by Geoff | Aug 23, 2010 | Gardening
One of the benefits of not mowing my lawn as often or thoroughly as might be indicated by societal norms is that I get all sorts of interesting and sometimes useful plants that just show up. One of these is Chile Pequin, a semi-wild hot pepper of Texas and Mexico. Sown by birds that do me the favor of encasing the seeds in a small dose of fertilizer, I now have one of these shrubby pepper plants in both the front and back yard of my Austin house. I enjoy...
by Anneliese | Aug 6, 2010 | Environmental Issues, Gardening, Recipes
Well, it’s harvest time again, and the fruit flies are starting to find their way into the kitchen. They have also managed to find their way back into my worm bin, and I’m not totally cool with that. I don’t think Phil minds too much, but I’m not terribly fond of the little buggers. So now I guess it’s time to set up the traps again. There are plenty of different techniques for making fruit fly traps, but this one has worked pretty...
by Judy | Aug 5, 2010 | Gardening, Recipes
It definitely depends upon your perspective. For us we’re at the beginning of the summer squash season, and so far so good. I’ve been very diligent in checking and picking the young fruits every day. Yesterday morning I looked to see what we’d have for dinner & decided to pick the zucchini just before cooking. I’m positive that the earmarked one was twice the size from morning ‘til night. Well…at least 50% bigger! They will get ahead of me, they always...
by Noel | Aug 3, 2010 | Gardening
I commented earlier that this year I cleaned off my compost area and stuck in some squash and melon starts. I didn’t start the seeds until the second week of June, but as you can see from the first picture, the plants are doing quite well. For a while I was worried that I was getting all foliage and no fruit. That is not the case. I counted well over a dozen relatively large squash and pumpkins hiding under the leaves and several are very close to...
by Geoff | Jul 15, 2010 | Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, Gardening
Close Up Sunflower One might not be able to tell from this photo, but I was standing on a ladder to get the shot. The tallest of the Mammoth Sunflowers that I got from Renee’s Garden Seeds finally opened up at a height of ten feet six inches. Looking Down on Sunflower Here is the perspective from below. Sunflower from Below The plant reached well above the edge of the roof. Leaf Damage from Caterpillars Last week I had to take action to save these...
by Geoff | Jul 9, 2010 | Gardening
Austin can be a tough place to grow vegetables. But little by little I have been picking up on techniques that led to this past year being my most productive vegetable garden in Texas yet. Of course, the first thing that I had to learn about is Austin’s split garden season, with most crops grown either in the fall or the early spring. This is pretty much the only way to grow crops like brassicas and sugar snap peas. And honestly, it’s pretty awesome to...
