Almost time!

Planting time is quickly approaching! Or maybe my big tomato transplants are just making me antsy. :) Seriously, though, they look awesome.  I am proud!

On one of the charts I've looked at (Doug Welsh's Texas Garden Almanac), they list Austin's average last spring frost date as 2/24! That's in four days! That on top of the next week's weather report is really making me itch to plant more this weekend. I may sacrifice one of these big tomatoes... or two. Perhaps a couple of my new pepper transplants.  I am fine with taking risks. I experiment with things so that I can learn.  For instance, I learned that the plants who have mostly lived in the outdoor greenhouse for the past couple weeks have not done nearly as well as the one's still sitting indoors in windowsills.  Some of those outside have fared better than others. Notes are jotted down in my paper journal. Lessons are being learned.  Sometimes I feel like I am back in elementary school science class. :)

Speaking of which, I was finally able to make up and finish up my Citizen Gardener instruction on Saturday.  It was raining and the place where it was held (an elementary school) was flooded in the (huge, impressive) garden area. We had to sit in the gym for instruction, but I didn't mind! It gave me the opportunity to write moe down.  I learned a lot and also scored an old olive barrel for rain collection, cheap! Now to get it set up and going.

My favorite "tip" learned from class on Saturday was that you can use Christmas bulbs to scare birds off your plants! They hate shiny things.

On Sunday I built my 6'x3' bed out back and vowed to either have someone else build these, or buy them preassembled from now on!  I tossed what was going of my compost pile (lots of decomposed leaves) in and watered it really well. I will fill it the rest of the way and plant soon.  Just one thing on my long list of to-dos. Can't wait until my toddler is old enough to help!

upper respiratory bummer

I came down with a upper respiratory infection (aka cold) and had to miss Saturday's citizen gardener class. If that didn't make me disappointed enough, I wasn't able to do much in the garden either.  Attempts ended with me feeling a bit winded and reclining on the couch. I eventually gave up and bought the Spring 2011 Heirloom Gardener for my iPad to make me feel better. It worked. ;)  I read all about tomatoes and am starting to feel a bit more knowledgeable. I am a little nervous about growing tomatoes! I have had really bad results so far.  Granted I've only gone two seasons, and had little to no clue what I was doing, but still!

E checking out a few pepper, tomato, and eggplant starts in the greenhouse

One of my collard plants started a flower, so I decided they were done. As much as that plant (which was actually 2 kind of intertwined together, oops!) produced, I really am not a big fan of the flavor so I hardly harvested it. I need to make room for other things. :)

Like more sugar snap peas! I have 8-10 of those plants growing right now, and the plant that I had left from summer/fall decided to spit out 4 pods before it turned brown and wilted.  Evie and I really enjoyed them as a snack on Saturday! She is actually quite nuts over those peas, so I am excited to have a ton more soon.  We like them enough that I want to start another set of them for springtime.

I'm also thinking about more beans and peas. We love them in our house, now to find out how well they do in this climate!  Also on the list now that wasn't before: melons, and perhaps a winter squash variety (I have 2 summer varieties planned for spring.)  Ever since I found out that peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes are not too fond of the superhot weather we are prone to get, I have been on a mission to fill my gardens with stuff that may work better. I've got a lot of space to work with and want to make sure I am using it to its fullest potential!

Back yard (before we finished mulching the back on Saturday)

I decided to raised-box the longer bed that I dug up in the back yard, again to help improve yields. We went to Home Depot and got some wood for that, so I now have a(nother) project for next weekend.  The scrap wood ended up being two 1' and two 2' pieces, which I plant to assemble into a small box, possibly for an herb garden, probably for the front yard.

I may be a little bit obsessed with gardening.  I can think of many worse things to be obsessed about. :)  I love the peace it gives me, the usefulness and practicality, the connection with the earth.  I appreciate food so much more now that I know all of the work that goes into producing it. And it definitely tastes better!  Plus I like to know that I am learning such a vital skill.  It gives me pride to go out to my own yard and harvest food that I cared for to feed my family. I picked some lettuce for lunch on Saturday and I swear it was the best lettuce I've ever tasted! I never knew how much I liked lettuce until I started eating it NOT from the grocery store.  I plan on growing a ton of it!  There's already quite a bit out there.

E bringing kale in for dinner Thursday night

Busy day!

I did a lot in the garden today! Scott helped. :)

• Planted another round of seeds: tomato, pepper, eggplant, lavender and basil
• Majorly thinned the existing seedlings
• Laid cardboard around the perimeter of the new beds and weeded
• Dumped a bag of some natural gardener compost in the rear raised bed
• Watered the cardboard and beds
• Went to the nursery down the road for onions, wandered around admiring and testing* plants for at least a half hour, came home with shallots, 4 strawberry plants, a russian red kale, a lemon thyme, and a lettuce (no onions)
• Went to Home Depot for mulch, found onion sets! Also finally found the soil testing kits!  (Last time I asked, they acted like they had no clue what I was talking about.)
• Mulched over most of the area (need more mulch, plus some good black mulch for on top of the beds)
• Planted everything mentioned above (minus the shallots, need to research!) in the way we were shown in class; gently massaged the roots, made a few pricks with a sharp point where necessary (the thyme plant had some pretty serious roots, but I wanted it too much to not buy it!)
• Watered some more
• Admired the work!

* testing plants:  Paige taught us, while we were planting the bed, how to look for good transplant candidates. If the plant roots are coming out of the bottom, or look like they have completely overtaken the bottom, that's generally a bad sign; the plant will probably take a bit longer to establish itself than one that isn't so root bound. There were a lot of plants like that at the nursery!

The coming weeks should be busy, busy, busy. I plan to get a rainwater collection set up soon, hopefully a DIY/cheap solution. We will be learning about it in class, thankfully! I am also keeping a very close eye on all my plant babies. It's been so nice and warm during the day that they get a lot of time outside. I've moved a few (a tomato, a pepper, a cucumber, and an onion; plus the new strawberry planter) to pots and am keeping them in the greenhouse, sort of as an experiment (but mostly because I have no room for them otherwise!) So far they're still alive, and we're going on day 4 or 5.

I will post photos soon! I just downloaded the Blogger app to my phone; hope it doesn't suck. ;)