April Garden Update 2011

It is hard to be excited about the garden after it was smashed by hail on April 14th, but ~2 weeks later, it is nice to see how well it has recovered.



The purple heart is blooming, but the leaves are all beaten up. This used to fill the garden near the Cottonwood tree, but the chickens love to scratch in this area so most of the purple heart has been killed off. It still hangs on in the area right around the tree and I know it will refill the garden over the course of the season.



My 'Paprika Yarrow" is growing and blooming nicely. It has spread some, and I hope it will fill the whole area of the flower bed.



My Swiss Chard survived!

It is battered and beaten, but it lives on... phew. Of all of the plants, this one seemed to take the worst beating from the hail.


I planted four varieties of chard this year. The red is "Rhubarb Chard", it is the most scraggly of the bunch and has the poorest performance.

The large yellow is... umm the strongest variety... bu I will need to check my garden journal for the actual name.



The pale white stems were Fordhook Giant. It has the second best performance and seemed to withstand the hail better than the others (could be location too, it is near the mint and may have gotten some protection from that).



The small yellow stems at the front are Fantasia Chard. It is doing fairly well, probably ranks third out of four varieties.

Scattered through the gardens are German Camomile

(the ferny light green plants near the hose). I bought this as a single 4" pot from Northhaven Gardens and there were hundreds of seedlings in the pot. I was able to carefully break the cluster of seedlings apart and planted them all over the place. They seem to be doing great this year. Camomile is a medicinal herb and the flowers are harvested for a calming tea, it can also be used to lighten hair color.



This awful picture is the red amaranth I planted. Amaranth is a grain and ornamental and will grow to five feet tall according to the seed packet. I planted to varieties, but only the red seems to have germinated (no sign of the Golden Amaranth)

The amaranth is over seeded in my asparagus bed. The poor asparagus just limps along.

I saw a few spears, less than 10 and definitely did not harvest any. This is New Jersey Giant (?) planted last year from ugly dried out roots. I need to get a real start of asparagus from my mom. Her patch of asparagus is about 15 years old, and completely untended it has produced more asparagus than she could eat this spring.



The snow peas are starting to produce, it has been too hot for them to really do well. These peas are from my spring planting. The winter peas I planted all froze out in one of our ice storms this winter.



My spinach did not freeze this winter and it has been a great producer. This short little three foot row has kept us in spinach since about February. Unfortunately, due to the heat it has started to bolt. I keep pinching off the tops, but it keeps sending up new ones.



My poor tomatoes. Most of the main plants were damaged by the hail, but most have grown back from the roots.



The squash looks great. Strongest by far is the zucchini (black beauty)



Weird angle on this photo, but the first hill of squash along the fence is zucchini, then yellow crookneck squash (poorest performance), then a hill of the mixed squash (same mix I grew the last two years with excellent results).
The squash mix has already bloomed.

Last is the dead out hill of cucumbers. The four plants I had were completely obliterated by the hail and did not grow back.



Brussel sprouts... I have no idea. Is this what they are supposed to look like? When do they produce sprouts? I suspect that they already made the sprouts and they are now just getting leggy. A few weeks ago, I noticed very loose leaf clusters forming along the main stem of the plant, but they never resembled brussel sprouts to me. It may just be too hot to grow these here. Too bad.




My lovely Red Lasoda potatoes are growing great and I spotted the first few blooms a few days ago.



I only bought 2.5lbs of seed potatoes this year, I wish I had bought more to fill the whole section of garden. I waiver between wanting to try lots of varieties and also wanting to grow huge quantities of what I know will do well.



The beans are blooming. I planted three varities: Jade Bush, Black Valentine, and Blue Lake. It seems that my three bean mix from previous years did better, but it could also just be the weird weather this year that is causing them to grow so slowly.



Jerusalem Artichokes are coming up everywhere. I have replanted from this patch, taken a 5 gallon bucket full of plants to my MIL, and still they keep sprouting. Silly me for moving these spreading weeds to three different areas of my veggie garden over the years. Oh well, if I have to deal with an noxious spreading plant, I'm at least happy this is an edible noxious spreading plant... and it blooms very prettily in the fall, like little sunflowers. I kind of have a love hate relationship with this veggie, mostly I love it, but boy can it be a pain.



Speaking of noxious spreading plants, yikes my mint is going nuts. This little 4" pot purchased in 2009 now covers a huge swath of my garden. I find little mint plants popping up 10 feet away from the parent plant... all connected by a pencil thick root system. I'm happy to weed it, it smells pretty and I have been replanting it in tricky areas of the yard where nothing else seems to grow. The kids like to pick handfuls of leaves to sniff.



New to me this year is corn. I have never planted corn before, claiming I did not have the space, but hubby got me a huge variety pack of heirloom seeds this year and I did want to try something new.



Plus pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins... we had about 10 pumpkins to decorate this Halloween and after the holiday, they were carried around the yard by the kids, dog and squirrels. This spring, pumpkin seeds are popping up everywhere. In the garden,

on the path

by the garage door (where we walk all the time)



in the lawn... I'm going to try and let most of them grown (apart from where they will get mowed or stomped) in the wild areas of the garden. It would be fun to have lots of pumpkins, but I'm not counting on them to do great. Last year, I allowed a volunteer pumpkin to take over a huge area of my garden and it only produced one small pumpkin.

Overall, the spring garden is doing well, despite the cold to hot to cold weather and hail. My tendency this year was to plant lots of varieties of plants, but not huge quantities of any one kind (except tomatoes, I have a full section: 9 plants of tomatoes). I will see how it works out for me. Right now, I'm wishing I had planted more potatoes and less winter stuff (beets, broccoli, radishes, carrots--all doing poorly and taking up room). It is hard not to be distracted by all the pretty seed packet descriptions. It is all a learning experience. Like every year, late April and May are the glory days of the garden. Plenty of rain, not too hot, not too cold, everything growing great, it is hard not to be excited.

What the Hail?

Spring in Texas usually means unpredictable weather, and true to form, we got that last night...

April 14th, 2011



At about 10:30 I woke up to a big storm and the rain sounded heavier than usual.



Sure enough, it was hail that was pounding down on our roof. The black line through the yard is a full sized 1 inch garden hose.




Most of the hail was marble sized



Some was even golf ball sized (this one had melted a bit, but you can see how big it was).



In just a few minutes it had covered our yard in ice





As soon as the hail stopped (and I made sure our family, critters and house were safe) I rushed out to my garden to survey the damage.



Poor squash, poor tomatoes



my swiss chard looked more like swiss cheese


This morning, April 15th, I woke up to see that there was STILL ice on the ground.




As of 7:30 this morning when I left the house, there was still a solid covering of ice in our yard. Our whole neighborhood looked about the same with shredded leaves covering the ground, limbs down and a mess everywhere. Less than 2 miles away at the kids daycare was a completely different picture, just a nice damp 'after spring shower' glow to the gardens and trees. Sigh.



I'm thankful that it was not worse for us than it was. The storm only lasted about 10 minutes before it blew over, but those 10 minutes were spent with me running helplessly from window to window trying to see what was happening (yes, I know, standing by a glass window with giant icy projectiles hurtled toward it was not a good idea).

In the daylight, my garden looked even worse than the night before



tomatoes were snapped off,



the formerly regal looking mullein was in tatters



oddly, the potatoes looked great... I am keeping up hope that after our sunny and 70 degree day today the rest of plants will perk up and recover nicely.


Or maybe a trip to the garden center is in order



Yep, typical spring in Texas.

Potatoes Mulch layer 1

On April 4th, the potato plants were up enough for me to add the first layer of hay mulch.



Here is one of the little potato sprouts.



I noticed that the blue potatoes I planted later than the rest (March 5) were up first. They were also a lot leggier when I planted them.

Potatoes In -- March 3

This morning before work, boy and I planted the seed potatoes into the cold ground. It was 35 degrees with a coating of frost on everything, but we have 60 degrees forecast for today, so I did not feel too bad about breaking through the frost layer to plant the potatoes. Yes, frozen ground, I've never had to deal with this in Texas before--it's that dern global warmin' I tell ya!

My seed potatoes were purchased about a month ago. I got 3 lbs of Red Lasoda from Calloways, I also had another pound or so of Wal-Mart baking potatoes that had sprouted. These potatoes have been hanging out on a platter in my kitchen window for the last few weeks working on sprouting their little eyes.

On March 1st, I carefully cut each seed potato into sections with about 1 strong sprouted eye each. For the potatoes which were fist sized or larger I cut into thirds, smaller than fist sized I cut into halves, and for golf ball sized potatoes, I just left to plant whole. I probably could have gotten a few more starts if I had been more ruthless in my cutting, but I don't have much room for potatoes, so my amount worked out just right.

I let the cut potatoes sit, cut side up, on the window for two days to allow a nice scab to form over the cuts. The theory is that this scab will prevent the potato from rotting in the ground. I did not let the cut potatoes scab over last year and they did just great. I have also heard you can dust the potatoes with powdered sulphur to prevent rot, but I've not gone that far yet.

The potatoes are tucked neatly into their potato coffins and hopefully ready to grow with the warmer sunny weather that is forecast for us.

The boy was helping me plant this morning, he said "These are seed potatoes, we will plant them and they will grow into BIIIGGGG mashed potatoes!"

Potato Patch reborn

This weekend I cleaned out what was left in the potato section of the bed. When originally planted, this section held 6 rows of potatoes, 5 rows of onions and 1 row of scallions.
See how pretty and orderly it is on April 15th?

The potatoes quickly out grew their rows, tipped over, and kept growing some more. Oh and at some point (April 18th), I decided to stick 5 more tomato plants into the same little area...
April 26th

As if this were not all crowded enough, my composted pumpkin from last year started to sprout in the same area and had set fruit before I was able to tear it out...


Mix in a wild spattering of Jeurasalem artichokes and it made for a section so dense that the onions were completely shaded out. I planted over 150 onions in this section and have only found fewer than 50, most of which are just golf ball sized. The shallots grew a little bit, and I do plan to replant them now that the potatoes are done.

This weekend, I was able to harvest another 4.5 lbs of potatoes, Kennebec White and a few reds that I missed the first time around. I pulled out the stray Jeurasalem artichokes, used clothesline and t-posts to secure the rest of the Jeurasalem artichokes, and loosened and raked the soil. I staked up the spindly tomato plants, re-directed the pumpkin vines (more fruit is setting now), and planted 2 Black Beauty eggplants, 1 store bought sweet potato vine, and 1 home sprouted sweet potato (it started growing in my veggie drawer in the pantry). Curtis also cut up 3 store bought potatoes that had sprouted eyes and I planted those along the back fence. So once again, this bed is over crowded, but I just can't help myself.

Boiled Potatoes with Parsley

Boiled Potatoes with Parsley Butter



1.5 lb garden potatoes
2 tbs butter
1 tsp dried garden parsley

Wash and rinse potatoes well. Boil in salted water until tender. Drain water and add butter and parsley to pan. Place back on heat until water evaporates and butter is melted.