Crazy Billionaire

One of these things is not like the others.

2011-03-01T20:46:00.000-06:00

I tried starting tomatoes again this year, with about a 4-percent success rate.

Everybody in this shot started more or less at the same time. The big guy in the middle took a strange detour. After not making the cut during potting up, I set him out in the real ground under a milk jug for about a week. When I needed to turn that bed over for the upcoming sweet potato experiment, I took pity on him and gave him a pot and brought him back in under the lights.

Meanwhile, the others went from initial sprouting in store-bought seed-starting mix to 2-inch cells filled with a combo of that mix and some sandy garden soil I bought cheap from some guy a couple of months ago. They were under lights 24/7 except for a few 70-degree overcast afternoons that just seemed perfect for seedlings. Puny and yellow.

So what up with that?

I feel like there are too many variables in play to say for sure. The thriver has done great since I brought it indoors, so I think my lights are fine. The suspect soil mix doesn't seem too terrible to me -- pretty light and the plants have grown decent roots in it. The only other possibility is a feeding I gave them with a weak solution from a sample bottle of LadyBug liquid fertilizer.

Anyhoo, here's my plan for next year.

1. Wait to pot them up until the second leaves are good and sprouted. I yanked these as soon as they put out little nubs and I suspect they weren't quite ready for the move.

2. Go straight from there to 4-inch pots. I like the 2-inch cell tray because it's easier to handle, but I don't think it really helps the plants.

3. Stick with fresh starter mix the whole way through. I always get too smart for my own good and think a little garden bacteria will keep them healthy, despite the fact that every guide and expert says otherwise.

4. Play it safe with the feeding. Hold off until maybe the second watering after potting up and then keep it weak.

So maybe better luck next year. It's cool though. I've got at least one viable plant (a mystery variety that has done great every time I've grown it). And reinforcements are on the way this weekend.

Quick

2011-02-12T15:44:00.000-06:00

Just upgraded from plastic to brass quick connectors on the backyard hose.

I'll try not to lord it over all you little people who knew me when.

Turkeymole!

2010-09-29T13:12:00.000-05:00

I've been refining a turkey burger recipe over the last couple of years, but it's kind of hard to do any refining when you don't actually remember what you did from time to time, so here goes.

"Turkey burger" to me generally ranks up there with "bologna sandwich" ("baloney sammich") in the list of blah food concepts. If I'm going to go to the trouble of making a burger, why not buy beef and make something I really want?

So how do I ever find myself trying turkey burgers again? Normally, my wife will buy a package of ground turkey on sale and put it in the freezer. Later, over the course of 2 or 3 weeks, she'll mention during the "what do you want to eat tonight" conversation that "we have that ground turkey in the freezer." I will ignore this as long as I comfortably can until the day she adds "and we have some buns in there that need to get used soon" and puts the turkey in the sink to thaw.

Such was the case last weekend, when I did the following ...

1/3 c pumpkin seeds or pepitas (hulled or not). I used about half and half.

2 tbsp canned mole. We had Dona Maria brand, but it's nothing special.

up to 1/3 c of liquid, such as orange juice, stock or water. I used a Dole juice mix we had.

1+ lb of ground turkey. 1.2 lbs

1. Grind pumpkin seeds in a coffee grinder until no big chunks are evident. It will be a pretty fine powder in parts.

2. In a mixing bowl, combine ground seeds, with the mole and enough liquid to make a smooth paste.

The idea here follows ATK's well-done burger recipe, which uses a panade of bread and milk to keep the burgers from drying out, which can be a problem with turkey and its low fat content. The pumpkin seeds add a little binding strength (also a turkey necessity). you might otherwise use bread crumbs, but the seeds are sturdier and a traditional mole ingredient, so I think they go well.

3. Add the turkey and incorporate the mole with the meat thoroughly while squashing it all into goo as little as possible.

4. Form 4 patties. Right before grilling, sprinkle them with kosher salt and seasoning of your choice. (my choice is Ancho Mama's chile seasoning) Spray or rub the tops with olive oil if grilling and turn them onto the hot grill. Salt and season again before flipping.

5. Serve as you like, although sliced avocado is a good choice.

This batch was probably the best yet. Next time I'll probably bump the spice up a bit by mixing some chopped chipotle in with the mole mix.

Caprese!

2010-05-18T21:01:00.000-05:00

The first handful of Sweet Millions, one leftover bocconcini and a couple of leaves from a very young basil. It's not the most impressive interpretation, but not bad for May 18.

Checking in ...

2010-04-26T21:02:00.000-05:00

This is one of those boring posts that only I will be reading this time next year when I'm trying to figure out what went wrong this year.

Actually, I'm allowing myself a bit of enthusiasm after the gardening disaster that was 2009.

I've got perhaps 2 dozen baby tomatoes already on the vine. I got the tomatoes in the ground on March 7 which is a personal record. Of course, early tomato-planting isn't necessarily something to strive for. More often than not, you'll get rewarded with an early spring freeze or at least a few weeks of cool weather that turn the plants into helpless bait for the aphids and pill bugs.

Granted, we got both the freeze and the cool days, but otherwise the weather has been perfect and here it is the end of April and I've got tomato-achella (yeah, I'm proposing that) going on back there. Meanwhile, the artichoke is producing small buds and the squash are enjoying their time in the sun before the reapers appear.

And I just got in from some late pepper planting -- 2 jalepeños, a poblano and a red bell. Still to come: okra from seed.

Monster

2010-04-04T20:27:00.000-05:00

This artichoke is friggin' huge! 5 feet tall, I'd say.

Also ...

Don't call it a comeback ...

2010-03-30T21:23:00.001-05:00

I've been busy making hay!

Hay is a popular choice for garden mulch. It makes a nice solid mat to keep in soil moisture, it stays dry on top to limit mold problems on your plants, and it decomposes well to add organic matter to the soil. You can get it by the bail from a local farmer who may have cut it from a field of Alfalfa or Coastal Bermuda.

But I prefer a more boutique variety that you don't see much at your local farm coop -- St. Augustine. Fortunately, I have two small fields of it growing very near my house, and this time of year, right as it's coming out of winter dormancy, is perfect for raking up last year's dried crop.

Load up the bails into your tractor.

Drive it out to one of your freshly-planted tomato fields.

And start spreading.

This blog has moved

2010-03-30T20:14:00.004-05:00

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Easy gardening

2009-05-05T21:48:00.000-05:00

Is it unforgivable to have a gardening blog and not post for the entire month of April, or is it the other way around?

Given other commitments , I expected that I might not have much time for the garden this year. But truth be told, aside from some mowing left undone and some hoped-for projects unstarted, I'm about as set as I've ever been gardening-wise.

Mainly, I'm just not worrying about too much this year.

Once again I failed at tomato seed-starting , but rather than having a mid-March panic, I picked up some nursery seedlings and got the show rolling. I added a few more by the beginning of April, tucked them in here and there among the still-producing lettuce and they're looking great. I also haven't pinched a single sucker so far and don't plan to -- just to see how it goes.

That lettuce, along with the spinach and chard that the squirrels were going to town on in the fall, came back to life and provided plenty of salads. The chard is actually still going strong and keeping the un-thinned leeks company.

And while my struggles with the Squashbane are well documented, I'm trying a new approach this year -- the all-you-can-eat squash-vine borer buffet.

In the new in-ground bed I cut in the fall, I've got zucchini, tromboncino, crook-neck, cucumbers and canteloupe -- all cucurbits, plus a volunteer tomato and some garbanzos I planted as cover late in the winter.

Come get it!

Whew!

2009-03-30T20:32:00.000-05:00

Man, I got so much done this past weekend, I can't even blog about it.

And they're off

2009-03-17T20:37:00.001-05:00

After a wonderful 3-day rain last week, and temps back in the 80's this week, it looks like Spring may be here for reals. So let's get to plantin'!

Tomato seedlings, y'all ready to go?

Hmm. OK, not sure what the problem was this year, but I'll guess a combination of waiting too long to pot up from sprouts, sowing the seeds too densely, and maybe a weak grow light situation for the first month. Give me a break though, my attention was elsewhere .

If I'm lucky these guys may be big enough to plant out sometime in August. So, today after baby's first movie outing (The Watchmen is totally appropriate for a 6-week old, right?) we headed towards Great Outdoors, but instead stumbled across the very friendly and affordable PlantEscape Gardens, where I picked up some professionally-grown seedlings. You know, just to get things started.

That's Brandywine, Better Boy, Rutgers and Valley Girl. I've been meaning to try some hybrids, so I'm particularly interested to see what the Better Boy does.

So away we go. Tomato sandwiches are on the way. And hopefully my seedlings will put on a growth spurt and let me get them in the ground by April. I'll get seedlings figured out one of these years.

reBirth

2009-03-07T11:18:00.001-06:00

Let me just avoid any seed planting, bean sprouting or fruit ripening cleverness and cut to the chase.

The Crazy Billionaire household got a new gardener on February 3. She's been a pretty good baby so far, generally scheduling her fussy awake times to mostly daylight hours. And she's left me more time than I expected for seed-starting, bed-digging and watering, if not garden blogging.

Her arrival has accompanied another tempting early Austin spring that has everything in the garden perilously sticking out stems, leaves and blossoms, and me, as usual, itching to plant with no idea where to put everything.

But those are minor problems. It's been, metaphorically, a long cold snowy winter, but here comes the sun and it's alright.

Wake up.

2009-01-25T12:11:00.000-06:00

Mystery tomato. Seeded 1/19/2009.

Greens

2009-01-17T10:40:00.004-06:00

It's demoralizing, y'all.

I was making a ham sandwich to take for lunch the other day and had layered on my meat and cheese and went to the crisper for something green only to find it empty. Any other year since we've lived in this house, I would just march out to the garden and trim some lettuce or spinach and be done, but not this year.

I've come close to declaring a total loss on the winter garden this year thanks to those fluffy-tailed rat bastards. Spinach -- gone. Lettuce -- gone. Chard -- gone. Beets -- a handful of survivors. And all this is despite my heroic security efforts.

On the bright side, the carrots have remained relatively untouched (except by drought, which is another story). But the primary saving grace has been the greens -- specifically the side bed patch of Chinese kale (aka Chinese broccoli, kai-lan, or gai-lan) and broccoli rabe.

We actually had enough that we didn't quite keep up and some went to seed.

Most of the time, it got a quick trip through a skillet with some hot bacon drippings.

That's the Chinese kale. It has a good broccoli flavor and even the stems are pretty sweet, they just need a little longer on the heat.

The rabe is a little tougher, but it found its way into several pasta dishes.

The ultimate winner, however, had to be kale with bacon and oven-dried tomatoes. It was a fine partner to the mac and cheese on the other side of the plate, although next time, we may just put them all together into one dish.

Sadly though even the greens have now come to an end, but I'm not mourning them too much -- I've got seed packets strewn around the kitchen and will be off to Callahan's shortly for supplies to get the spring crops started. That big wheel keeps on turning.

Nestled all snug in their beds...

2008-12-23T17:11:00.000-06:00

Happy holidays everybody. Get your seed list together -- Spring will be here sooner than you think.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to tell my coworkers about my blog

2008-12-11T08:40:00.000-06:00

'cause this shit looks kind of crazy to the untrained eye:

That's the sight of 14 bags of dead leaves that fell in other people's yards and made it as far as the curb the night before trash day before being stealthily loaded into the back of my Jimmy. Well, stealthily, with the exception of those that fell in the yard of Evelyn, the sweet little old lady who was finishing up her yardwork in the dark and just pleased as punch for me to have them.

Hopefully sooner than later, these will all make a run through my recently acquired leaf shredder. Then they'll sit in an inconspicuous heap in the backyard awaiting a slow feeding to the compost pile, or thick layering as mulch around the spring plantings.

With luck, they'll hold out until about this time next year when the circle of carbon sequestration will begin again.

Winter time is here again

2008-12-09T21:34:00.001-06:00

Nine PM, and I'm in a rain jacket and gloves with a headlamp under my hood wrangling wet plastic over the garden, because the weatherpeople were right for once and it's sleeting. I'm not actually worried about the temperature so much, but I'm now on my second set of beet and lettuce seedlings, and the third set of spinach, and I figure they can use all the help they can get.

As you may recall from my last post, lo those many weeks ago, something mysterious had decided to chew on every new plant in the garden. I suspected insects and disbelieved my rodent-phobic wife's accusations against the squirrels. But that was before I caught one of the furry bastards in the act of jumping into the Swiss Chard box.

I released the Kraken on him ...

But he was too fast. (The Kraken, by the way, has honed her hunting skills since the departure of her mentor, and has already upped her career body count by one.)

The squirrels still don't seem to get the message though, which is why I had to institute some food security measures.

The chard has been netted.

The beets are on lockdown.

Lettuce dreams of freedom.

And the spinach is awaiting due process.

I think operation "garden-tanamo" has been a success, as everything is putting on new growth and not getting eaten to the ground. However, I worry that all the setbacks may not bode well for my fourth-season gardening. With the sleet currently falling outside and first freeze looming, these leafy greens have missed out on some prime cool sunny fall days.

And, hard as it is to believe, we're about a month away from tomato seed-starting time! I might be pursuing a different approach on that front this year though.

Still growing ...

2008-11-03T21:01:00.000-06:00

It's so nice this time of year to remember that we don't actually live on the surface of Mercury.

The artichokes have taken advantage of the cool weather to put on some growth. I may have helped a bit by completely excavating their roots and packing in fresh compost and fertilizer.

The serranos have also finally decided to get busy.

Green beans are in.

Swiss chard has made its debut in the crazy billionaire garden ...

joining the broccoli raab, Chinese kale, shallots and garlic.

But all the news is not so pleasant. After promising starts, every beet, lettuce and spinach seedling got devoured over the course of about 3 days. I still haven't identified the culprit. Squirrel? Grasshopper? Caterpillar? Beetle? Pill bug?

I put in some fresh beet seeds over the weekend, and am waiting for the green beans to finish before reseeding lettuce and spinach. Hopefully whatever it was has reached its low temperature limit. otherwise, I'll just have to keep replanting. I do have plenty of seeds.

Updated: Carnival of the green and brown

2008-10-12T13:10:00.002-05:00

I notice Anthony at The Compost Bin wrote a post today about the state of his eponymous bin. I'd totally accuse him of stealing my idea, if he wasn't already the Internet's leading compost enthusiast.

However, it does remind me of an idea I've been kicking around -- I think it would be really interesting to see how other folks out there in the garden blogosphere handle their composting.

So if you're reading this, how about taking some pics and writing a few words about the current state of your bin? Come on, you know your real-life friends don't want to hear about it.

If you comment here, I'll add links to the post, or you can link to others in your post ... or something, I'm not sure how that should work.

Compost!

And so it begins ...

Linda puts some big culvert pipes to good use in Australia

Anthony the compost man explains just how little effort composting requires.

Dean and his junior composter army dig a shallow grave.

What horrors lurk in the East-Side-Patch bins?

The plantening continues

2008-10-06T20:46:00.001-05:00

New seeds planted this past weekend:

Spinach, Bloomsdale Long-Standing and Catalina baby leaf

Chinese Kale (I think this is the same as Chinese broccoli)

Broccoli Raab

Shallots

Garlic

10/4/2008

A couple of bugs

2008-10-04T13:54:00.000-05:00

Pardon the terrible photo, but I came into the kitchen one morning a couple of weeks ago and found this fat walking stick sitting on the floor. When I went to scoop him up with a piece of junk mail, I suddenly felt a fine spray of liquid on my hand. Some Internet searching reveals that walking sticks (the Phasmida order of insects) do spit as a defense mechanism. Conventional wisdom that the spit is acidic and can blind you if it gets in your eyes seems to be untrue.

I was a little disappointed not to have seen any mantises in the garden this year, but this giant showed up in the carport recently. Crazy, isn't it? I relocated her to the herb patch in hopes she might enjoy some of the leaf-footed bugs that are still hanging around hoping the tomatoes are coming back.

The Compost Report

2008-10-04T13:38:00.000-05:00

If I was prone to poetic overstatement, I'd tell you that the compost pile is the beating heart of the organic garden -- the living organ that pumps the very life force into the soil and thus the plants which, when finally spent, return to the pile to begin again the cycle of life.

Wait, maybe that would make it the lungs then. Regardless, I want to talk about compost.

Here's my pile, which got a long-awaited turning last weekend.

It's been an especially hot and dry summer, and I've been especially stingy with the water, so the pile has been very dry since the spring and therefore, not very active. Composting, as I'm sure you know, has 3 basic ingredients:

Browns -- dry leaves, straw, twigs, etc.
Greens -- grass clippings, garden cuttings, kitchen waste, etc.
Water -- enough that everything is damp, but not so much that there's no air in the pile.

Mix them together in some some magic proportion and a menagerie of bacteria, fungii and bugs go crazy eating it and each other until it's all broken down into a pretty fundamental mass of organic material. Put that in your garden and it improves the texture and water-holding ability of your soil. And all that bacteria keeps eating any organic material it can find, breaking it down to the basic molecules that feed your plants.

The magic proportion can take a lot of fussing to find, but fortunately, even if you never manage to come anywhere close, it's all going to end up as compost anyway. It may just take longer and get kind of stinky at times.

Or you might find that 6 months of stocking a 40 cubic-foot pile gets you about $6 worth of compost.

But then it's all about the journey, isn't it?

Back in the dirt.

2008-09-28T19:48:00.000-05:00

Despite my carrot-loving friend's absence, I got out and did a bit of Fall planting today. Carrot and beet seeds are in the ground.

Yesterday was full of enjoyably back-breaking compost turning and bed preparation, with a little lettuce planting and artichoke side-dressing for dessert.

As I had hoped, the cooler weather seems to be good motivation for gardening. We'll see if it helps with the garden blogging.

Planted:

Oak Leaf leaf lettuce, Tom Thumb and Winter Density head lettuce from seed, 9/27/2008

Early Wonder beet, Scarlet Nantes and Danvers Half Long carrots from seed, 9/28/2008

Bink the Stink

2008-09-26T09:39:00.000-05:00

As long as I'm not posting about gardening, I'd like to share a small sadness.

Bink Smith, the fuzzball you may recognize from the background of many a garden photo, passed on this week.

Despite her love for pulling broccoli plants up by the roots and eating only the ripest tomatoes off the vine, Bink was a serene presence in the garden, as everywhere else in our lives.

Before she went, we had time for one more round of "chase the water", a game she loved albeit one I wasn't always happy with, especially when the field of play was a brittle squash vine. And she got one last shot at catching that rat in the shed. No success, but the hunt was always the best part.

She was a good dog and we miss her lots.

Ohai.

2008-09-13T15:56:00.001-05:00

Still not a lot to report around these parts. I've been lamenting the effects of this summer's crushing heat, particularly earlier in the week when the two surviving growing tips of my tromboncino squash got roasted to a crisp in the afternoon sun. Oh, and did I mention that control squash is all et up with the squash bugs, and I've still got no eggplants? It's a bit demoralizing.

Note to self -- just take next August off. I'm sure there are plenty of gardeners elsewhere who would say that a 10-month growing season is plenty.

Today was nice though. Hurricane Ike (or as it turned out here in Austin, "Hurricane Psych") gave us a day of cloud cover if no rain. I got out and turned up one of the empty beds. It's good to get into the dirt again.

I put in some green bean seeds when I was done, and have been giving some thought to the fall garden plan. At the moment, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, broccoli-kale, onions, garlic and leeks are on deck.

In other news, we got a new patio door. My friend John helped me install it last week and I've been fiddling with the trim some today. Addie hates it since she can't see the yard when the blinds are up.

It's for the best though. She would have died if she had seen this display of nerve out there earlier.

Planted: Green beans, Burpee Stringless Green Pod from seed, 9/13/2008

More squash talk

2008-08-30T10:42:00.000-05:00

Work in the lab continues.

The control squash (the one in its own bed) is thriving and even has a real deal squash on it.

However, I suspect danger lurks deep within its stems. In the last week, I've scraped about 30 eggs off of the vine.

The experimental squash (the one that was abandoned in the wild to be raised by cantaloupes) is still bug free, but that may just be because the moths have been embarrassed to leave their children there -- it's scrawny. Check out this side by side.

In the ground with the cantaloupe:

In the raised bed by itself:

That certainly makes me feel good about my soil mix tough.

What is the deal with my eggplant?

2008-08-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

Since my accidental all-night watering about a month ago, the eggplant have really turned on the blossoms. I took the hint and have been trying to keep that bed plenty moist, and have gotten a bit of help from some recent rain.

However, every one of those blossoms so far have ended up on the ground, leaving behind tiny stubs that are absolutely no good in a pork stir fry or breaded and smothered in tomato sauce and melted mozzarella.

So tell me gardeners of the blogosphere, what am I doing wrong? Still too little water? Too much water? Too hot? And whatever it is, is it the same story for my peppers?

Return to the garden

2008-08-19T19:20:00.000-05:00

It's amazing what actual rain will do for the garden and for my willingness to go walk around outside taking pictures of it.

This little patch popped up today near the acorn squash. It never ceases to amaze me how suddenly fungi fruit. And seeing this one reminded me of last year's freakish monsoon summer during which I identified probably a dozen different fungi in and around the garden.

The control acorn has seen fit to make its presence known to the local pollinator's union. In the upper left there, you can just see a little female blossom, which I hope gets a chance to get it on before you-know-who starts laying eggs.

The recent rains and perhaps the harvesting of the last two melons on the vine have inspired a fit of blossoming in the cantaloupe patch, with quite a few females like this one. We might just get a few more fruits before it's all done. Seven so far, for those of you keeping score.

And this guy and a few friends decided to poke their heads up this week. They're about the most colorful things growing in the lawn for sure.

The daily squash report

2008-08-17T22:36:00.000-05:00

The acorns are both still kicking, although the one I planted amid the cantaloupes is kind of stunted, probably due to it being planted in barely-amended native soil. The control squash is growing like crazy. I'll have to expound on these confounding factors when I submit my paper to the American Journal of Squash Growin'.

In sad news, the butternut has succumbed to Tha Itis.

That's the sad sight I found when rearranging its stems today. I've been checking daily for moth eggs and have seen none. I had been assuming that its poor growth was due to the brutal heat that has burnt its growing tip to a crisp twice, but it looks like the little bastards snuck in on me.

On a positive note, the Tromboncino planted 3 feet away seems fine so far. This might give some support to Matt's vine vs. bush idea -- my butternut was a bushy variety while the Tromboncino is very viny.

Now, if I can just keep the survivors alive for a couple more weeks, I may be set. And hey, it only got up to 93 today. Cold front!

Wrap it up

2008-08-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

It's too hot out there to grow anything, so maybe it's time for some reflecting (Thanks for the inspiration, Katie and Lewru.)

This has been my third summer of gardening. It seems like I've read that an organic garden needs three years to really hit its stride. That's three years of regular amending with compost, feeding the soil with organic matter and, of course, not using chemical pesticides or fertilizers. During that time, ostensibly, you're creating a hospitable environment in your soil and garden for the diverse population of microbes, worms and other critters that turn organic matter into plant food.

The summer crops did grow better than ever this year, although I don't think there was any third-year magic involved. This was my first dry summer using the new soaker-hose irrigation system and the first season since I turned up all that native clay into the peat/compost soilless mix.

Yet, I still don't think my garden grows very well. I sure don't think so when I read about random folks' gardens on GardenWeb or when I go see how the pros are growing at the Natural Gardener. I thought that having a garden meant desperately looking for friends and coworkers to take produce off your hands in the summer, but I haven't found that to be the case.

I doubt there's a single magic trick that will turn my garden into the Fertile Crescent (pre-modern times, that is). But maybe there are some clues here:

What worked this year.

More clay was a good thing. The raised beds still dry out and water soaks almost straight down from the soaker hoses, but their water-holding capacity is obviously improved.
I feel good about my decisive executions of squash and tomatoes. Rather than staring at sad dying plants for weeks, I opted to yank them out as soon as the end was evident.
Varieties that will be asked back: Ambrosia cantaloupes have been awesome. And if the squash experiment goes well, I may have to plant them everywhere. Brandywine -- these produced well and were delicious.
Leeks are awesome.

What didn't work.

Forget the tomato ring. I'm always desperate to find homes for tomato seedlings and have been planting a few in the shady corner around the compost pile. I do get a couple of tomatoes off them, but all in all, I don't think it's worth the effort.
Again I didn't give the cream peas much of a chance. I need to plant them earlier, in larger quantity in a real bed.
Varieties to pitch: Costoluto Genovese -- not very flavorful and the convoluted shape means it's mostly skin. Principe Borghese -- disappointingly tiny. I think for sauce/drying next time I'm going to go with some hybrid romas. Persimmon -- not its fault, but I wasn't too fond of the tart/salty flavor. Not a big producer either.
The earthtainer tomato actually worked pretty well, but I don't think it's worth the effort of having a separate container that needs hand watering. Perhaps I'll plant it up and pass it along to a garden-less friend.

Things to do differently.

Water the hell out of everything. I thought I was watering pretty well, then I went and left the soakers going for 12 hours straight on accident a few weeks ago. Since then, the eggplants have gone crazy with blossoms. I made a similar mistake with the peppers, and now I'm seeing the first blossoms of the year on a couple of them.
It's always hard to tell, but I think my feeding regime worked well. I think I might try increasing the amount of initial feeding and remember to do a mid-season side-dressing.
Feed the artichokes. The artichokes have always been small and loose and I think maybe they need more food. I may dig them up completely and add a couple of bags of manure and plenty of food to the holes.
Be more conscientious with the leek planting. I kind of half-assed these at seeding, and was regretting it when harvesting those delicious leeks. Also, plant more of them.
Try sweet potatoes, if I can find space.
Plant garlic, lots of it.
Plant more onions.
GASP! Try a couple of hybrid tomatoes. I'm a big fan of heirlooms, but I also like science. it would be interesting to see how yields compare.

I'm sure there's more, but you people probably have work to do.

Look out, leaves

2008-08-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

Dreams really do come true.

When I got home from work on Friday, this device was sitting out on our neighbor's curb.

It's one of them fancy electrical leaf shredders. And it works!

This is really going to change my Fall. I never got around to swiping bagged leaves from my neighbors last year, partly because it was such a pain to shred them with the lawnmower the year before. This year I'm going to be rolling (probably not literally) in shredded oak and pecan leaves. I'll be mulching a foot deep with them next summer, layering them with the kitchen scraps in the compost bin, mixing them in with my cereal for a crunchy, carbohydrate-rich breakfast. It's going to be awesome!

Oh the things that pass for excitement these days.

Round 2

2008-08-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

I'm about to kick it with the Scientific Method, 7th-grade style. So get ready.

1. Question: Is there something about cantaloupe plants that cause them to repel Squash Vine Borer moths? If so, could that trait be used to protect other plants from SVB infestation?

2. Research: Cantaloupe is theoretically one of the preferred victims of the Squash Vine Borer. However, cantaloupe in the garden have remained completely untouched by SVBs this year, even as squash have been completely decimated. It has been observed that while the cantaloupe vines look almost identical to squash vines, they tend to exude a strong sweet odor that squash plants lack.

3. Hypothesis: Cantaloupe vines could be used as either a cover or camouflage to prevent SVB moths from laying eggs on susceptible squash plants.

4. Design experiment: Plant a squash plant between two hills and among the spreading vines of cantaloupe plants. Plant a control squash nearby, but away from the cantaloupe. Watch for signs of SVB egg-laying and larvae infestation in both plants.

5. Conduct experiment: Two identical acorn squash plants were purchased on July 25th at the Natural Gardener. While in the store, investigator's wife embarrassed him by trying to take sneaky photo of investigator and John Dromgoole, causing investigator to retreat to the windchime department.

One squash was planted midway between two established Ambrosia cantaloupe plants in a hole amended with cottonseed meal and kelp meal.

Where's Waldo?

The other squash plant was planted in a similarly-amended hole 5 feet away in a bed that currently has one basil plant in it.

6. Record data:

7. Draw conclusions:

More pie

2008-07-26T12:35:00.000-05:00

Sorry, I still haven't found my garden blogging muse. Please accept more pie blogging.

You may recall my peach and blueberry pie, but there was also a cherry pie, which was OK, given that it was made with sweet cherries instead of the coveted sour Montmorency cherries -- we just can't seem to find them around here.

But being as it is the height of Texas freestone peach season, I'm trying to take full advantage of the ready availability of plump ripe local peaches. Peaches are, after all, the most delicious fruit. This is a fact that cannot be disputed*.

I went with straight peaches this time, mainly because blackberries are so damned expensive. However, I mixed it up a bit with a technique I've had good luck with in the past -- a grated top crust.

When you're done mixing up your crust, treat the bottom crust as normal, but take the dough for the top crust and pack it into a ball or hunk. Leave it in the refrigerator as long as you can so it sets up nice and firm. Then, when you've filled the bottom shell with filling, grate the cold dough just like cheese over the top of the pie.

Then bake it like normal. No worries about vent holes -- the juices will bubble up through it and around the edges. This time, about halfway through I sprinkled it liberally with vanilla sugar.

It came out like this:

I'm a little perturbed that it doesn't brown up better than that -- the lower-lying bits of crust are done, but look awfully pale. Maybe spraying it with butter would help or perhaps I need to fiddle with the temperature a bit more. Anyone have suggestions?

Oh, and in case you were skeptical of claims elsewhere -- lard really is the way to go. I've been doing a 3/4 lard to 1/4 butter lately and it comes out perfect.

* I will accept arguments on behalf of the pineapple and mango, but these will ultimately fail.

The end of the line

2008-07-19T11:28:00.000-05:00

Hey, what do you know, if you spend some time gardening, you get some ideas for your garden blog.

I took advantage of the sub-90 morning temperature to get out and check on the back 40.

Visiting the tomatoes, I was faced with the annual conundrum.

As you may know, once temperatures get consistently above 90 in the daytime and above 70 at night, tomatoes tend to stop blossoming or drop their blossoms before they set fruit. Here in Central Texas and other hot climates, that means that by mid-July, we're pretty much done seeing any tiny new green tomatoes. And this year, with a string of 100-degree days in early, we've been pretty done for a while.

What to do? You can keep watering the scraggly things in hopes that they'll still be healthy enough to start fruiting again when it cools off. You can chop them off at the kneecaps to make them put out new young sprouts and hope those produce fruit later. Or you can plant fresh seedlings, either grown from seed or rooted from suckers taken off the mature plants.

I've tried just about all of these and never had much success, yet I've still had trouble bringing myself to make the obvious choice. Not so this year.

Thanks for the memories and mouth ulcers, Brandywine, Persimmon and Black Krim. The compost pile thanks you for the greenery.

Bringing Practical Back

2008-07-13T22:09:00.001-05:00

I seem to have been been too busy or unmotivated to come up with anything good to write about in the past week. Maybe it's time we got back to the basics of this here garden blog.

Saturday I dropped some nutrition on a few plants. Everybody is looking mighty tired in this every-day 100-degree heat, so I thought maybe they could use some encouragement. I pulled out my trusty fertilizer bucket and gave a handful each of cottonseed, bone, and kelp meal to the cantaloupes and the new Tromboncino and Butternut squashes.

I also gave a little bone and kelp to the peppers which have, as usual, been disappointing me with their refusal to hold onto blossoms long enough to make peppers. Yes, Cayenne, that's right, you've been very good about making peppers, although I wouldn't get too cocky since you can't seem to turn any of them red.

And then I yanked three tomatoes -- the ones that were growing around the compost bin, Japanese tomato-ring style. That's a shady area and it doesn't get much water, so they were all pretty sad looking. The upside of that is that I can now get to the compost to turn it, which reminds me that I've been meaning to write up my compost situation, which I'm sure you will all be hotly anticipating over the next week.

Pie

2008-07-06T11:38:00.000-05:00

I'm afraid I'm a little dry on gardening news. I actually did some work on my neglected St. Augustine crop yesterday, but that wasn't as exciting as what I did afterward.

Persimmon

2008-07-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

Talk about a late bloomer. To be fair, these Persimmons have probably been ripe for a few days, but I just realized they weren't going to turn red. So I pulled one yesterday and sliced it up for turkey burgers.

They're pretty large and have an amazing creamy color. They're also probably the meatiest tomato I've ever seen.

The flesh is very firm and kind of tart -- actually almost salty.

A very interesting tomato, but I don't think I'll grow them again. This plant only ended up with 4 fruits, and honestly, I'm in it for sweet and tomato-y, not tart and salty.

Sharing the wealth

2008-06-30T22:04:00.000-05:00

A friend just sent me this. It's funny 'cause it's true.

This weekend marked the beginning of the endgame. Now that the tomato harvest is on the downside of the curve, every fruit is a little more precious and now is when the little bastards have chosen to strike.

Despite the maiming and the mauling, the squirrels have finally found the treasure. And none of us -- human, rodent or terrier -- will rest until it is all claimed.

Brandywine, all the guys would say she's mighty fine.

2008-06-27T08:49:00.004-05:00

Last year, I was just about convinced that I wouldn't grow Brandywines again. They're kind of the Platonic ideal of an heirloom tomato -- good size, sweet tomato flavor, meaty and tender -- but last summer they didn't bother to put on any fruit until about July, by which time I was only able to get about 2 or 3 of them. I figured they were just too big and thirsty for Texas, despite it being the year of the monsoon.

So fast forward to this year and my one Brandywine (I let it back into the garden on probation this time) has just given up a flush of nearly-perfect hefty pink fruits with 3 or 4 more coming soon and a couple of late setters on the vine.

It's good to see they can do so well. Probably all the rain last year caused a lot of the blossom drop, and possibly my new zeal for kelp and bonemeal helped with the fruit set, but it's safe to say that Brandywine will be getting renewed for the 2009 season.

Caprese

2008-06-24T09:00:00.002-05:00

While I'm not really known for my flow, I feel comfortable saying that I kick Coolio's ass when it comes to Caprese.

Harvest

2008-06-22T22:38:00.004-05:00

Cantaloupe, Ambrosia, June 22, 2008 (seedlings planted March 26th) 89 days, >5 lbs.

Actually the second cantaloupe, the first one having been picked by John and Becky while they were garden-sitting. I've been waiting for the official tell-tale signs -- cantaloupe smell, softness around the stem, easy separation from the vine -- but it still wasn't showing any. It was, however, cracked on the blossom end and ants were starting to explore, so it had to be done, but it's plenty ready. It's not the sweetest one I've ever had, but it's mighty good.

As I was bringing it inside, I was reminded of what was probably a seminal experience for my organic gardening hobby. It was our family vacation to the mid-Atlantic when I was in the 4th grade (generally I date all childhood memories to the 4th grade, but I think it really was in this case) and we were doing some touring of Pennsylvania Dutch country.

Driving past Amish farms, the air was heavy with the smell of cow manure. At a restaurant or farm stand, we had a cantaloupe that we generally agreed was the best any of us had tasted and we attributed it to the Amish farmers' use of manure fertilizer. In hindsight, I think it was a basic realization for me that cow shit could grow tastier fruit than the granulated stuff in our shed at home.

Drying tomatoes

2008-06-21T13:26:00.006-05:00

Pick a bunch of tomatoes. Generally, varieties designated as paste, roma, or plum are best since they're drier to begin with and are kind of mealy when eaten fresh. These are also the ones you'd want to use for making sauce. Certainly you can dry any kind, but you'd hate to wake up one morning in September and realize you could have had one more tomato sandwich or Caprese salad, but squandered it on tomato jerky instead.

Slice them up. Smaller tomatoes like these, you can just cut in half. I found that these Principe Borgheses had a flattened shape, and that if you cut them parallel to the flattened sides, the seeds where much easier to remove -- other tomatoes may vary.

Poke your fingers into the halves and squish out most of the seeds and gel, then lay them out on a rack on a baking sheet.

You can sprinkle them with a little bit of kosher salt to help get the juices out and add a little flavor. Actually, you could add all sorts of fanciness at this point, like fresh herbs, or balsamic, but keeping it simple will give you more options when you're ready to use them.

Put them in the oven somewhere between 150 and 225 and let them go for a few hours. The time will depend on your temperature and how dry you want them to be, but you can probably count on 3-4 hours. If you start too late at night and want to go to bed, just turn off the oven and turn it on again in the morning. This is some definite low-impact cooking.

When they're done, you can eat them like candy, add them to sauces for extra sweetness, use them whole or chopped in pasta or pizzas, or grind them up in pesto. We put them in plastic and freeze them, which is an especially awesome idea when you remember them in December. You can also cover them in olive oil and store them in the refrigerator for a while, which preserves them and gives you tomato-infused oil.

And that is all I know about oven-dried tomatoes.

One down

2008-06-19T11:35:00.004-05:00

While I may have suspended my squirrel eradication campaign, I neglected to notify junior gardener number two of the change in policy.

Isn't she a sweetheart?

Addie achieved her second career kill this morning when a very stupid squirrel decided to re-enter the yard after having been chased out. On re-entry, he made it to the safety of the oak tree. But rather than waiting for me to get sick of the dogs barking and bring them inside, like the smart squirrels do, he bolted for the fence and never made it.

Retrieving a squirrel from a terrier is not an easy task, but here are some tips. If you can get the other terrier indoors, the first one will bring the squirrel right up to you to show it to you and receive full credit. She will not let you hold it, however, until you pick her up by her hind legs and hang her upside down.

Back!

2008-06-15T20:49:00.004-05:00

Back from vacation. It was a relaxing week of sleeping, reading, swimming and visiting a most-curious village.

I ate my first tomato sandwich of the year -- Oatnut bread, Hellman's mayo, and a Black Krim, which I can recommend highly. My first BLT was quite acceptable, what with the home-cured bacon. I used a Mortgage Lifter for that, which was good, but I can't say it lived up to the hype.

The garden weathered a nine-day period of 98+ high temps and no rain pretty well, thanks to my gardensitters, one of whom won the raffle prize of the first cantaloupe of the year -- I can't wait to hear how it was. When I got back this afternoon, I picked 7 pounds of tomatoes. Most of those were Principe Borghese, which will get dried in the oven in the next couple of days.

I also picked a Brandywine, a Persimmon (I think) and about 10 of our mystery black tomatoes. Oh, also three skinny white Asian eggplants and a late-breaking artichoke from the second plant that got a late start in the Fall.

And I just finished a dinner of penne with the aforementioned eggplant, a Costoluto Genovese, spinach, and homemade pancetta.

And this concludes my entry for the most-riveting-blog-post-of-the-year award.

In bloom

2008-06-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

Hey, here's what an artichoke looks like when allowed to bloom.

I know! It's crazy, isn't it?

Let's work together on this, America!

2008-06-10T09:00:00.003-05:00

I realize I probably seem a little obsessed with the squash vine borers, but come on! A couple of squash plants could provide us with vegetable dishes for every meal of the summer if left to their full potential. But all it takes is one or two tiny worms to kill a whole plant.

I've officially given up on squash round one. The plant I thought was doing the best failed to bounce back from its daily wilt today (6/4), so I pulled it and slit open its stem to find this guy

and his little brother.

The round-two squash seedlings are doing well and will go in the ground soon. But that's really just an appeasement strategy. What we need is a solution. And today I'm stepping up to the plate to provide the leadership needed to find one.

The Crazy Billionaire X-Prize for Squash Vine Borer Abatement

To the person or team who concocts a reliable method for preventing the infestation of food crops of the family Cucurbitaceae by the larvae of Melittia Cucurbitae I will award a homemade cookbook containing my family's many favorite recipes for the preparation of squash and zucchini. Details of the winning method or invention will be published on this Web site under Creative Commons license for the good of all humankind.

If we can put a man on the moon and make a square watermelon, we can beat this little worm, people. Let me get you started with a couple of ideas:

1. Somehow that moth knows a squash plant when it sees, or smells, it. I don't know if its pheremones or what, but can't we concentrate it, bottle that shit and spray it on a glue trap? Or how about a big fake squash plant covered in glue -- something that will really grab hold of the old ovipositor and never let go.

2. I've noticed my squash plants tend to have ants crawling on them. Now if Monsanto can genetically engineer a potato that will kill a potato beetle, why not an ant that loves to crack open and eat delicious moth eggs?

Anyway, that's just spitballin'. I'm sure you'll surprise me with something better, gardeners of the world.

Let's do this.

Harvest

2008-06-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Eggplant, Black Beauty -- first picked 6/2/2008

Beach

2008-06-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

I know this is an awful-bloggery thing to do, but I'm noting that I'm on vacation this week so the thousands of you who spend your work days hitting the refresh button in hopes of finding new photos of produce won't be too disappointed. In an extra-bloggery move, I'm going to try to queue up a few quick posts over the week just to keep things fresh.

In fact, this very post was written in advance and queued. At this moment, I'm likely sitting on the beach drinking a cold beer and eating a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich. I'm not sure where the tomato came from, but I hope it ripened in my garden before we left town.

From last year's crop.

I must confess

2008-06-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

I've been struggling to put into words for some time my discovery that everything I do or think is just a natural response to my particular socio-economic situation and therefore thousands upon thousands of other people are doing and thinking the same things, no matter how unique I may think I am.

Generally, my guidebook in this existential journey is a publication called the New York Times. Day after day, they publish articles that neatly illustrate activities and thoughts that I have recently "discovered", usually quoting 3 or 4 people from different East coast communities to really illustrate the breadth of the trend.

What can I say? I'm white people.

So seeing this article, concerning the ethical struggles (or lack thereof) gardeners have with varmint-killing, was especially liberating from a garden-blogging perspective.

Concerned that garden-blog readers might not have a lot of crossover with killers of woodland creatures, I might have gone forever without ever writing about the recent time I borrowed a friend's high-powered pellet gun and took a rushed shot at a squirrel lurking around the cantaloupe bed.

I managed only to hit him in the left-front paw, which gave me the chance to fast-track all the ethical dilemmas I had glossed over during my rush to grab the gun. I did all that thinking while gathering up my gloves and a hammer on my way out to visit my new friend who was catching his breath by the back fence. However by the time I got out there, he was gone. I've since seen him scurrying on the fence and power lines with a tell-tale limp.

However, knowing what I know about demographic fatalism, now verified by the NYT, I can tell the story safely with the knowledge that gardeners everywhere are happily shooting, beating with shovels, drowning in rain barrels, snapping the necks of and otherwise killing all manner of squirrel, rabbit, mole, woodchuck and snake on a daily basis.

Hell, with only one gimped squirrel under my belt, I'm a regular Francis of Assisi.

I will say the squirrels have not touched a single tomato so far this year. Maybe they just need some more time to find them, maybe my experiments with cayenne pepper and pepper spray are having some effect.

Or just maybe Squirrelly Tremain is out there telling his friends which yard not to fuck with.

'lopes

2008-06-04T09:00:00.001-05:00

By popular demand, here's a post about cantaloupes.

My previous experience with melon growing includes a small hill of watermelon I planted in our backyard when I was about 12. As I recall, it produced two melons, the first of which was proudly harvested at about softball size by the bratty kid from next door. The second was still maturing on the vine when my brother got too close to it while mowing the yard and sucked the whole vine up into the lawnmower.

Attempt number two was last year with a couple of Moon and Stars watermelons that seemed to grow fine, until they succumbed to some sort of fungus or mold, I think, probably brought on by last year's damp monsoon weather.

This year, things seem to be going much better. After I built the new raised bed in February, I never got around to expending the money or labor needed to fill it with growing mix and instead opted to dig into the native soil beneath it and turn in a bit of leftover bagged compost and fertilizer mix. Most of the compost went in two hills inside the bed, where, in each, I planted one Ambrosia cantaloupe seedling from the Natural Gardener and covered the whole mess with a few inches of dead grass. That was March 26th.

They're growing pretty well.

All that foliage keeps the whole bed very well shaded, which I think is helping the water situation quite a bit. Melons are thirsty, I hear. It also makes it a little hard to find the melons. It seems that cantaloupes tend to produce nothing by male blossoms for quite a while at first. I was starting to get worried toward the end of April, when I finally noticed a few tiny melons here and there. A couple of weeks later, I noticed my most promising candidate, about the size of a pecan, had shriveled up and fallen off.

Then I dug around a bit and found three of these.

At this point, they're about 6-inches long and starting to develop those brown ridges and bumps on their skins. They're about 70 days from transplant, so I'm guessing the first could be ready within a couple of weeks, assuming squirrels or terriers don't find them first.

Here come the toms!

2008-06-01T23:30:00.006-05:00

So these are the for-real first tomatoes of the summer.^* The little ones are Principe Borghese, which are much smaller than I expected -- could be I need to water more. And the crazy-wrinkly ones are the Costoluto Genovese.

Chump that I am, I took this photo on the patio, then stepped over to the garden to take some other photos. When I looked back over, she was at it again and had devoured both PBs and the multi-colored CG. I blame myself.

Principe Borghese -- first picked 5/29/2008

Costoluto Genovese -- first picked 5/31/2008

Both seedlings were planted out March 15, so that makes 75 and 77 days. Interestingly, these are rated at 75 and 78 days, respectively, but I think time to maturity is supposed to measure from seed under optimal conditions. I plant out relatively early, and these seedlings had some other circumstances to overcome.

*Here I have to admit to having picked a prematurely-ripened-by-BER Black Krim on 5/31 and, after slicing off the damaged portion, eaten it with a little salt. It was good.

Patio photos

2008-05-28T09:00:00.001-05:00

As promised, here are the results.

But first, a shot from after I demolished the old deck (although I can't say this is a lot worse than what it looked like when the deck was there),

Here it is all done in the daylight.

And here it is all dressed up for prom at night (which is really the only time we'll be enjoying it much for about the next 4 months).

And here's a former resident of the old deck. He and two of his friends and relations were relocated to a new homestead behind the shed.

SVB Update

2008-05-27T13:41:00.000-05:00

The Squash Vine Borers, as expected, have done their damage.

The squash have been going downhill for about a week now, wilting easily during the day and not putting on as many blossoms. Saturday morning I pulled up the Peter Pan squash and tossed it in the compost pile after slitting it open and decapitating the inch-long larva inside (sorry, no photos).

Of the remaining three plants, one is still pretty strong, and the other two are looking decent, but small. Their stems all look something like this.

I've sliced into them lengthwise with a razor blade to see if I could catch the culprit, but there's no telling. I did find these in a spot by the fence where we grew tromboncino last year.

Those are the discarded cocoons (I probably saw a dozen of them) of the next brood, so I'm guessing they're not going to be done anytime soon.

Meanwhile, I've started seedlings for zucchini, butternut, and tromboncino. They grow extraordinarily fast, so I'm going to try to just keep a succession of squash going all summer. Screw those guys!

Rottin'

2008-05-26T12:52:00.002-05:00

Check it.

A fat, juicy Brandywine cut down in its youth. So nasty a squirrel wouldn't eat it. That, my friends, is the heartbreak of BER -- blossom-end rot.

Apparently, this is caused by a calcium deficiency within the fruit. That can mean that the soil needs more calcium, in the form of lime or bone meal. But more likely, it's that the calcium isn't moving into and through the plant efficiently, which can be caused, helpfully, by either too much water or too little water. Shallow cultivation, that is, dragging your hoe around the plants and breaking near-the-surface roots, can also cause that calcium disruption.

So what did I do wrong?

After getting on the bone meal train this year, along with my regular use of Rabbit Hill Farm Minerals Plus, I feel pretty good about my soil's calcium content.

I haven't gotten near the plants' roots since I planted them. They're all buried under several inches of mulch, which has also kept the soil moisture pretty consistent.

I want to say that it was the 3 or 4 big thunderstorms we've had that dumped a lot of water on the garden. That's a good scapegoat, since I can't do much about it. However, only tomatoes in my raised beds have been affected. You would think those growing in the ground in clay soil would have gotten more thoroughly soaked.

I guess I'll just take comfort in the fact that BER usually goes away after the first few tomatoes. The first few precious, precious tomatoes.

First tomato!

2008-05-24T12:39:00.003-05:00

No surprise, it was a Sungold.

I didn't get a chance to take a picture, but here's where it was ...

Sadly, I didn't get to pick it or eat it either. That honor went to junior gardener Bink ...

I've already threatened to send her to the pound if she does it again. I don't think that will stop her though. During the summer, she frequently comes inside smelling like tomato leaves with yellow streaks of pollen on her head. My wife built a fence around the East bed this year to keep the dogs out, but I think she was able to reach over for this particular low-hanging fruit.

Harvest

2008-05-24T12:33:00.003-05:00

1015 onions, picked over the past week or two.

We planted these in November, I think. Wait until the tops die off and the necks get dry to pick them. Then, let them sit outside for a couple of days to make sure the outer papery skin gets nice and dry so they'll keep longer.

I've got another dozen or so still out in the garden.

Bacon

2008-05-23T22:13:00.001-05:00

This is totally garden-related. The whole point of growing tomatoes is so you can eat BLTs.

That particular hunk of pork is half of a piece (that cut is known as pork belly) that also yielded the aforementioned pancetta. it was similarly cured for a week, but then smoked in a friend's homemade smoker. No rolling up.

It's delicious -- a little more like country ham than the bacon you buy in the supermarket. Most of it is now in the freezer, awaiting the confluence of ripe tomatoes and a beach vacation.

Irrigation, that's what I need, some irrigation.

2008-05-22T20:53:00.010-05:00

So, back to the gardening.

Last Spring, after having endured a year of wrangling a fussy drip irrigation system only to have my plants shrivel from thirst, I set out to build an ideal irrigation system. My goal was to build something that would keep all the growing medium in my raised beds moist, with a minimum of hose dragging, while allowing me to get in there to till and add new compost every year.

After having a plumber out one time to fix a frozen pipe outside our house, I discovered how totally easy and, dare I say, fun working with PVC plumbing can be. It's like a big Erector set. You should totally try it -- don't be skeered.

To start, I sketched out a plan, then broke it down to what kind of bends and connectors I needed to make it happen. Then I went over to Lowe's and stood in front of the PVC fittings aisle for about 3 hours, looking at my sketch and scratching my head. I came home with some lengths of 3/4 and 1/2 inch pipe and a bunch of connectors.

From there, it was just a matter of gluing it all together. The most complicated part was the connection to the garden hose, which looks like this ...

That's part of the header ...

Which I buried under a few inches of dirt and mulch.

Then for each bed, I built one of these ...

Those are PVC T-joints with threaded stems, which connect to brass flanges, which connect to sections of soaker hose, which I terminated by folding them over and cinching down with hose clamps. Easy!

Anyway, each bed looks like this ...

Now I just attach my hose (with a quick connector, of course) to the header, and I'm watering all three beds. I've got a valve at each bed, so I can cut one or two of them off if I want. And I didn't glue the connections between the buried header and the PVC in each bed, so I can remove them for tilling and topping off the beds each Spring. I'm still experimenting for the best way to keep those tight -- electrical tape or zip-ties have both worked OK. I feel like there's a rubber-band solution out there that will prove to be a winner though.

It's working pretty well -- especially after adding a programmable timer to my hose, so it waters automatically during the summer. One day I'll figure out how to hook PVC into my water supply and run a pipe underground from the house to the garden so I don't have to deal with a hose. Of course, now that I've added a fourth raised bed and dug up a whole new corner of the yard for peppers, squash and more tomatoes, I'm dragging the hose more than ever, but we'll deal with that eventually ...

Closet meat=good

2008-05-20T22:43:00.003-05:00

Yes, the patio got installed, and it's awesome. Pictures later. But while we're totally off the subject of gardening, check out what's been in our linen closet for the past two weeks:

It's homemade pancetta!

It started as a raw pork belly, which my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday. It then (why the passive voice? no idea.) got rubbed down with salt, sugar, pepper, and various herbs, and sat in the refrigerator for a week. Then after getting rolled into a tight log, it spent the past two weeks hanging in our linen closet, which brings you up to date. And then:

There is much Carbonara and Amatriciana, among other things, in our future.

Materials

2008-05-18T13:16:00.003-05:00

Check out our new patio!

Someone's coming tomorrow to install it, then it will be done.

Earthtainer

2008-05-16T11:32:00.010-05:00

You would have thought that running out of ground after planting 19 tomatoes would have been a sign that I should stop planting. Alas, the Internet made an appeal to my garden-nerd sensibilities and offered me a spot for one more tomato.

That spot is an on-the-cheap homemade version of a popular self-watering container that retails for 40 to 50 bucks. It's a planter that extends partially into a water reservoir so that water is constantly being wicked up to where the plant's roots can reach it.

There are plenty of fine tutorials online for this project, so I'll lay out the rudiments here and let you delve deeper elsewhere. Josh Mandel is the apparent originator of this thing -- and holy crap, I just found out, also the designer of Space Quest, a classic of computer adventure games. Also, if you wade into the Gardenweb tomatoes forum you'll find two guys who post under the names "rnewste" and "bingster" who are like a couple of tomato-planter mad scientists and have contributed some great innovations.

(update (6/16/2008) "rnewste" is Ray Newstead and he's teamed up with the TomatoFest folks to make his plans widely available as a public service. They've got a great guide online that will tell you everything you need to know and then some.)

Anyhoo.

Start with a pair of big plastic containers. The main problem with the commercial version is that it's not really large enough for a big robust indeterminate tomato growing anywhere south of Canada. I bought Rubbermaid 18-gallon bins for $6 each.

You also need a rigid basket-like container of some sort. I used a plant basket, which is meant for planting aquatic plants in a pond, although I've seen people use coffee cans punched full of holes. It has to retain soil, but let water in. And you need a piece of pipe, at least an inch-and-a-half wide and taller than your bin.

That's it for required materials. Everything else is optional.

Start by hacking off the bottom of one of the containers at a height equal to the height of your basket. Flip the bottom piece over and cut out a hole slightly smaller than the mouth of your basket, then attach the mouth of the basket to the hole so that the basket is inside the bin piece. I drilled holes and used zip ties.

Drill a bunch of little holes all over the top of the bin piece and one big hole at one end wide enough to fit your pipe.

In that photo, you can see that I lined my basket with a paint strainer for added soil retention, but it's probably not necessary.

Drop that whole assembly into the bottom of your other bin and you're mostly done. I cut some row cover cloth to seal the crack between the pieces to keep soil from dropping down into the bottom compartment, some people have used styrofoam peanuts for that, but again, it probably isn't necessary. Drill a couple of holes in the side of the outside bin slightly below the height of the other piece -- this is to drain excess water.

Now, put your pipe into the hole and fill the container with soil mix, starting with the basket, and wetting it down as you go. Your soil mix is kind of important. Since all of your watering will be done from the bottom, the mix has to have enough wicking capacity to pull the water up to near the top of the planter. The gold standard for this is apparently Miracle Gro Moisture Control Potting Mix. But if you're going organic, you'll need to be sure to have plenty of absorbent content like peat, vermiculite, or perlite. Sadly, I didn't really write down what I used, but I think it was something like this:

2 parts peat
2 parts commercial compost
1 part peat humus,
1/2 part each vermiculite and perlite
a few handfuls of my cottonseed/kelp/bone meal mix

Fill it up to overflowing, then dig a shallow trench near one side and fill it with a strip of your preferred fertilizer. The idea is that the wet soil will gradually dissolve the fertilizer and keep the plant fed over time. I'm not sure if I buy it, particularly using organic fertilizer, but that's what They say to do.

Cover the whole thing with a layer of plastic (I finally found a use for that red plastic tomato mulch I've had laying around) then put on one of the bin lids, after cutting out holes for your fill pipe and your plant in the lid and the plastic. The covering serves to retain moisture, but also to keep rain from getting in -- you mainly want the plant's water coming from below so that the fertilizer doesn't get washed out.

And there it is. Just keep the reservoir full (I've got a stick stuck to a wine cork to test my water level) and play the waiting game.

So is it worth it? Dunno. The tomato I planted in mine, Mortgage Lifter is doing quite well, so I think my soil mix is getting the water to the plant. It is nice to not have to worry about whether it needs watering or not, and I've only had to fill it once so far, although we haven't had real heat yet. I am also desperately needing to set up some supports for the plant, which has blown over in storms twice now.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Be it ever so humble

2008-05-10T19:06:00.029-05:00

Hey, I should post a picture of this garden I keep going on about -- like a picture of the whole thing.

I can't lie -- that idea came from my friend Martha. She just posted a shot of her garden on her blog yesterday ...

I seem to have misplaced Charles' phone number, so I can't borrow the helicopter for my shoot. We'll have to make do with an unwieldy photo panorama ...

(Be sure to click the image to get the whole huge thing, with labels even.)

And it's a good thing I took those photos when I did. Here's what's going on back there right now -- another hailstorm -- hopefully there'll be something left tomorrow.

Costoluto Genovese

2008-05-08T22:03:00.002-05:00

I hate to commit the sin of pride, but I think the tomatoes are doing really well this year.

Blossoms have been generally prolific all around, and fruit is setting left and right. But none seem to be doing as well as the Costoluto Genovese. This variety doesn't get very good reviews as a slicing tomato, but there's always drying and saucing.

It starts ...

2008-05-03T15:13:00.002-05:00

We got our first summer harvest last night -- these three Sunburst squash. They got sliced, soaked in orange juice and soy sauce, and seared on the grill. Tasty.

Well aren't we just King and Queen Locavore of Hippie Hollow!

2008-04-30T20:30:00.005-05:00

I just got back from a walk across the neighborhood where I met a very nice family with a flock of 6 chickens in their backyard.

My wife -- who likes to be called "Fayrene" when she's on the Internet -- had emailed Linda after seeing her mention on our neighborhood email list that she has chickens and gives away eggs on a regular rotation. Fayrene said "yes please, and can we give you some produce?" and since Fayrene is in class tonight, it was left to me to do the walking.

Long story short, I came home with these ...

... and left them a bundle of green onions. I think we definitely got the better end of the deal, but it's kind of an in-between time of the season. By next round, we'll have squash and maybe tomatoes to make it up to them.

(By the way, only language nerds should click here)

update, 5/5/2008

The eggs got eaten yesterday morning. We poached them and served them on English muffins with bacon and avocado, with cheddar cheese sauce on top. As is true of many of my attempts at writing about food, we forgot to take a picture as we were too busy stuffing our faces.

Death from above

2008-04-28T21:13:00.003-05:00

We had a classic Central Texas Spring thunderstorm Sunday morning -- about 20 minutes of heavy rain and thunder and enough hail to paint bare ground white.

The damage wasn't too bad. The Sungold and one of the Principe Borghese both got their main stalks broke, but they should be alright. So should the squash, but it looks like someone took a machine gun to them.

Harvest

2008-04-27T18:17:00.001-05:00

Leeks and an artichoke. April 27.

Proof!

2008-04-26T19:35:00.003-05:00

I really do have a hard time believing that my plants are actually growing, probably because I see them several times a day. Now I have photographic proof to ease my mind.

March 31

April 26

Head for the hills

2008-04-25T20:03:00.001-05:00

My wife and I are making a much-needed retreat to the hill country this weekend. Of course the best part for me is having two days without obsessively checking on the garden 5 times a day. When we get back, everything will look friggin' huge!

Too many mother uckers uckin' with my squa!

2008-04-23T18:24:00.006-05:00

I got home from work today and went to visit the garden, where the squash (3 Sunburst, 1 Peter Pan) are in heavy blossom mode ...

Only to find this ...

Actually, about 70 or 80 of those, which you may recognize as the eggs of one Melittia cucurbitae, a.k.a. the Squash Vine Borer moth, a.k.a "Those goddamn motherfuckers" (pardon the blue language).

I can't tell you I was surprised -- growing squash around these parts is largely an exercise in futility due to the Squash Vine Borer. But, as fast and prolific as squash are, it's worth it to keep trying for the few weeks of production we usually manage to get before they succumb.

And the end is not pretty. Once any one of those eggs hatch, the tiny larva burrows into the hollow squash stem and begins burrowing downward until it hits the solid, meaty base, where it starts eating, growing and pooping. Usually you'll see a little sawdusty poop (frass) pile at the base of the stem as the caterpillar eats its way through. More and more of the plant's leaves get wilty (a condition referred to as "tha itis" in our house) until they're all dead. Then the fat borer crawls out of the stem, belches loudly and drops into the soil where it digs in and cocoons up for the winter.

Actually, I found a few of them when I was preparing the beds in February. These were summarily executed.

Organic prescriptions for SVB include covering your plants with row cover and pollinating by hand, picking off eggs and spraying or injecting the stems with Bt, and shopping for squash at Whole Foods.

I opted to pick off as many as I could and hope for the best.

Update

Look who I found skulking about in the pea seedlings ...

ps. The squash plants aren't actually that green. Something in the camera>iPhoto>PicasaWeb chain was messing with the levels, a problem I've since remedied.

Why?

2008-04-21T16:02:00.004-05:00

What kind of garden blog would this be without a link to the latest Michael Pollan article in the Times?

Alongside a sporting run at the eternal question "What can one person do?" the article hits pretty close to the reason I think I'm into gardening, although I've never really articulated it. It's anti-consumerism. I have a purposely-overinflated paranoia about corporate marketing cabals scheming to get my money. I've worked hard to build up an immunity to most of the single-purpose kitchen appliances, wearable advertising and overly-convenient food products they generally throw at me (us all).

But it's a less (imaginary) nefarious process that Pollan talks about.

Specialists ourselves, we can no longer imagine anyone but an expert, or anything but a new technology or law, solving our problems. Al Gore asks us to change the light bulbs because he probably can’t imagine us doing anything much more challenging, like, say, growing some portion of our own food.

By having a garden, I break some portion of the lifeline to Dole, Kraft or ADM that we all still rely on for much of our food, and my family and friends get better-tasting, healthier produce to boot.

Plus, when the shit goes down, we won't have to eat cat food.

Ladybug lifecycle

2008-04-17T10:10:00.004-05:00

In early March, our big artichoke was swarmed with aphids. Within a couple of weeks, it was swarming with these little black creepy-crawlies ...

Which one by one holed up in these little spotted cocoons ...

Which were soon vacated by little yellow ladybugs ...

No more aphids!

Feeding tomatoes

2008-04-15T22:25:00.003-05:00

Dang this site needs more pictures, y'all.

The tomatoes are getting visibly bigger every day and most of them have tiny blossoms. I'm taking that as a sign to stop the weekly dousings with fish emulsion to let them burn through all that nitrogen so it doesn't distract them from blossoming and fruit setting.

Today I paid some mind to the neglected East-side bed. That's the one that's in-ground, and along the fence, so it doesn't get morning sun. That hasn't kept it from producing a healthy crop of tomatoes the past 2 years though. However, I didn't do anything at all to the soil this year, just stuck 6 plants in among the onions and leeks. So, after work today I scratched in two handfuls of cottonseed/kelp/bone meal around each plant, laid down the soaker hose, which takes 3 loops to fit in the bed, and covered it all with a wheelbarrow full of grass clippings and leaf mold from the pile in the West-side bed.

Everything but the well-mulched raised beds was looking a bit dry, so I put a little water down on the cantaloupe, squash, artichokes and the corner-bed tomatoes. I also soaked the cream peas I planted on Saturday. Then I plugged in the soaker hose and let it run for 20 minutes on the East bed.

Basil's smelling good -- I can just taste the tomatoes ...

Peppers

2008-04-08T19:16:00.003-05:00

I haven't had great luck with peppers. The first year they got devoured by pill bugs. Last year, they grew lovely leaves, but not a lot of peppers. Jalapenos have done OK, but that's about it. This year, I have 4 great looking seedlings from seed and just transplanted them into more-or-less-native soil near the compost bin. They can't do much worse than they have.

April 8
Peppers: (from left to right, facing compost) Cayenne, Serrano, Yellow Wonder, California Wonder Orange. Holes dug past pecan roots in plain soil, each hole amended with a tiny bit of compost, and a handful of cottonseed, bone, and kelp meal.

Dates

2008-04-05T13:56:00.003-05:00

I think just about everything is in the ground. I'm waiting for my pepper seedlings to get a little bigger before planting, and there's a stretch of dirt on the North fence where I grew tromboncino squash last year that could take something. But that's about it. Now I just need to remember what I did for next year ...

March 15
Tomatoes: Various home-grown seedlings. 8 in the raised beds mulched with dead grass, 6 in the in-ground bed on the East fence, and 3 around the compost bin in Japanese tomato ring style.

March 26
Cantaloupe: 2, bought from Natural Gardener, planted in the new, unfilled raised bed in two hills of native soil and compost, mulched with dead grass

March 29
Tomatoes: Mail-order seedlings from mom for my birthday. 2 in new spots on the North and East fences in the compost corner, 1 in my homemade "earthtainer".

March 30
Eggplant: 3 small varieties bought from The Great Outdoors, planted in one of the raised beds.
Basil: 1 sweet basil from Great Outdoors, planted with existing herbs in a raised bed.

April 1
Squash, 3 Sunburst, 1 Peter Pan: We had removed 2 Althea bushes along our East fence, leaving a couple of holes, which I filled out with compost and peat humus. I planted two squash in each hill and covered the surrounding area with cardboard and leaf mold.

Home Despot

2008-04-02T21:39:00.004-05:00

I feel a twinge of guilt every time I buy garden supplies at Home Depot, but until I stop being so lazy or someone opens a nursery at all convenient to East Austin, I'll keep going there, especially once they open the new "green" location within biking distance.

I've noticed this year they're carrying an organic fertilizer that, the more I think about it, I might have to buy. $19 for a 40 pound mix of Corn Gluten Meal, Soybean Meal, Sunflower Meal, Yeast Culture, Dried Molasses, Dried Kelp, Alfalfa Meal, Fish Meal, Langbeinite, Limestone, Phosphate Rock and Sulfur is a lot better than I could do on my own. I actually don't think I've seen Corn Gluten Meal by itself that cheap.

They're really upselling the stuff too. Check out the prominent display in the far back corner of the garden section.

(That's it on the other side of the forklift.)

Mmmm ... Bokashi ...

2008-04-01T11:04:00.002-05:00

After logging my fertilizer approach yesterday, I saw this post at Path to Freedom talking about how they've gone a full year without adding any organic NPK fertilizer. I take that to mean they're all homemade compost (which for them would include chicken and goat droppings) and I gather they also add rock dust.

One of my general goals is to spend as little as possible on gardening. I'm not there yet, but maybe at some point I'll set a $0 year budget for the garden and see how it goes. I don't yet have a good sense of how fertile my soil is and how much it relies on the purchased amendments. Better record keeping and the journaling I'm doing here will help me with that, I hope.

But I am rather skeptical of this EM business Path to Freedom is talking about. It sounds like compost tea to me, and you can make that yourself. Bokashi, I guess, is bran and sugar soaked in EM. How's that different from cottonseed meal getting soaked in your garden with compost tea (or rainwater seeping through compost)? It is Japanese though, so I guess that makes it pretty cool.

There are also a couple of good links there on rock dust -- I'm thinking I may need to get another bag of the Minerals Plus.

And if you're not familiar with Path to Freedom, they're some true believers -- a family with 1/10 acre yard in Pasadena who are shooting to harvest 10,000 pounds of food this year.

Fertilizer mix

2008-03-31T10:51:00.004-05:00

The maddening thing about organic fertilizer is that it's kind of hard to get a handle on whether it really works. You aren't dumping a fast acting chemical that shows up in a day or two in the plants. You're adding material that the soil will digest and make available to the plants when it gets around to it.

It may just be yet another example of the slow pace of gardening. After only 3 years, I just haven't had enough opportunity to learn to notice the effects of different ingredients and proportions.

On the bright side, there's not much worry about overdoing it with organic fertilizers. As a result, I generally am pretty random with adding whatever I have around in whatever quantities seem right. But, I have been a little more consistent so far this year with my fertilizer mix, even though I've had to make up 2 or 3 separate batches. They've looked something like this:

4 parts cottonseed meal
1/2 part bone meal
1/2 part kelp meal
1/2 part Rabbit Hill Farm Minerals Plus

When refreshing the beds, I mixed in a handful per 3-4 square feet. Then I added another handful in each planting hole.

Here's what I know about these ingredients:

Cottonseed meal -- It's cheap and is supposed to provide a reasonably high proportion of nitrogen. It's also what they use for general purpose fertilizer at The Natural Gardener, which is a decent endorsement. Some organic gardeners avoid cottonseed meal because of the pesticides and defoliants used in cotton growing, but I'm not too concerned and have never seen any solid answer about it. It might also not be approved for certified organic use.

Bone meal -- It's a phosphorous, and I guess calcium, source. It also takes a while to break down, so getting it into the soil early gives you time before the tomatoes start blooming, which is when phosphorous supposedly comes into play. Hardcore organic folks balk at using ground up animal bones in the garden, but they just don't appreciate the irony of vegetables eating animals.

Kelp meal -- A Potassium and trace minerals source. It supposedly also has some sort of hormone and enzyme content that promotes microbe action.

Minerals Plus -- I bought a bag of this a few years ago out of my concern for the lack of mineral content in my soilless mix and have been adding it generously in previous years. My thinking is that it serves the same purpose as lime would -- added calcium and other trace minerals.

For future reference

2008-03-29T14:29:00.007-05:00

The whole thing with gardening is that if you screw something up badly, you pretty much just have to live with it until next year. That's also what makes it rewarding and the reason old people are good at it. You have to wait until next season or year to apply any lesson you learned this season.

This is why people keep garden journals and the reason why every year I've wished I had kept one. Motivated by the near disaster with the tomato seedlings, I think this might be the year I start.

So ... entry one -- bed prep.

Raised Beds
First week of March this year, I double dug (OK, maybe not a textbook case of double-digging but I turned over every bit of soil in them and then some) our three existing raised beds and the soil beneath the new raised bed.

I haven't made a habit of doing this, in part because no-till gardening sounds like it kind of makes sense, and also because I'm lazy and it's hard work. However, I had a couple of thoughts that motivated me.

First, I've had it in my mind for a while that our beds, filled as they are with a soilless peat/compost/perlite mix ( a la Square Foot Gardening) are lacking in water-holding ability. Our native black clay soil knows all about water holding, and probably has a lot of good mineral content to boot. So, by digging down to the bottom of the beds and a couple of inches into the ground, I probably introduced a good 10 percent native soil to my growing mix. It's still very light and crumbly, but I can definitely feel the clay in the mix now.

Secondly, in my exploratory probing of these beds, I noticed a lot of roots that I suspect are from the neighbor's pecan trees. A friend of mine had a raised bed completely overtaken by pecan roots, so I figured it might not hurt to knock them back every few years.

Besides the digging, I did my usual routine of mixing in some fertilizer mix and sifting a wheelbarrow of compost out of the pile and topping off each bed with a layer of it, scratching it into the surface just a bit. I also pulled out my soaker hoses and reset them on top of the soil, nestled in a bit until they were level. (I'll have to devote a whole post sometime to my irrigation system)

Oh, and that new fourth bed -- I haven't really filled it, but I tilled it up pretty good at ground level, added some leftover bought compost, leaf mold, dry leaves and fertilizer mix and mixed it in.

So that's quite a bit for now. More later.

I've had a terrible time with my tomato seedlings this year.

2008-03-27T15:11:00.008-05:00

Things started out pretty well -- I sowed about 9 seeds each for 9 different varieties. This was on January 22nd, which is maybe a week later than I've done it previously.

After the first true leaves appeared, I thinned them to 6 per variety and potted up to 2 inch cells.

On March 1, I bumped them up to 16oz plastic cups.

And there's where my troubles began. I don't think they grew much at all after that point. The lower leaves turned yellow and eventually fell off and they gradually got to looking pretty sickly.

My best theory at the moment is that I drowned them, through a combination of not punching big enough holes in the plastic cups and using too much compost in my potting mix. Tomatoes are resilient though. I planted 17 of the wimpy things and after 12 days in the ground, they're all quite green and about double in size.

It's killing me though that after weeks of coddling them indoors under lights, I'm now happy that they're just alive, and it's almost April. I think plenty of people in Austin plant about this time anyway (at least to judge by what's available in the stores), but what's the point of being obsessive compulsive about tomato growing if you can't beat your neighbors to first fruit?

What to blog about

2007-11-16T14:36:00.000-06:00

This here Web site has been a classic case of the abandoned domain name. I've certainly gotten some use out of it as an e-mail address and I've had random photos and some half-hearted attempts at blogging, but generally, Google hasn't had to knock itself out reindexing this page over the past 7-8 years.

Several months ago I hooked it up with some blogger tags mainly just to get the stale content out of the way. Then last week I stopped by for some reason and thought I should really do something with it.

I'm at least old and wise enough to know that probably isn't going to happen, at least not on a sustained basis, but I'll pretend for at least a few days.

test post

2007-05-02T00:21:00.000-05:00

another test post