The garden, start to current

Brace yourself, this is going to get boring. I will now attempt to catch up on details.

Until recently, I have always gardened in small amounts, in containers. At my last place of residence, I had expanded to huge bins of dirt, and I grew several giant tomato plants (taller than me!) and peppers in the summer. Chard, kale, cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi, artichokes, and salad greens in the not-summer. I grew many of those for the first time, and some of them were unsuccessful. But it was fun!

Last summer, I moved into a house with a huge yard. A teeny garden plot was already in, with a few tomatoes, peppers, some little tiny mystery plants (turned out to be broccoli) and a giant mystery vine (turned out to be cantaloupe). I moved in around August, and everything was looking rough in the heat.

In the fall, I planted some kale, some brussel sprouts, some romanesque cauliflower, some purty flowers. Some fall beans. Some okra. Sounds neat, right? It all did pretty awful.  

The wee garden in October. Most of these plants crapped out.

Very disappointing. The flowers did great. I got a few teeny weeny melons. One of the cauliflowers did ok. The one RIGHT next to it did awful. Don't ask me. I can't figure it out.

So, this spring, the patient man-half of the relationship helped me to renovate the garden plot. We pulled the weeds, tilled the ground, edged with stones, filled with fresh organic garden soil, vermiculite and compost. Of course, I got the wrong compost. Instead of lovely composted poo, I got composted wood chips, that weren't even completely composted. Bleh. But anyway, the plot looked great! I was very hopeful that my growing would be more successful. (Cue sad music to let you know rough times are ahead). 

All tilled up, and enlarged by two feet.

Edged, raised, filled. Dogs in rear.

The fruits of the squirrels' labors. Apparently the garden was THE place to store pecans.

I don't know. I don't remember even taking this.

Planted with summer veggies! So full of promise. 

Planted as transplants from a local nursery (I think all these were organic): 

• Two Blue Lake Bush Beans
• Eight Royal Burgundy Beans
• Yellow Pear Tomato (a past favorite of mine)
• Fireworks Tomato- a red slicing tomato
• Orange Oxheart Tomato- an orange slicing tomato
• Chocolate Cherry Tomato (a HUGE past favorite of mine)
• Eight Clemson Spineless Okra
• Eureka Cucumber
• Lilac Mini Bell Pepper
• Gourmet Orange Bell Pepper
• T.A.M. Jalapeno
• Bush Baby Mini Zucchini
• unknown Crook Neck Squash.
• marigolds planted all around the edge

Additionally, in containers: We planted a Table Ace Acorn Squash in a big ole bucket, and several Sugar Snap Peas in a smaller container. I also had a container with two chard plants (one rainbow and one red). The rainbow was two years old, so that one was retired and a new transplant put in.

All of this happened 4-3-15. Which was mistake number one- these should have been planted two to three weeks earlier, especially with this warm spring we had. Mistake number two- that crappy compost. 

4-18-15 Three Eversweet and one Ozark Beauty strawberry plants put in. The existing plants look like crap on a stick. Weak, still very small, anemic and pale. We had been having butt-loads (official terminology) of rain, and cooler weather than norm. I gave everything a good leaf bath and root soak of  seaweed fertilizer on one of the only non-rainy days.

5-2-15 Hey, guess what? Everything still looked like crap. SO much rain. Days and days of it. And windy storms. And days of little or no sun. I was worried that all the nutrients in the new soil was getting flushed away, so  I purchased some better compost from a local nursery The Natural Gardener. (Well technically, I purchased it from Red Barn Nursery, but the product is made and bagged by the Natural Gardener. http://www.naturalgardeneraustin.com) What the website has to say about it: "Revitalizer™ Compost: a blend of different types of composts, decomposed granite and humate. This blend creates a balanced array of beneficial bacterial and fungal microorganisms. Ideal for loosening heavy soils and for topdressing trees, shrubs, and flowerbeds. Our BEST general-purpose compost."

So.Much.Rain.

5-4-15 Pulled out the dying cucumber plant and put in two more- a Lemon Cucumber and a Marketmore.

5-29-15 The Royal Burgundy purple beans went to that big trash can in the sky. All of them. I think they had a virus. Too bad, they were so pretty, and the very few beans they produced were gorgeous and tasty. Same goes with the Lilac Mini Bell Pepper (it was dying of a broken heart?) and the sugar snap peas AND the Table Ace Acorn Squash. Sad times. 

5-30-15 Hope renewed! Fun things happened in the garden, instead of rain and mud and tears! Existing plants looked better, and new plants went in. Three new pepper plants were planted: a Serrano Pepper, a Yellow Belle Pepper, and a Habanero Pepper. Two additional okra plants- Red Burgundy ones this time, were added. Also planted were some Hubbard Squash seeds in the bucket that the Acorn Squash vacated, and some Malabar Squash seeds in the container that housed the Sugar Snap Peas.

Where do we stand today? Welp, we have had more days of sun and warmth. The remaining plants have actually been GROWING in the last couple of weeks. Slowly but surely. Blossoming and fruiting have not been great, though. 

• The zucchini plant is huge and beautiful. But the sweet widdle baby zucchinis keep turning yellow and mushy, either before pollination or soon after. I have even been hand pollinating. I think I may have squash borer bugs. I just dusted with Bt powder (an organic way to try to fight beetles). 
• The yellow squash is looking decent. But same story as the zucchinis. 
• The two green bean plants started off ok, then almost died, but now seem to be rallying with new leaves and blossoms. 
• The tomato plants are growing, excepting the Fireworks Plant. The top bit of this one broke off in a storm, and it stopped growing. It has one large, lovely green tomato growing on it. But the plant is less than two feet tall and has no new growth anywhere on it. Even if it tries to grow a new bit, it is probably too late in the season to get any decent growth and put out more blossoms before it gets too hot. But I will watch closely! The other three plants are growing, finally, and the Chocolate Cherry and Yellow Pear are about to put out more blossoms. 
• The Jalapeno plant looks weak and pathetic but has one lil pepper growing! The Gourmet Orange Bell just looks weak and pathetic. But it keeps plugging along.
• The okra looks great. Should be bigger and better, but still. I will take what I can get!
• The two new cucumber plants have blossoms and teeny little prickly cucumbers. Whoop!

Ok. That's all folks. We are all caught up, in the garden. I hope this lowers your expectations of me. There will be plenty of failures written about here. I just hope I can share some successes at some point, as well. Thanks for slogging through this with me.