GREEN ZINNIAS

THis is the REAL COLOR! THey are beautifully green!

Claudia, Iris: I HEAR YA!!! Actually, it is a comfort, a GREAT COMFORT to me to know that other gardeners that I respect had a crummy yield this year. You would THINK with all the rain!! That it would have been the B*E*S*T Y*E*A*R E*V*E*R! Ya know??

But I feel like I have been overlooky; the one thing that I have got in spades this year is FLOWERS. In fact, this year I had the first TRIUMPH ever at growing GREEN ZINNIAS. I have planted many of the new, green flowers many times (particularly the green gladiolas) and every time, because of our limestone alkaline soil or the hot temperatures or something, they always bloomed YELLOW. I have planted green zinnias for three years without ever seeing one.

See how the GREEN really offsets the OTHER colors?

But THIS year, I again planted the green zinnias, and at least three and maybe as many as five perfectly green zinnia plants have thrived!! (Plus lots of other colors, naturally!) It makes my fingers ITCH to cut them and use them in vases (because they are GREEN!) but mostly I restrain myself, because there aren’t that many.

The package the FUNCTIONAL green zinnias came in was the Renee’s Garden Green-and-Orange zinnia package, and the orange ones are magnificent also, a pale orange like orange sherbet.

And ALSO in my OVERLOOK-Y-NESS, I didn’t mention that I planted OKRA really late (because I suck, not for any horticultural reason) in like MID-JULY, and they are doing very well, and I MIGHT get a freezer full of okra out of them YET! (I also planted seven pepper plants and five fall tomatoes, but they are all stunted and miserable from the heat, even though I water. I mean, I will PROBABLY get some fall tomatoes, but it isn’t going to be spectacular and it might be a bust.) So far, I have only gotten three pods, but they are looking strong and healthy!

One of seven Okra plants

Bouganvilla

At least this Bouganvilla is doing OKAY!

At the end of the long, not-as-hot-as-usual-but-it-sure-has-been-hot-lately summer, everything in my garden looks like….shit. Yeah, even with the mulch. The garden, now in it’s tenth year, has never been less productive; this year I got like one bucket of tomatoes, TWO (TWO!!!!) cucumbers (off, I dunno, 12 vines?) a handful of jalapenos, and a LOT of basil. But that is it. There is NO QUESTION that the money I spent on watering would have been better spent BUYING vegetables from the Farmers Market.

What gives?

I am thinking the my soil is getting tired, despite the CONTINUAL composting. I am not sure what to do!! Should I take a season OFF and re-dig and amend my beds? Should I let the ground lie fallow for a year? I am pretty sure that PART of my problem is BUGS; the pests just ruin everything. If I don’t plant these delicious, edible garden crops for a year or a season, will the pests go AWAY? The spider mites have been out of control for YEARS now, closely followed by the stink bugs.

Well, it is depressing! Plus, I know that if I take a year off, the Bermuda Grass will take over everything again, and I will have to start over again FROM SCRATCH; It will be a weeding nightmare.

On the OTHER hand, the bugs die in the winter, so if I am going to take a season OFF, maybe it should be the buggy SPRING. Stupid Bugs!!!

Actual Photos of MULCHING

OMIGOD BEHOLD THE DEPTH OF THE MULCH

It doesn’t GET more exciting than this!! Photos of MULCHED BEDS !!!

Happy Mulched Zinnias around the mailbox

MULCH MILLIONAIRES!

THE GIGANTIC PILE OF MULCH

Let’s talk about MULCH. What is it? It is usually ground up wood, pine needles, or, in some climates, chopped up leaves. Mulch is placed around the bases of plants and shrubs (and even trees) to keep moisture from evaporating out of the soil, and to discourage weeds.

Now, I have read in gardening books that deal with DESIRABLE gardening climates, that one can just cram wet fallen autumn leaves around the bases of plants to discourage weeds, about an inch thick, and that does the job JUST FINE.

But here in Central Texas, where you can have summer temperatures hovering around a hundred and ten (like last summer) and sometimes no rain for two years (like Last Summer), my Central Texas Vegetable Gardening book advises: “apply mulch at least 8 inches thick and preferable a FOOT THICK, and use ground up trees because leaves will just dry up and blow away.”

ANOTHER ANGLE ON THE GIGANTIC MULCH PILE

Sadly, the amount of mulch advised is just so much, even though I am CONSTANTLY on the lookout for ground up trees, and I grind up all my OWN trees whenever possible, I have never had anywhere NEAR enough mulch. Laying it on a foot thick, a HUGE garbage can full of mulch (the super huge kind) will only do about a five by five foot bed. So for a garden like mine, I would need like 35 giant garbage cans full.

At Xmas, the City of AUstin gives away all the ground up Xmas trees (to keep them out of the landfill) and we got load after load after load of the ground up Xmas trees, and I STILL used it all up before I got half the garden mulched (and only about 3 inches deep).

SO!

Davey Tree Service was hired by the City to cut down all the tree limbs in the entire city that threatened power lines. We didn’t really have any, but they came and rooted out a ONE foot tall pecan that was growing where they thought it might eventually in 20 years touch the power line. And I was joking around with the Davey Tree guy and I said, ” I don’t suppose you are GIVING AWAY any of that MULCH for FREE?” (from grinding up the limbs, which they were doing) And I was TOTALLY JOKING, because normally the tree trimming companies give you the STINK EYE when you make jests of that nature.

And the Davey Tree guy said: “HOW MANY TRUCKFULS WOULD YOU LIKE?”

(and I said. “……………one……………..?”)

And then nothing happened for a week, and I figured he forgot. But then we came home last Friday and there was THE HUGEST PILE OF MULCH in front of our house, the photos don’t do it justice!

And today, the following Wednesday, Dave finished shoveling the TEN THOUSAND TONS of mulch into three piles, no FOUR PILES in the backyard. I have mulched about HALF the garden, too, and I have enough mulch to mulch EVERYTHING A FOOR DEEP!!!  EVERYTHING !!!!

WE ARE MULCH MILLIONAIRES!!!

ALL MOVED TO THE BACKYARD BY DAVE THORNBERRY, SUPERHERO.

Late Gladiolas

My gladiolas didn't bloom this year because, well, I THOUGHT it had rained enough for them, but actually I needed to water them more. So instead of blooming they all just withered. But this week, after the thousand inches of rain we have gotten, a few of my gladiolas have sent up flower shoots! The rain made them top heavy and they were falling over, so I had to put them in this vase. IS IT NOT GORGEOUS???

Gladiolas

This hybrid for some reason reminds me of my Grandmother; it hybridized in my garden, I planted solid colors and over the years they have bred. This one, obviously a hybrid of pink and yellow

A pure yellow

Here are some photos of my miraculous Gladiolas. I planted 50 more gladiola bulbs last week, too. MOST bulbs can’t take the Texas summer here (exceptions being German Iris, Rain-Lilys, and Amaryllis) but I have had luck with Gladiolas even though they generally DON’T do well here.

Here is a white and red and a yellow that you can barely see, behind

I think my “luck” is that I planted them in the only deep soil in my yard (there is one little pocket- I imagine maybe it is where are outhouse was a hundred years ago, that would explain the DEPTH of the soil there when everywhere else it is one inch deep.)

So if you plant these, plant them in deep, good soil, if you have any. I should mention, these aren’t blooming NOW, these bloom in the early summer. I just planted the BULBS now.

This insanely showy one is another hybrid, this time between yellow and purple

Flowering Shrubs that Adore the Brutal Climate of Central Texas

PLUMBAGO! This plant is low to the ground, generally, usually a foot or two high only. Plumbago loves the heat the sun the drought the shade. Plumbago LOVES TEXAS!

Typically, one one’s BLOG one posts pictures of blooms that are happening in real time, so I want to stress that these are pictures from last summer. But the time to PLANT these blooming shrubs is coming up, so I thought as an assist to gardening readers I would post about them NOW.

Plumbago is available at every nursery in town all year round, because damn, does this plant ever like it here! You can literally plant it anytime, though it is best to wait until after the January freezes (it looks like we are going to get a freeze tonight, as a matter of fact.)

Pride of Barbados will TAKE OVER YOUR FLOWERBEDS if you let it, it propagates like crazy. All you have to do, though, is pull up any unwanted babies, they pull right out off the ground.

PRIDE OF BARBADOS grows to be 4 to 5 feet tall, but its branches are thin and its leaves tiny, so it doesn't shade other flowers out that are planted nearby

Both of these plants die back in a freeze, and grow out again from the roots in the spring, which is AWESOME because that way they kind of stay the same size from year to year once they get reasonably big. So you can still plant zinnias and poppies, etc, around them and get the full effect of many colors. Also the red and orange of the Pride of Barbados contrasts beautifully with the pale blue of the Plumbago.

Blooms

Fluffy Poppies

The Cilantro Quandary

Giant Pile of Cilantro!

Probably somewhere (Mexico?) the salsa ingredients Tomato, Onion, Hot Peppers, and Cilantro ALL GROW AT THE SAME TIME. You know, so you can MAKE SALSA by using the ingredients in your own garden. In our wacky modern age, Texans get the ingredients for salsa at the HEB and give nary a thought to it, because most people are completely oblivious to what grows where when.

But in actuality, in Central Texas, hot peppers and tomatoes ripen in the “warm season” (May-November) and onions and cilantro can only be grown in the “cool season” (November-March) Because of this, it is not possible to make fresh salsa from your own garden, except for like ONE DAY in April.

Now, onions can be dried and stored, so they aren’t as problematic in a temporal sense; but cilantro cannot be dried, it must be fresh or it loses its flavor. How Can One Possibly Solve this Quandary?

What you do is, you pick all the leaves off the stems. It is not hard and doesn't take all that long either. This is a restaurant skill that you learn like the FIRST WEEK you work in a kitchen, it is really quite simple.

The solution I have come to is this: I pick the cilantro at the peak of it’s perfection (it goes to seed quickly) and de-stem and FREEZE it. This is the G*R*E*A*T*E*S*T solution ever, because then you have “fresh” homegrown organic Cilantro for all your Mexican, Indian and Thai dishes. (The frozen cilantro leaves must be used in cooked or “cooked-ish” preparations like salsa, soups and curry; it won’t work in Thai Beef Salad or any dish where it absolutely HAS TO be raw.)

Here I have put the leaves into ONE freezer bag, and the STEMS into another, for the making of vegetable stock

I always put in into a gallon sized zippy bag, in a thinnish layer. That way when you need some, you can just break off a piece, like breaking off a piece of Peanut Brittle.

It stays a nice, bright green for a long time, too.

Double Digging: or, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME

This is the area I need to Double-Dig. At the far end you see the pathetically small cube of a hole we managed to dig in 8 hours.

I was reading somewhere in my swirling vortex of perpetual reading (it is really rather like a tornado of printed words, except for IT LASTS FOREVER) about a group of Austinites who volunteer to spend their weekends DOUBLE-DIGGING gardens for people who cannot do it for themselves. This group is called THE GREEN CORN PROJECT.

When I started gardening, like a decade ago, in my CRAP SOIL urban CALICHE gravel-pit yard, I read up on Double Digging, and you know, it sounded really great. Like WOW, what a great way to make your garden be AWESOME! What it is is this: You dig all the soil out of a reasonable part of your garden (like say a 4 foot X 4 foot area), and you dig it rather deep (I forget, but like 2 feet deep or more). You pile the dirt on the ground.

THEN, you dig ANOTHER 4 X 4 foot area, and this time, you pile the dirt into the hole you already dug. Repeat until the whole garden has been double-dug, and then, in the last hole, you put the ORIGINAL dirt that you piled on the ground.

NOW, your garden will be super radically awesomely great and your plants will be able to grow deep roots, PLUS, it has all been “aerated” with oxygen which stimulates the soil organisms that feed your plantios.

Awesome, right?

A scientific image of DOUBLE-DIGGING instructions from the internet

Except, I dug about a six inch CUBE and I said to myself:  TOO. HARD.

And I lay my trowel aside and mopped my red-faced brow. (TROWEL? TROWEL you say? Yes. Because my soil is so hard and full of gravel and stones that a regular shovel, where you step on it, it doesn’t GO IN!!! So you kind of have to scrape the dirt with a trowel…sideways. Have I mentioned that my soil is SUB-PAR?)

So, what I did was, I went for the “Raised Bed” style of gardening, where I just pile like a metric TON of compost on the crappy ground and grow stuff in the compost. And it has worked well for me, mostly.

But last year and the year before, I just COULD NOT get anything (besides spinach) to grow in my two sunniest beds. And really, these beds should be my very BEST beds. Windy, well-drained, sunny….but instead all the plants I planted there were stunted and withered and did not produce. AT ALL.

So I thought: “Hey..if these VOLUNTEERS at the Green Corn Project are willing to spend their precious weekends double-digging for strangers, I can certainly do it for my own stupid self!”

I mean REALLY, right?

The Dirt that Was Removed. THIS IS A LOT OF DIRT!!

So, enlisting the help of my husband, I set aside a WHOLE DAY to double-dig these two beds. Except, I was going to do even BETTER than double digging. These beds are FULL of gravel, the soil is virtually solid gravel, with this greasy, horrible gray clay underneath. So, my plan was to SCREEN the dirt, get the gravel out, and return the soil sans gravel.

And you know what? We did it. Over a period of TWO DAYS, we dug, screened and double dug…..

A TWO FOOT BY TWO FOOT CUBE.

That soil was so made out of solid caliche that Dave had to get out the DIGGING BAR, a twenty pound rod of solid iron, and use it to break up the rock. We removed something like a dozen gigantic buckets of gravel.

The horrible greasy clay was the worst part: the consistency of Colby cheese, it had to be grated through the screen LABORIOUSLY in a mind-numbingly LENGTHLY process. OUR BACKS ACHED, our arms trembled.

Torrential rains were promised for the weekend, so, instead of continuing on and double digging the entire area (which apparently will take…..8X3X2….48 solid hours...6 straight 8 hour days!!!!!!) we had to shovel the screened soil back into the hole, so it wouldn’t wash away.

The Pathetic Hole. Actually, it is deeper than it looks....but it is still only about a THIRD of ONE bed.

(The Torrential Rains have come, too!  AND WHILE I AM ON THE SUBJECT:

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE LOCAL TV METEOROLOGISTS? On the news tonight, there they were, grinning away like GOONS, saying INSULTINGLY MINDLESS sentences like “Oh, too bad about the rain, maybe we can salvage a little of the weekend blah blah blah, rain= bad amirite?…” Dave and I stared at one another, aghast, and Dave said:

“HOW GODDAM SHORT ARE THEIR MEMORIES?”

I mean, seriously, we just came out of the Worst Drought In Recorded History!!  The Wort Drought in NON-Recorded history!!  According to TREE rings, the Worst Drought in, what, 6000 years?!?!?!!? SIX THOUSAND YEARS!!!

And these Blockheads, these Dunderheads, these…these……facile, empty-headed morons are COMPLAINING about RAIN?!?!?!

Honestly, do most American think FOOD comes out of the Replicator or something? We all eat FOOD! Food requires RAIN. Rain is much, much more than some kind of impediment to your goddam golf game.

(What I wouldn’t give for a TV meteorologist who isn’t some kind of COMPLETE KNOW-NOTHING.)

Where was I?

The Double-Digging shall continue, when the weather permits. I will keep you ABREAST of  DEVELOPMENTS! But the verdict still is: You Have Got to be Kidding Me, This Is the Hardest Thing In the World, I Need Like Thirty Volunteers To Help Me Do This.

THE gorgeous, gorgeous double-dug (portion of a) bed.