Deer Like Swiss Chard Too

Well, so much for my perpetual spinach-type Swiss Chard this year. The deer have eaten them down to nubs. Fortunately, they haven't touched anything else in the front garden yet, but I need to be vigilant. Eventually I will build a fence around the front garden. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. In the meantime I've just been using cylinders of chicken wire around the plants (like giant tomato cages) which work but are a hassle.

The chard didn't have wire around them, and this is the result.

Oh well, they were bolting and getting bitter anyway.

Greening Moon - belated full moon update

I'm back! Last week we went on vacation to the Big Bend area, and before that I was really busy with final exams and getting final grades in, so May's full moon post is about two weeks late.

May is supposed to be our wettest month, and we did get around 3 inches of rain, which isn't actually that much, but better than we have been getting.

Lots of things have been happening in the garden that probably deserve their own post. First the neighbor's chickens were causing a lot of damage digging up things in the front garden, then while we were on vacation the deer found it! I also got my sweet potato plants from Duck Creek Farms and planted them. I've been harvesting a few paste tomatoes, but I think the deer are eating a lot of them too. That makes comparing yields from the different varieties I planted difficult. I might have to leave out that bit of data this time around and just compare things like plant vigor and heat tolerance.

I knew I was risking things by planting my Rattlesnake beans in the front, and sure enough, the deer have been eating the leaves off of them. The funny thing is it looks like my deer are lazy, and are only eating the leaves in the middle of the vine, not bothering to bend down to eat the ones near the ground, or stand up to reach the higher ones.

The chickens dug up a lot of the beans, so in their place I planted the rest of my Waltham Butternut squash seeds. There were from Seed Savers Exchange in 2009, and I guess they were getting old because I was having trouble getting them to germinate. I went ahead and planted all the rest of my seeds in the ground before we left, and when we came back some of them were sprouting.

The deer are also eating the ends of the shoots on the tomatoes and peppers. I guess the new growth is more tender. Some of my peppers are getting fruit anyway, but I'm sure the deer have eaten a lot of the blossoms.

Weirdly, they don't seem to like the eggplants. The remaining eggplants I have that didn't get dug up by the chickens are making fruits now. This variety is Fengyuan Purple, and the eggplants growing on it are really long and skinny! The biggest one I have so far looks like it's over a foot long. Guess I need to make some more Thai Green Curry paste to make these into curry with.

The tomatillos aren't looking so good. I've harvested a lot of them, but now it looks like they're starting to die down. I don't know if it's because they aren't getting enough water or something else. The deer haven't bothered them either, even the ones outside the wire cage my husband made for them.

I should be harvesting lots of tomatoes now, but the deer have been mostly beating me to them. When I got back from vacation there were hardly any ripe ones to be found, except for a few that look like this. This is a nice big Red Brandywine with a big chomp out of it. Another annoying this is it appears deer don't know the difference between a ripe and an unripe tomato. Maybe because they're colorblind? I found lots of green tomatoes, including a really nice Opalka that was the size of a Poblano pepper with bites out of them.

The only thing I have left to plant is my okra. Some of them took a really long time to come up, which isn't that unusual with okra. I got three varieties from Native Seeds/SEARCH, all from Texas: Beck's Gardenville, Eagle Pass, and Hill Country Red. I know I'm a bit late on okra planting, but okra can really take the heat, so I think they'll be OK.

Taking a quick look at the herb garden, the Esperanza is starting to overwhelm things again, like I knew it would. The other plants aren't doing too bad though. Herbs really like being in the ground much more than in pots. Once I planted all my herbs in the ground, ones that had been in pots on my apartment balcony for years, they really took off. In the background here is the Mexican oregano flowering like crazy. To the gnome's right is marjoram, while to his left is thyme. Elsewhere in the herb garden I've got Greek oregano, rosemary, peppermint, orange mint, catmint, catnip, lemon balm, yarrow, skullcap, horehound, parsley, and now a few different kinds of basil.

I'm still waiting on the potatoes to die down. It's taking longer than I thought it would. I also haven't harvested the garlic or shallots yet. The garlic still doesn't look good, but the shallots are still pretty green.

This is Tatume squash, a Mexican heirloom that is in the C. pepo species but is supposed to be more resistant to squash vine borers. I planted five, and it looks like the borers already got one, but the others are doing pretty well, so we'll see.

The Moon and Stars watermelon plants are also doing well. I planted four of them. I also just planted three Melon de Castilla plants, a cantaloupe from Native Seeds/SEARCH. 

The Christmas Lima beans are in the back, so the deer aren't eating them, and they're doing great. They're just starting to get blossoms.

Here are my sweet potatoes I just planted right before we went on vacation. They probably deserve a post of their own. They've just gotten settled after transplanting and are starting to grow.

The fava beans just aren't doing too great though. It started getting hot just as they were making pods, so I think they just didn't have enough time. This fall I'll have to plant them much sooner.

OK, that's my update. By now I should be getting my summer crops in if it wasn't for the darn deer.

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.

Poison Ivy

Since our yard, especially in the back, was mostly left wild by the previous occupants, we're finding quite a variety of native plants coming up back there, including a big healthy patch of Toxicodendron radicans in the eastern corner. I've never gotten a reaction to poison ivy before, so I'm either not allergic or only mildly so, but my husband is very sensitive to it, so it's going to have to go. Fortunately the plants are still small and haven't developed into the big woody vines I've seen in some natural areas, but there's a lot of little plants coming up. Even though I vastly prefer organic methods, I might have to resort to Roundup for this. I could try wearing gloves and pulling the plants up one by one, but there's just so many of them!

Here's a close up of one of the plants. Poison ivy is actually an attractive plant, in my opinion. The gloss on the leaves is the irritating oil of the plant, and the stems are red in many specimens (but not all). I've heard that deer and goats both love to eat it, and the berries are enjoyed by songbirds (who then disperse the seeds). So it does have its place in nature, but not in the yard of someone who's highly allergic to it!

Unfortunately there's also some Virginia Creeper growing in among the poison ivy, which might get killed if I end up using herbicide. This is a different vine that is often mistaken for poison ivy, but it has five leaflets instead of three, and is in the grape family, while poison ivy is in the sumac family. In the above picture, the Virginia creeper is to the left, and the poison ivy is to the right. The hairy, woody vines growing up trees are very hard to tell apart, especially in the winter when they lose their leaves, so if you see a vine like that on a tree, it's best to just not touch it to be on the safe side.

I've already caught the cats walking through the poison ivy, so there's a danger that they could spread the oil to my husband if they get some on them, then come in and snuggle on him. The poison ivy is going to have to go!

The Grackle Moon (and Easter!)

Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, and this year that full moon happened to fall on Good Friday. It's been warm lately, in the low 80's, and we had such a mild winter, that lots of action is happening out in the garden. Easter is the holiday where we Texans enjoy the outdoors for one last time before it starts to get too hot to be comfortable outside anymore.

The roses are really taking off now. To the left is the big red rose bush, which now has 8 or 9 blooms on it. To the right is the smaller rose bush that was here, which has just revealed itself to be a yellow rose.

My in-laws gave us a couple of Shrimp Plants to plant in the front flowerbed, which is rather shady under some large oak trees. Shrimp Plant is a native to southern Mexico and Guatemala, but does very well here, and the hummingbirds love it.

The hummingbirds also like the Texas Lantana that's starting to bloom in the back yard.

And they love my Pineapple Sage. The most common hummingbird we have here is the Black-chinned hummingbird. They look just like a Ruby-throated hummingbird (which is the most common hummingbird east of here), but they have a purple throat instead of a red one (which looks black at certain angles). I wish I could get you a picture of them, but they're just too fast.

 Even the plain old Common Sage is blooming, with lavender flowers.

We got two cubic yards of compost from GardenVille to put in the vegetable garden. That seemed like a lot, but I've already used up about half of it. It says it has stable bedding in it, and it smells slightly of ammonia, so I hope that means it's rich in nitrogen.

The garlic that I transplanted from the old house is doing even better than I thought it would. It's already growing back new leaves. On some varieties you can hardly even tell anything happened to them.

The peppers are all in. Here you can see Basil checking on them.

The tomatoes are all in too. These are the ones I planted first, and they're already about twice as big as when I put them in.

I can already tell this is going to be a bad bug year. We had a mild winter, and then lots of rain. There are tons of mosquitoes, but also caterpillars. Some unknown caterpillars have already been eating up my tomatoes AND peppers. At first I thought it was the work of tomato hornworms, but when I found some of the caterpillars, they don't look like hornworms at all. They don't have the horns on their butts, and have dark stripes going down the sides. I went ahead and sprayed the plants with Bt since some of them have been almost completely defoliated.

Another bug in abundance are these strange looking creatures. They're EVERYWHERE. They're kind of scary looking too, shiny black with six legs in front, and big pincher-like jaws. There are also lots of these metallic green beetles that run quickly around. Well, some Internet searching, and searching through The Texas Bug Book, revealed that the green beetles are called Caterpillar Hunters, and the strange black creatures are their larvae (I thought they bore some resemblance to large ladybug larvae!). The good news is both the adult beetles and the larvae have voracious appetites for caterpillars! So from now on every time one of the larvae wander into the house or garage (and they seem to do that a lot!), I catch it and put it out in the garden. I've already seen two of them viciously attacking caterpillars several times their size in various parts of the yard. They are certainly aptly named.

Well, that's about it. Happy Easter from Basil and me!

The Cedar Moon

For the last month or so when I go outside to work in the garden, I've noticed this lovely smell. It's a fresh, clean smell, like Christmas trees or pine shavings. I'd inhale deeply and go "aah" and wonder what it was.

I finally figured it out.

This is the culprit! It's a male Ashe Juniper tree in my next door neighbor's yard. That golden hue is pollen cones. I never realized before that juniper pollen has a smell, but juniper is what the air smells like. That's what it must be. The rest of the tree is very fragrant: the wood, scales, berries, and bark. Makes sense the pollen would be too.

I love Ashe Juniper trees, but I might not feel the same way if I was allergic to them. Ashe Junipers are commonly known as "cedars" around here, even though they're in a completely different genus than true cedars and don't even look much like them (true cedars look much more like pine trees, with needles and cones, instead of scales and berries). Like most conifers, they're very fragrant. I love the smell of a campfire made with some Ashe juniper wood, and the branches make good smudge sticks.

I might also love them because they're such a hated tree, so they seem like underdogs. Besides the notorious allergy, they're also hated for "encroaching" on pastures (similarly to mesquite trees in some areas, another tree I like that a lot of people hate), and even depleting the Edward's Aquifer of water.

Personally, I think it's a bit unfair. Like other "encroaching" woody plants, I don't think it's fair to blame junipers for being able to survive in overgrazed, under-burned, and overall poorly managed pastures when grass cannot. (In other words, they're a symptom of that problem, not a cause.) I was always skeptical of the idea that junipers are especially "thirsty" plants that are sucking up all our water, and now there may be science backing me up on this. And while I feel sorry for people who are suffering from Cedar Fever right now, people are allergic to oaks and elms too. However, those trees just don't seem to draw the same kind of hatred that cedar does (I am allergic to something in the spring. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm afraid it might be oak).

According to my next door neighbor, the owner of this house hated cedar so much that he cut them all down in this yard. That explains why my yard only has oaks and elms and ash, while the yards surrounding us all have mature juniper trees in the mix. Seems pretty silly to chop down all the junipers in this yard when there are plenty right next door. It's not like pollen respects property lines. But maybe the desire for revenge against the evil cedar outweighed any logic in this case.

My pineapple sage is also trying to reproduce. Pineapple sage is supposed to flower in the autumn, not the dead of winter, so I wonder why it's late like this. Maybe it was too stressed from the drought at first, and now that's it's finally started raining a lot, it's making up for lost time. We've also had a fairly mild winter so far, with only a couple of mild freezes. This may also be why the cedar pollen is especially high.

The mild weather also might be making the cabbage worms worse. My cauliflower and collards are getting eaten up very badly. I just sprayed them with Bt again. Normally winter-grown brassicas don't have a big problem with bugs, but we haven't had any hard enough freezes to kill the bugs yet.

The only brassica they aren't bothering are the mustards. Maybe they don't like spicy food. My CSA farmer gave me transplants of something called Horned Mustard to plant in my own garden. He's been giving me it for eating for a while, and it's really good in stir fries. The transplants seem to have taken well.

The Curly Mustard I planted a while ago is also doing fine. It's a lighter color and more frilly than any of the other brassicas. The other plants in this picture are some volunteer elephant garlic (sprouted up from bulbils I missed), some bunching onions, and some wild clover I'm letting grow so it can add nitrogen to the soil.

The garlic is doing well too, but now I'm sad because I might end up moving before it's time to harvest the garlic in May. Daniel suggested that we could transplant it to the new place, but I'm not sure if it will make it through that. I guess that would be better than giving up on it entirely though.

The peas are doing fine, but I haven't harvested any so far. I also might not get any before we move, though peas are less of a big deal to me than garlic.

I don't know why the peas over here are so much lighter in color than the ones along the fence. Something in the soil? Surrounding them are the rutabagas which are just starting to swell up.

The lettuce is doing well too. Here you can see the difference between my first planting and second planting. Hopefully the second one will catch up.

I'm still working on starting my nightshades, but I've gotten a setback. The tomatoes are getting really bad rotting or damping off or something like that. The top of the soil has gotten all green and slimy, and the tomato sprouts just sort of shrivel up. I wonder if I should replant and start microwaving the soil to sterilize it first. I have done that before, but I wasn't sure if it made a big difference, so this year I haven't bothered yet. Maybe it is important after all.

I can keep the nightshades in pots until we move and then plant them at the new place.