bush, which rocked it this year. They looked beautiful though, huge green leaves, tall as your faithful writer, etc. Just no fruit. We had set them in on a bed of rock phosphate but that didn't get the balance right.
Ladybugs like pepper plants, Yippee!
Peppers handle the heat far better than tomatoes and tomatillos, neither of which did anything for us after June.
You cannot live off of peppers, though the garden may try and convince you of this.
Friends are a great help with a pepper surfeit.
Japanese cucumbers look suspiciously like sex toys.
