A big mess...

We had our first freeze a few weeks ago. Manperson and I heard these really loud sounds outside our bedroom window and thought there is no way they are playing baseball this early on a Saturday morning. We were correct. Our pecan tree had a massive small limb and leaf drop.  The back patio was covered as was anything within 5 to 10 feet with several inches of it. Starting to dislike the pecan tree even more. I know it serves a purpose in keeping the house cool in the summer, but this is the second major mess it is has created. The last time it was a pecan drop all over the patio and the pecans were too early and unhappy enough that is was just another big mess with no reward. Not that I eat pecans much anyway. I know that a lot of the early, sad pecan drop was the stress the tree has been under because of the long-standing drought conditions. But I don't care, the tree is now on my list of too much work. I don't think I will be planting any nut trees anytime soon and if I do they will be of the dwarf variety.

I also regret not pulling out all the tomato plants before it froze. I was just too taken with the tiny green tomatoes and the pretty yellow flowers. They all melted in the freeze which was exactly why I didn't bother planting any and created and particular ickyness in my raised beds. In the 4x4 bed, the sugar snap peas, nasturtium, swiss chard all didn't make it, on the other hand who knew salad greens were so frost hardy. I'm planning on my vacation from work to totally redo the 4x4 bed and start some new salad greens. Apparently, one can plant them and spinach all through the winter months. I haven't even been watering my ollas. The last time was just before it froze to make sure they didn't break. In the 4x8 bed, the volunteer tomato plants were yet again a pain, along with it's closeness to the pecan tree. I don't know how much time I will need to spend removing leaves from my veggies.  The other unexpected painful plant was the dill, it didn't exactly melt, just keeled over, but greenly still I think I will keep it confined next time. I realized finally that the mystery plant that I have been trying to figure out in the middle of my 4x8 raised bed is not something I planted. On the good front, the cabbage lopers liked it enough to leave some of my other plants alone. On the bad front, they kept other stuff I planted from growing. I'm pulling them all up when I clean up the 4x8 bed. I got one more green harvest out the 4x8 bed with some really tasty rapini. The cauliflower bud does not look happy after the freeze, I think any cauliflower I plant again will either need to be done early or protected from freezes. The hardy greens i.e. kale, collards and mustards as well as the tsoi tsoi, rapini and what is left of the broccoli all made it through just fine. Yay, brassicas, mostly hardy. I have some small broccoli shoots that are growing and hopefully will make it through subsequent freezes. 

I will write more postmortem gardening sum-up  during the winter break including all the new plants I planted in early november, pictures, and future plans.

Updates...

Check out how tall one kind of sugar/snow pea has grown and it is even larger since I took this picture. I'm probably going to totally redo this raised bed for the next growing season since except for the swiss chard and salad greens it mostly produced stuff that I wasn't interested in eating or things that I didn't plant, but are turning out to be plants that I've planned for next summer and new raised beds that I'm going to convince manperson to build. Manperson has his own growing project though. He plans on growing cigar plants and making his own cigars (ambitious, indeed).

Here is a close-up of one of my sugar snap pea plants that is producing what looks and tastes more like snow peas. I really need to read up on these plants since I have more seeds waiting to planting for the next growing season and no idea what went wrong...

I still have no idea what is in the center of this raised bed except that it is painful to touch and the cabbage lopers and snails love it enough to mostly leave my other vegetables except the cauliflower alone. The cauliflower is coming back though after having been mostly decimated and I hope to have a picture of my pretty white cauliflower bud soon.

The big single broccoli plant here seen right after a rain, seems to be one that may not develop side shoots. I heard that I could eat the rest of the plant including the leaves. I'm going to give it two weeks to see if some side shoots develop then try to eat broccoli leaves.

The two broccoli plants that are together promise more broccoli later, there are already side shoots developing...

Here is the most snow peas/sugar snap peas, I've been able to harvest at one time. They are laying mostly on mustard greens and a few swiss chard (gotta plant more swiss chard next time, my 1 plant has been really prolific).

Here are the broccoli finally ready to be cooked and eaten on a bed of mostly collards with a few kale leaves mixed in and 1 mustard green leaf.

A few posts ago, I put a yellow mystery flower on my blog. The "Manperson's" friend D said the plant was a tomato plant, but I didn't plant any tomato plants. I went through all my seeds hoping one of them would explain these plants that were overtaking my raised beds and also popping up in other places in my backyard. I had 12-13 of them just in the raised beds. I recently pulled out two so that my lettuces and spinach had a little more room. I also pulled up some nasturtium which never flowered which was taking room from plants I'm actually willing to eat. It turns out that D was right. I have tomato plants. I didn't plant them so they were either in the soil or birds brought them, who knows. I now have a few with little green tomatoes. It will interesting to see what happens since we are hitting cold season. I wanted to plant tomato plants, but this is not tomato season in Austin according to my planting guides...

Stats so far...

6 salad green meals (3 each for the man and I), and 1 big meal with in-laws

7 baskets of kale, collards, mustard green, red swiss chard, and some random other brassica type greens that I'm not sure of type/name mix

Maybe 2 handfuls of snow peas & sugar snap peas

3 broccoli heads and more on the way

Some of my backyard experiments have failed. I stuck foil around one of my leaf/tree limb compost areas. It made the ligustrum that I thought was dead grow back fairly vigorously, arg! At least the other ligustrum stumps haven't vigorously sprouted again. All in all, I'm super happy with my backyard right now. I used to hate going back there and now I'm sad when it is too dark to really visit with my plants...

Eventually, I will have an update on all the new plants in the backyard. My fabulous mother-in-law took me plant shopping for my recent turkey birthday.

Beautiful Broccoli

So the photos of broccoli that are smaller and left justified are earlier pictures. I have three broccoli plants right now that I know of though I did plant one by seed that is super small right now. The center justified pictures are the newer ones.

Broccoli is so cool when it flowers. It seems to grow a third in size each week.




















They are also cut an come again vegetables. I'm not sure when I do it, but once these flowers get big enough I'm supposed to cut them out and the broccoli in order to propagate itself will develop side flower shoots. So cool!

I've always enjoyed the sweet taste of broccoli. Now that I don't eat sugar it is even taster. Broccoli is one of those super vegetables when it comes to nutrients and back when I was going vegan it was suggested in many of my nutrition books to eat 1 cup of broccoli a day. I think it is odd that I finally have garden but I'm a meat eater now.

I think whenever 'tis the season broccoli will be the first thing I plant...

Landscape Views and other updates.

I just got some bird baths in the hopes of attracting more butterflies. They definitely add something to my garden. I was really excited to find these at Lowes. T and I went to several places and all the concrete bird baths were over $100 each. I got both of these for way less than $100.

The 4x8 bed is full again. Here is a new angle. It seems to be ready for some harvesting again. I'm saving that for my in-laws visit, so they will get some fresh kale, collards, and mustard greens from my garden.

After two shearings, the salads greens are ready to harvest again. They seem to grow back every two weeks. The rest of the snow peas and sugar snap peas have flowers. I have these big plants with yellow flowers in the 4X4 bed and as usual no clue what they are...

The Time Change, a Good Angle, and Veggie Flowers.

I probably won't be posting much or doing much more to the backyard for a while. Busy season has hit at work between that and the time change, I'm tired and there just isn't enough available light during the week. I have pictures to post of some new things in the garden and some old that I never managed to get posted...

Here is the bed near the house. I finally found a good angle. The Tecoma Stans is no longer flowering, but the bicolor sage and rock rose are on a daily basis.  In this area, I also planted chile piquin, pigeonberry, american beautyberry, a pentsemon (not sure what kind anymore), either mexican marigold or oregano. 

The cabbage lopers love the cauliflower. They did so much damage to the leaves I had to completely remove a bunch of them. Ah well, I wasn't sure I cared about garden fresh cauliflower because unlike broccoli which you can setup to harvest multiple flower crowns with cauliflower there is only one.

Check it out we have a little tiny broccoli flower. I wonder how long it takes until they get to the size you see broccoli crowns in the stores. I found a cabbage lopper having it's way with this one later in the day. I caught before it could do much damage though.

Plants to Attract Butterflies and other Insects

I bought a white mistflower and a blue mistflower because I saw a really beautiful white mistflower speciman at UT and from several yards away I could see the bees swarming it. I broke off a piece and took it to one of my supervisors who idd it right away. It smells strongly of honey. The "man" finds it overpowering. I brought home the sprig for him to smell. 

T and I went to the Ladybird Wildflower center this weekend and we saw masses of butterflies and bees and other insects all over the white mistflower. I'm becoming more and more enamored of the idea of attracting butterflies. It is definitely changing alot of my plants decisions. I had written down what I was planning on planting on the back fence and have scrapped that plan. I planted most of the back fence this morning. 

I will have to wait for a less sunny time of day or when these plants get large to really show them off. In the foreground is a Don's Dwarf Wax Myrtle. I was also contemplating getting a native yellow bells, but after seeing that it had a pot as big as the Dwarf Wax Myrtle I decided against it. I'm really glad I did. Digging the hole for this was hard, but I'm really happy with it. Next to it is a  Duranta Erecta "Sapphire Showers".

T and I went to "It's About Thyme" garden center and saw a plant with light orange/yellow berries turns out it was the Duranta Erecta "Sapphire Showers." It was so cool I decided to buy one, but not there. I'm afraid the place gave off a bad vibe. The plants didn't seem all that happy to me. They did have some really great metal garden art. T and I really like the tiny table and chairs. I was also fond of the metal bicycle plant holder. I just don't get how a place that looks so cool when you first walk in can become so not as you get into the main plant area. I also saw a lot of wasps which I am deathly allergic to always a signal to me to leave the area. I'm lucky we don't have wasps at the house.

Between the Duranta and Wax Myrtle, I planted a brazilian/mexican rock rose. Its flowers have a light pink petal with darker lines and a dark red center. Really beautiful, but I was able to get a good picture this morning with the way the light is. After the Duranta, I planted a dwarf barbadoes cherry. In the front near it I have two salvias, a magenta and a mealy blue. Then a butterfly bush. Another salvia "raspberry" and a blue mistflower.  Then a white mistflower and behind that a pineapple guava. I check the line of plants from several angles in the yard and I really love how they fit in with my other planted sections. Things are really coming together. I even saw a new butterfly this morning, one I have never seen before.

I need a better camera. I'm finding it impossible to take pictures of the smaller flowers and the bugs. You can barely make it out, but I saw this American Snout Butterfly (libytheana carinenta) on my Russian Sage. I was just telling the "Man" about insects with large snouts because I am reading the Orchid Thief by Susan Orleans for my book club and she mentions orchids with really long throats and insects that develop along with these orchids with really long noses/snouts.  So cool to see something this odd looking and in my garden, I'm really excited about what other butterflies I may see once everything is set up and growing fast and furiously.

Too pretty to eat and other thoughts/plans

One thing that they don't warn new gardeners about in any of the books at least the ones I read is the internal struggle regarding the harvest because as the
 "Man" recently said about the salad greens is that they are almost too pretty to eat and at times I feel that it all looks too good to harvest. 



There are flowers on one of the pea plants which you can't really make out in these pictures. For some reason the camera didn't want to focus on the peas flowers. 

I think in my next garden planting after all these greens

are eaten and their season is over. I will be planting 3 times as many mustard greens, kale, collards, salad greens, swiss chard, and spinach. I see now were I went amiss in variety. We eat whole meals of greens especially those and so far the greens harvest has only been enough for a side dish or more like a seasoning even though the baskets seem full.

 I think I will also be applying this lesson to future fruit trees. I planted edible flowers, but now I wish I had less nasturtium, sweet alssyum, and other randoms and more things I actually eat a lot of which makes me

think I am cutting down my fruit tree list to only things I am sure the man and I will want to eat and are the easiest to grow like asian pear trees, plum trees, fig trees, and grape vines any other fruit will be done in severe moderation since he and I don't really seem to like to eat a lot of fruit. I'm still taken with the idea of planting pineapple kiwi, but it seems like a lot of work so that may be an even farther in the future endeavor. I would also eventually like to get into citrus or some really exotic fruit trees, but yet again that will also have to wait especially considering how much my mind has changed with new experiences and information and these trees and vines apparently take more work than at this moment I think I am capable up especially with all the moaning I do about watering my ollas and I only do that every other or every third day.

The Manperson made this taco salad eventually with his salad greens. He added soyrizo on top for a hearty vegetarian meal. I almost ate the salad greens for him since he was rationing out theones I saved for him.  Taking out the container everyday and munching on just a few of the salad greens.

Here is my less ornate salad, but still very tasty. Salad greens fresh from the garden do taste better. I also added some fresh mustard green to my salad to give it a bite.

The other issue that comes up is that when the crop is small it seems like too much trouble to bring it in and the temptation to eat it right there is overwhelming. I had three sugar snap peas today. I would have taken a picture but I ate them too quickly. Whoops, my bad. It was a small crop (all of three) and they were kind of small, but very round and not as tasty as I expected, thought the pride of eating something I've grown still makes up for any taste deficiencies. I'm regretting not getting the pea inoculant now. Next year I will go ahead and inoculate. Granted, there could also be something I didn't do. I think it is time to research peas because the plants are also kind of sad right now unlike my brassicas and salad greens.

Lately, my other concern has been the amount of money I have spent and want to spend on the garden. Sadly, money doesn't also grow on trees and I have no plans to sell future harvest. I want my garden to eventually be sustainable and self-sufficient, but bigs plans and ideas are great and all to help push one to do more, but one also has to be realistic and pragmatic about what one can truly handle and accomplish at any given moment in time/life (I'm hoping that is the dregs of the cold I still can't seem to shake or the rain talking, because I know that somewhere inside is the little devil that wants to dream big and accomplish much).

Trying to Solve Some Mysteries

I'm trying to figure out what this vine is with the pointy leaves. When I originally saw it I thought just my luck poison ivy to go with the poison oak, but it is too delicate and pretty to be poison ivy. I did my white paper test on it. Urushiol oil (the stuff that makes humans itch) turns black on white printer paper within an hour or so off rubbing a leave on it. I tested our poison oak and yep it turned black pretty quickly. The stuff below stayed green 24 hours. I described the vine to the natural gardener people and they said it could possibly be peppervine or a type of clematis. I'm thinking peppervine, though I can't find a picture of peppervine that looks quite like this. I did read that peppervine is often mistaken for poison ivy/oak. It's mature berries turn dark bluish-black though they start out green then turn white then red. So as soon as this vine berries baby I will have better idea of what it actually is. It is surrounded by carolina snailseed (the vine with the little red berries).

Check out how different the poison oak looks even small on the right side of the picture versus the tiny vine that I mistook for poison ivy that is growing right under the fence and along it. On the lower left is snapdragon vine. Poison oak and poison ivy look pretty similar, have hardy looking leaves that bruise easily the better to cover you in itch causing sap and change colors with the seasons. They can turn red or yellow in early fall while other plants are still green. The ones in the picture below was a darker green and is fading out, other leaflets of poison oak in the yard have a red tinge right now. The more pictures I see of poison ivy and oak and the more I come across it in nature. I can see why people who are not allergic have actually taken cuttings and planted it in their yards. It only causes contact dermatitis symptoms in humans. Birds (especially catbirds, grosbeak, and robins) eat the berries especially when their is not much else to eat during fall migration to southern Mexico. Poison Ivy has white berries. Poison Oak has yellow berries. They lose their leaves in the fall. And after all the reading tonight, I'm pretty confident that I only have poison oak in one corner of the yard and not all along the back fence.
I showed picture to my chiropractor and she thinks these plants may be cabbages which would explain why the cabbage caterpillars love them. It makes sense. I had narrowed it down to cabbage or cauliflower, but I have a cauliflower transplant and it looks a lot like the broccoli transplant, but smaller.

the word is out...

The bug's must be gossiping.  I'm seeing more and more different bugs in my garden. I haven't been able to catch any of the beneficials on camera. I saw a ladybug today hanging out on one of the desert willows. I'm seeing more and more butterflies. Just the plan ol' white ones. Lots of bees both big and small who seem to like flying in patterns in front of me. I can't decide if they are saying thank you, get away this is mine, or what are you doing here big human. Every once in a while I will even see a dragonfly. I now also seeing spiders. I'm pretty excited now that every time I dig into the earth in the yard I see an earthworm. I didn't see any before I started really mucking about in the backyard which says I have been doing a good job improving the soil.

I'm also seeing more flies and gnats. Snails both big and small. Caterpillars, or just the caterpillar marks on the leaves or eaten leaves, and lots and lots of what I think are caterpillar eggs. I'm also seeing a lot of mystery bugs. I'm not sure I want to know what they are beyond part of my backyard ecosystem. Here are some pictures to peruse.

Magical Mushroom Garden Tour

As a result of the rain, I have mushrooms popping up all over the place in my backyard. They look so magical...