The Grackle Moon

Thursday was April's full moon, and I'd say that the warm-season crops are just about all planted. Finally time to relax a little bit after the frantic March and April planting season and watch things grow.

Here is the front garden. The only thing left to do is mulch that last bed, but I'm waiting until the pole beans get a bit bigger and start climbing the poles. Getting the front garden ready took up a lot of my time, so some of the planting was a little late this year.

I put sticks over the ground to keep the neighbor's chickens from digging up the sprouting beans. That seems to be working so far.

Most of the peppers that survived the winter are coming back nicely. I transplanted them to the front garden, but I'm afraid a few of them might not have survived the trip. Or maybe they're just taking their time.

The tomatillos already have lots of fruit on them. The husks grow first, and then the fruit grows into them (right now the fruits are about the size of marbles).  I got the seeds from an online trade, and they were supposed to be purple tomatillos, but they sure don't look like it to me.

In the back, the Tuscan kale is starting to bolt. I think I'll go ahead and let them and save seeds from them. I'm not going to plant anything in that spot anymore. It's too shady. Too close to an oak tree. The Elephant garlic is starting to make scapes, but it looks like the Romanian Red garlic is all dead now.

The potatoes are starting to turn a little yellow, and I can't tell if that means they're starting to finish up and get ready for harvest, or if they haven't been getting enough water.

The arugula seed pods are starting to dry and shatter. I've been going out there and clipping pods off to save seeds, but a lot of seed is ending up on the ground anyway. I guess I'll have lots of arugula volunteers.

I just planted some Calico lima beans around two bean tepees right next to this year's new pepper plants. I put these pepper plants in the back to isolate them from the peppers in the front for seed saving purposes.

I've started harvesting peas, but only enough to eat fresh right off the plant. The peas are turning out to be a disappointment this year. I think it's a combination of planting them late (after we moved here in March), a dry winter, and then the trellis I made for them keeps falling down and damaging the plants. I'll do better next time, when I will plant them in fall (like I usually do) so they can grow through the winter, and I'll be sure to build a much sturdier trellis for them.

The fava beans are starting to make pods. I'm not sure if I'll have enough to eat some, or if I should just let the seeds mature to increase my seed supply and plant more this fall.

The herb garden is doing great. The roses are finally starting to bloom, about a month later than they did last year. I trimmed back the esparanza and now it's coming back.

I planted watermelons, squash, cucumbers, cantelope, and okra seeds in pots to buy me a little more time to decide where I want to plant them, and to let some of my winter crops finish out before I plant them out. Also, some of the seeds were kind of old, so I wanted to make sure they were going to germinate. I also have basil plants in pots I need to plant out soon.

I've been getting lots of compliments from neighbors about my front yard vegetable garden. I'm really glad I did that. I think it might actually be a better spot than the one in the back (less shade, less rocky), and I'm feeling rebellious because a lot of neighborhoods don't allow front yard vegetable gardens at all. It's like I'm stickin' it to the Man!

The Blue Moon

Last night was the Blue Moon, since it was the second full moon in one month. I tried to find out why it's called the blue moon, but with no luck. Last night during our evening walk I looked up at the moon and thought of Neil Armstrong, who died only a few days ago. He was a true hero. I can't imagine how terrifying and thrilling it must have been to be the first human ever to walk on the moon.

Back here on Earth, I'm glad August is finally over and that means it must be cooling down soon! Alas, it's still been in the high 90's most days. We had a weak cold front earlier in the month that made it more like the low 90's and even high 80's for a few days, but it went away quickly.

This Labor Day weekend is also the 1 year anniversary of the horrible Bastrop wildfires. It's a good reminder that at least this summer was not nearly as bad as last summer. No big wildfires this time around.

Out in the garden, the peppers are the healthiest looking plants. They quit setting fruit, but will probably start up again and give a second crop in fall. Which means I'm going to end up with a lot of peppers!

A few of the fall tomatoes didn't make it, and the ones that did are still small. It's just an experiment, so I'm not getting my hopes up too much. If they get some fruit, that would be great, but they might not have time before frost, with how slowly they're growing out there in the heat.

As for the spring tomatoes that I pruned back, it looks like about half of them died, and half of them are starting to grow back, like this one here. I think they're probably more likely to give another crop before frost than the fall tomatoes, since the plants already bigger.

The one honeydew melon I had rotted before I picked it. What a disappointment! The rest of the vines aren't looking too good either. I think maybe this isn't such a good variety after all. Even if the fruit hadn't rotted, it did only set one fruit among four plants. It's San Juan from Native Seeds/SEARCH, and I didn't notice this when I bought it, but the catalog says it's a variety for the "high desert". I'm not completely sure what they mean by high desert vs. low desert varieties, but I think the low desert ones are more heat tolerant than the high desert ones. Maybe from now on I should stick to low desert varieties when I buy seeds from there. They recommend runner beans for the high desert, and I know they don't do well here at all. I grew Scarlet Runner once and got one pod.

This is my tangle of cucumber, luffa gourd, and mustang grape vines, and they aren't looking too good either. The luffa vines look the best, though they still haven't set any fruit. I expect cucumbers to die in summer anyway, so no surprise there. I'd like to find a more heat tolerant cucumber variety that could actually survive a Texas summer, but so far no luck. I am a little worried about the wild mustang grape vine that was already growing there on its own.. It seems to have some sort of fungal infection, with rusty spots on the leaves. I wanted that grape vine to cover the fence, so I hope it recovers.

I was sure the Rattlesnake pole beans were all dead, but it looks like a few are starting to grow back. I found a few still-green vines mixed in with all the dead ones. Maybe I'll get a second batch of beans before frost.

Yes, the leeks are still here. I'm really surprised they haven't bolted yet. I've left them in the garden to see if they'll produce bulbils that can be planted next year. Those are little mini-bulbs that grow out the sides of old leeks, and can be replanted to propagate leeks asexually. I ought to dig some up to see if they have any yet. If it works out, this might be a better way for me to propagate leeks in the garden than from seed.

The basil I planted in the summer is still hanging in there, though in this picture it's very wilted. It's growing slowly, but should pick up in fall, hopefully well enough to make some batches of pesto to put in the freezer. Basil is very heat tolerant as long as it gets enough water. It bolts when it gets very hot, but I just pinch the flowers off (except for the basils I'm growing for seed). Bolting doesn't seem to adversely affect the flavor of basil like it does for some other herbs.

Here's a picture of what I plan on becoming an herb garden this fall. We have a nice patio in the back of the house, and I thought it would be neat to plant herbs along the brick ledge. That way the trailing herbs like thyme and mint will cascade over the bricks, and once we get a table and chairs and start having dinner parties out there, people can brush up against the herbs surrounding them and smell the fragrance. That's the idea, anyway. There's already esparanza there and a couple of rose bushes, but still plenty of room for herbs.  I've been piling leaves and grass clippings up to start improving the soil and choking out the grass and weeds.  On the patio you can see three of my potted herbs that I'm going to plant in the ground. They've been in these pots for a long time, but now that I have my own place they're going in the ground. Herbs always seem to do better in the ground anyway. I'll probably plant these pretty soon. It's a bit too hot and humid out there right now to make me feel much like digging holes, but the first cooler day we have when I have time, they're going in!

And then there's my fall vegetables. I've got mustard greens, collard greens, arugula, broccoli raabe, kale, chard, parsley, dill, and cilantro waiting for their turn in the garden too. Most of them are still small and can stay in the pots a bit longer, but it won't be too much longer before it's time for them to go in the ground too.

The Thunder Moon

Big difference from last July. I actually still have a lot of green in the garden!

I'm really regretting not caging my tomatoes this year. I was just lazy, and they were so stunted last year they didn't need cages. Well, they would have really helped this year. My garden has become a tangle of vines, especially on this side, with tomatoes, melons, squash, and beans all jumbled together.

The squash isn't looking that great. I still haven't seen any squash vine borers, so I don't know if all the wilting is because of them or the heat. No fruit on them either. I hope they manage to pull through the summer and get some fruit in the fall. That's what my cushaws did in 2010 and I ended up with a great harvest (I still have some in the freezer).

Look! I have one melon! I haven't grown melons in a while, and hope this one makes it. Homegrown melons are really good. They're always much sweeter than store-bought.

The Rattlesnake pole beans are doing great, after going a couple of years without good beans from the garden. I'm out of seed, and I've been getting plenty of green beans from my CSA, so I'm letting these grow to maturity to replenish my seed stock. I'm also curious to see how much dry seed I get from this planting, because I'd like to start growing my own dry beans.

My other legume, Pinkeye Purple Hull cowpeas, are doing OK, I guess. They're starting to dry up, so I hope that's because they're about done with their life cycle, and not because they're not getting enough water. I'm trying to save seed from these too.

Another consequence of letting my tomatoes sprawl, besides the clutter, is that it leaves more of the fruit vulnerable to sunscald. The plants lying over on the ground like this means there's less of a leaf canopy directly over the fruits. I've lost a lot of tomatoes this way.

But not all is lost. I'm still getting a pretty decent crop of tomatoes. Here are some Arkansas Traveler tomatoes I picked right after taking this picture.

The peppers are doing well too. I've been picking a lot of Emerald Giant bell peppers, Lemon Drops, and mystery peppers, and have just started picking ripe Chile Negros and Cascabels. I have had a little trouble with sunscald on the peppers too, especially the Emerald Giants. Maybe next year I should give them some support too.

The Boothby's Blonde cucumbers were disappointing. I think this may be more of a pickling variety, because the cucumbers didn't get very big before they started turning yellow and bitter. Or maybe it's the weather. I don't know, but I only got a couple of edible cucumbers and now they're just wilting in the heat.

I've harvested some of my garlic now, but am giving my two hardneck varieties, German Extra Hardy and Siberian, more time. I dug up a GEH about a week ago, and it hadn't formed a bulb at all. I hope they manage to form a little bit of something.

My fall tomatoes are doing OK so far too. I just put them in individual pots. I ended up with three Arkansas Travelers and nine Cherokee Purples. I'm going to try planting them after the spring tomatoes die.

The basil is still waiting to be planted out too. I'd better get it done soon. I've already had to prune them back once. I was going to plant them where the garlic used to be, but it's taking longer for it to finish than I expected, probably because of it getting set back because of being transplanted.

Overall, this summer has turned out to be much less horrible than last summer, so far. I hope we don't get another summer like that again for a long time!

The Firefly Moon

It's always fun to go away on vacation and come back to see the big difference in the garden. When I look at the garden every day, I don't notice the changes as much as when I'm gone for over a week. It turns out we didn't get any more rain in May after that rainy weather at the beginning of the month, which is a shame. My in-laws had to water the garden a bit in our absence.

The esperanza by the porch has really taken off.  It's covered in clusters of yellow flowers now. The hummingbirds really love it.

I've got several lantanas in my yard that are in full bloom now too. Lantana is a really good native plant to grow. Hummingbirds and butterflies really like the blossoms, and then it gets berries on it that provide food for birds. It also blooms right in the heat of summer.

I was surprised to see how much my basil transplants grew while I was gone. They're ready to plant in the garden. I think I will put them in the spot where my garlic is now, after I harvest it.

I managed to get a picture of one of the hummingbirds as I headed out to the garden, when she landed on the top of my bamboo bean tepee.

Here is the garden now, a thick jungle of tomato plants! That rain really did it some good. Can't wait to harvest some tomatoes.

I went ahead and uncovered the squash, because it looked like it was about to bust out of the floating row cover on its own. I hope I wasn't too early, because it doesn't have blossoms yet. I'm not sure how many Jarrahdales ended up sprouting, or if they're all Kamo Kamo. I was surprised at the spines this variety of squash has on it. All squash has prickles of some type, but while they're more like stiff hairs on a lot of squash, this one has little thorn-like things.

The San Juan melons are growing too, but they're still behind the other cucurbits, since I kind of planted them late as sort of an afterthought.

The Rattlesnake pole beans are climbing up the poles and are starting to get blossoms on them. I hope they really are as heat tolerant as people say, so I can get some beans on them. I'm out of seed for them.

It won't be long now before I can harvest some ripe tomatoes, but it looks like I've got some rogue tomatoes, in addition to the rogue peppers I already mentioned. These tomatoes are growing in a patch that's supposed to be all Spear's Tennessee Green, but they're clearly some kind of red cherry (some of them are almost ripe!). It's hard to tell how many rogue tomatoes I have, since the plants are all tangled together. Next time I'm putting up tomato cages.

This is what Spear's Tennessee Green is really supposed to look like, a large, green-when-ripe tomato. I think this one here is almost ripe, because it's turning more of a yellow-green than the others. I've never grown a green-when-ripe tomato before, so I haven't learned yet what they look like when ripe.

It's about time to pick some peppers too. The Emerald Giant peppers are living up to their name, getting nice and big. I'm going to wait until they start to turn red to pick them, mainly to see how big they can get. Besides, ripe peppers taste better anyway.

The Lemon Drop peppers are starting to ripen too, turning bright yellow. I can already tell I'm going to get a lot of them. I found a recipe for hot sauce I plan on making from them, and maybe I'll dry the rest, which I think is the traditional thing to do with them in their native Peru.

The luffa gourds and Boothby's Blonde cucumbers have grown up to the top of their supports, and the cucumbers are starting to get little fruits on them.

Finally, the garlic is starting to dry down and get ready to harvest. I already harvested Lorz Italian. Unfortunately, all I got were small bulbs about the same diameter as a quarter. I'm not surprised since I'm sure transplanting them from the old house was a big setback. After doing all that work, I think this time I will try keeping them for planting stock for this fall. I was told that they'd work fine for that, though I am wondering how well such small cloves would do. Oh well, it's worth a try, and maybe this way I won't have to buy as much seed garlic this year, though I probably will buy some just in case.

The Greening Moon

Tonight's full moon is also a Supermoon! The moon is the closest to the Earth that it gets on its orbit, and will be 30% brighter than a usual full moon.

The full moon of May, in the local moon naming scheme I use, is called the Greening Moon, because May is supposed to be the rainiest month of the year, at least on average. Well, we haven't gotten any rain yet this month, and April was pretty dry too. There is rain in the forecast for next week, so here's hoping we get some. I'm really afraid we're going to have another summer like last summer. It's already been in the 90's most days. Today is supposed to get up to 94.

When I went out to take pictures, there was a Velociraptor standing on the woodpile! OK, not quite, but close. When I think of what Velociraptors might have been like, I think they may have been very similar to roadrunners. Roadrunners are pretty ferocious, and are known to get together in pairs or groups and kill rattlesnakes. They're actually a giant, ground-dwelling cuckoo. We have another species of cuckoo here, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, which I've been hearing lately. Their "song" (if you want to call it that) sounds to me like someone trying to start up some sort of motor (like a lawnmower or chainsaw) and having trouble getting it going. I guess European cuckoos must be the ones that sound like cuckoo clocks. Roadrunners actually sound more like cuckoo clocks than the smaller, Yellow-billed cuckoos do, though with a much deeper voice.

The roses are starting to fade, but the Esparanza is taking over for them. These are also known as Yellow Bells, but I like their Spanish name better. I'm really glad we have some in our new yard. They're a really great plant, that blooms right in the heat of summer.

The bluebonnets have gone to seed now, but we've got some other blue/purple flowers showing up other places in the yard, though not as many of them, so I hope they increase. We've got one of these purple flowers growing, which I always hear people calling just "verbena", though I know there are many species of verbenas, so I'm not sure which one this is. The ranch near our neighborhood has a huge patch of them that look like a sea of solid purple from a distance. They like heat and full sun.

Then we've got these flowers coming up in the shade of what's going to be our Sacred Grove, a nice grove of oak trees in the back with a lovely circular shady spot underneath. These are called Blue Curls, which is a very good name for them, because the flowers are on this curly inflorescence. I see these growing in the shade in lots of wooded areas around here.

I started a tray of basils a while back that need to be put in bigger pots. I have Cinnamon, Thai, Napoletano, and Ms. Burns Lemon. I also planted some Purple Ruffles basil, but it never came up, so I guess the seeds were bad. There is also some Asia Red Amaranth and Fenugreek in this try, but they aren't doing so well. I probably should have direct seeded them instead. I might try doing that with the rest of my seeds if we get a good rain.

Out in the garden, I want to show you my Squash Vine Borer Exclusion Device! This is a tip I got from my CSA farmer on how to get a crop of squash despite the dreaded Squash Vine Borers. He said I need to get floating row cover, the most lightweight kind that's for keeping out insects, and put that over the squashes until they flower. Then it has to be removed so bees can get to the squash, but by then hopefully the squash has gotten enough of a head start to give a crop before the borers kill it.

I have the row cover held up with PVC pipe bent and stuck over short pieces of rebar that are driven into the ground. I then held the cover down to the ground with rocks. In hindsight, I should have made 5 hoops instead of 3, because the cloth is sagging a lot between them. I also should have put a soaker hose under there with the end sticking out to water them. I have trying to water them through the cloth, but even though the cloth is supposed to let water through, a lot of it still beads up and runs down the side.

Underneath I have Kamo Kamo and Jarrahdale squashes planted. The first is a C. pepo and the second is a C. maxima which are the two species of squash most susceptible to borers. So we'll see if the cover helps them.

The squash coming up under the cloth looks about like that right now,but this is not a squash, but a San Juan melon. It's a type of melon I got from Native Seeds/SEARCH and is supposed to be a netted muskmelon with green flesh. I think in the future I'm going to be buying a lot more seeds from that company, since their seeds are adapted to hot, dry conditions.

I also planted a lot of Rattlesnake pole beans, which is supposed to be a heat tolerant pole bean, though last time I planted them they still didn't make it. I made bean tepees out of bamboo from the old house, tied down to railroad spikes my husband found out somewhere.

The tomatoes and peppers are coming along. They're all blooming now, though I checked, and last year at around this time, I was already getting green tomatoes. Everything is behind this year because of the move.

The only nightshade that has fruit so far are the Lemon Drop peppers. They're supposed to ripen to a bright yellow. I'm excited about these because this is the first time I've grown peppers that weren't in the Capsicum annum species. Lemon Drops are C. baccatum.

Towards the back of the garden, I have three Boothby's Blonde cucumbers that didn't get eaten by caterpillars. In the empty slots, I planted Luffa gourds, which are starting to get their first true leaves.

The garlic is starting to look run down. It should be time to dig them up in about a month, maybe less. I hope the move didn't stress them too much, and they managed to make some kind of a bulb down there.

Finally, at the back of the garden, where I still have a lot of wild plants growing, I found some more poison ivy. Here it is mixed in with another annoying native plant, which I've always heard called Beggar's Ticks. However, when I looked up Beggar's Ticks in Google, I found more than one plant that have that common name, one in the Aster family, and one in the Legume family, but that's not what these are. These are a plant in the carrot family, with feathery leaves, taproots, and umbel flowers, like most plants in that family. Those flowers then turn into these annoying, velcro-like seeds that stick to your pants, shoes, cats, etc. The seeds stuck on you look like some kind of bugs on you, hence the name.

This is the problem with common names. You can have the same common name referring to lots of different species, or one species with several common names. Does anybody know the scientific name for the carrot family beggar's ticks?

Anyway, they're very annoying, so I'm trying hard to get rid of them or at least greatly reduce their numbers. I've had socks and shoelaces completely ruined by them before, because once the seeds work their way into the fabric, they're pretty much impossible to get out.