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.