Veggie Update

The vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, zucchini) are looking great. In the two-ish weeks since I planted them I think they've doubled in size. Especially doing well seem to be the Brandywine Heirloom Tomato and the German Johnson Heirloom Tomato. The zucchini is also growing like nuts. Also, the banana pepper plant has a couple of blooms on it. I may have to get some tomato cages much faster than I thought.

The herbs are also doing great. One of the sage plants is blooming and most have grown significantly. I plucked some of the cilantro for a fish dish I made for the family tonight and I plucked a piece of rosemary for Kiah to rub in her hands (she loves the smell).

On a more somber note, the cucumbers plants don't look so good. Two of them look like they aren't gonna make it but all of them just look sad. The leaves have lost color and kinda felt crispy to the touch. Maybe I'm simply not watering enough or maybe it got a little chilly for them one night (got down to 40-ish for one night). I'll keep an eye on them.

April Fool's!

It's that time of year again when my wife and kids pull pranks on the rest of us. Kiah got Austin by claiming a cockroach was climbing up his back. Charlene got Asa to wake up more quickly by telling her that it was snowing outside. Charlene also put me off guard by saying she wasn't feeling well and then zinged me with a story. And then, finally, Charlene put mint chocolate cookie pieces into Kiah's sandwich for lunch. Mean, mean, mean, and mean!!!

But the worst April Fool's joke of all was the poison ivy striking back at me. I discovered poison ivy vines in a flower bed I was attempting to reclaim. The source of the vines all came to a point at the base of a huge pine tree that had the vine climbing into the clouds. The root of the vine was as big around as my wrist and I got a ton of it out of the ground, out of the bed, and off the tree. I carefully tried not to touch any part of it and used leather gloves the entire time. I have also scrubbed with poison ivy soap in the shower every night as a preventative matter. Perhaps that helped because while I have mild to medium blisters on both legs and arms it might have been much worse after reading what digging up roots can do to a person. It might have also helped if I had the Tecnu soap I think does the best. Instead, I picked up some CVS poison ivy soap which may not be as good. Again, perhaps the soap prevented a 4 alarm reaction or maybe Tecnu is just better.

Whew!

It's been a busy week at the Green household. We went camping over the weekend at Buescher State Park and my plants, especially the new grass, didn't get watered on Saturday. As soon as I got the truck unloaded I watered like crazy, giving everything a good soaking. So far it appears that everything is happy and Cyclops is doing his job keeping the critters away. Hopefully, I can spend some time this week getting some other gardening chores done.

We had a good time camping with beautiful weather. The trip was a little rushed because we had to leave Saturday morning as the twins and I are on a soccer team together. Well, I'm coaching - they're running. Austin came down with some sort of stomach bug but he seemed better Sunday morning. In fact, we spent part of the day grabbing a few geocaches in the park with our good friends. If you don't know about geocaching then there is no better place to start. My family goes by the geocache handle of "PeapodGang". Anyway, Austin held up really well until we got home late on Sunday. Tough kiddo.

Final Day of Spring Break

We had a good time seeing family and spending time at the farm. My youngest brother, Derek, made us homemade pizza with a ton of fresh garlic on it which was awesome. My Granddad Green started us on homemade pizza and it's stuck. In fact, it's partially due to ol' Granddad that I'm willing to try this gardening thing out. He had a big garden up at the farm and grew veggies by the bushel and would can many of them. He also got into making pickles and after a few tries got down a really good recipe. I'll never forget him hovering over a hot propane burner in a farm house that had no air conditioning with a big pot full of canned goods. He'd fill a whole wall of canned goods including jams. I hope to follow in his footsteps.

Anyway, Saturday was full of rain so I didn't get to play in the yard yesterday. I got an early start Sunday to get some supplies to redo a flower bed at the front of our property that is looking bad. I knocked out an old stump that finally rotted and planted a Sago palm as the centerpiece. These are great plants as they seem to be indestructible (heat tolerant, drought tolerant, non-edible to deer, disease resistent, etc.) but also evergreen with a rich texture. We had a pretty cold winter (for the Houston area) and they didn't like it but didn't die either. Reading the wiki link, I didn't realize they were Japanese and aren't really palms. Hmmmm, go figure. I surrounded the Sago palm-that's-not-a-palm with many 'Silver Dust' Dusty Millers and then I surrounded those with African Marigolds. All of these plants should do well in the hot Texas summer, not require lots of water and should be animal resistent.

Family Day

I'm taking the kiddos to go to our family farm today. I'm happy to go - the kids have been harping on me to get up there but I hate to leave on such a pretty day that I could use to get further with my project. But I also feel like I could use a day of rest. It's good to know that my body can still put up with a full day of digging since most of the time I'm a professional desk jockey. The first couple of days of digging my left knee became really sore but over the week I became less sore and felt the muscles waking up. Need to stay with it and maybe find the gym a little more often!
Another good reason to take a break today is that poison ivy rashes have appeared - even after daily scrubbing with ivy soap from CVS and trying to be careful with gloves, etc. Not crazy, bad rashes but an annoyance nevertheless. I ran out of my trusty Tecnu so I need to order some more from Amazon.

Time to Plant

One thing I failed to mention is that our soil where we live isn't typical for the Houston area. Most of Houston is built on a dark, clay soil that we affecionately call "gumbo", which drys to the softness of concrete or sticks to your shovel, and everything else, when it's wet. The soil on our property is a sandy soil that is a joy to work with but is really bad about retaining moisture. To help with this I added 4 cu. feet of "organic compost" plus 2 cu. feet of organic "leaf mold compost". And to help with the initial soil conditioning I added a heathly dose of organic fertilizer, which is composted chicken poop (and smells like composted chicken poop). Speaking of smells, the leaf mold compost had sort of a petroleum smells to it. For the price I paid, it might has well have been oil!

For the record, I picked up these compost products and my plants from a great nursery right up the road called The Arbor Gate. I highly recommend it to anyone who has any interest in gardening.

It was at the Arbor Gate that my son Austin and I attended a lecture from an herbalist, Ann Wheeler. She was both informative and funny. I asked her about my critter problem and she told me that two things keep critters out of your garden - roses (apparently funny but true) or a motion-sensor water sprinkler. I thought this was joke too until I looked on Amazon and found them. My wife thinks a good ol' fence is the only way to protect the plants and thinks this is crazy. We'll see but today we have "Cyclops" keeping vigil over my gardens.

Back to the plants....OK, I have 3 gardens. The first garden, which I think catches the most shade, I have set aside for herbs. I planted 2 golden greek oregano, 2 garlic chives, 2 creeping rosemary, 2 Ne'we Ya'ar Sage (per Ann Wheeler's suggestion), and cilantro. I'd like to add some dill and perhaps a container for mint to my herbal collection. Perhaps I'll transplant the sage soon as they will likely dominate the space and should be very pretty center pieces for a flower garden in front of the house.

The second and third gardens I have set aside for vegetables. In the second garden I have planted 6 tomato plants (BHN 444, 2 x Bush Celebrity, Champion VPNT, Brandywine Heirloom, and German Johnson Heirloom). I have also planted an assortment of peppers (Emerald Giant Bell, Super Chili F1 Hybrid, Anaheim, Sweet Banana, Big Bertha Bell, Red Beauty Sweet Bell, Better Bell Improved (TMR), and Golden Summer Bell). Finally, along the front row I have planted zucchini squash (Cash Flow, Ball's Zucchini, Cash Flow).

The third garden I've planned for warmer weather veggies. I went ahead and planted 4 cucumbers that I hope to use for pickling. The rest of the area I'll set aside for okra in April and perhaps some other ideas that come up along the way.

My eldest daughter, Kiah, also suggested that I plant grass around the perimenter of the beds,
which I've done. It looks so nice and inviting. My wife just had to buy this giant dragon fly to commemorate the new garden area, which takes residence in the herbal garden.

Breaking Ground

After doing some research online and reading lots of books, I've decided that I just need to dig in and get started. I've read about different means of starting to lay a garden and about how smaller dimensions are better, blah blah. Well, I always seem to do things the hard way so why should I stop now? Enough analysis paralysis - it's just time to get started!

Location, Location, Location
My first problem to overcome with placement of my garden is sunlight. I don't have too many spots that break through the tree canopy. The second problem that I need to overcome are critters that like to nibble. Critters like deer, racoons, rabbits, armadillo, opossums, and squirrels. I think I've spent more time worrying about these problems than what I'm going to plant. Given these two limitations, I've decided on a location just off my garage along the driveway. The house opens the tree canopy and the spot I picked SHOULD get ample sunlight as the days get longer. Also the close location to the house SHOULD help keep the critters at bay.

I knew I wanted a raised garden but the next problem was determining the material to enclose it. We want an organic garden so it didn't make sense to use a material that was full of chemicals that could leach into the soil. I considered getting cedar posts until I saw the price. I looked into my spare collection in the back yard and noticed I had quite a few treated landscape timbers from a previous childs play area. After a little more research into the alkaline copper treatment and how little they leach into the soil I decided we could live with this. The landscape timbers come in 8ft lengths so it may be no surprise that I went with a design of 3 gardens that are 8ft x 8ft. Many experts suggested a garden that is only 2 ft. wide so that you can easily reach the plants from all angles but I compromised by determining I was going to plant 3 rows in each garden.

While all of Houston seems pretty flat it just so happens that the location I picked has a slight grade. Now I mention this because I read so many articles about the "easy" way to start a garden by simply laying down newspaper or cardboard, throwing in dirt and "Viola!" - you're done. Since I had to dig to get the beds level, I decided to just bite the bullet and really turn the soil. And I'm glad I did because after scraping off the leaf and pine needle debris I found some unwanted building materials leftover from the house building. Plastic bags, copper tubing, asphalt shingles, bricks, concrete clumps, rocks, and a few pieces of rebar. The other benefit to turning the soil is that I really tore out much of the wild stuff growing there like vines and their root balls that would just keep haunting whatever I planted. Did I mention poison ivy? It took some doing but I've got two of the 3 beds in and the third is taking form.

Hello Blogsphere!

Welcome to my little corner of the gardening world! Hi, my name is Mike, or as I was sometimes called back in school, Jolly Green Giant. It is here that I hope to share my efforts as a home gardener - what worked and what didn't. My wife has been pushing the organic foods lifestyle for awhile so it was only natural to take this dive into gardening.

Depending on how you look at it, we are either fortunate or unfortunate enough to have over 2 acres in which to play. We built our house over 7 years ago and the "yard" has been undergoing a slow evolution. The property is heavily wooded with monster pine trees, sweet gum, oak trees, and a wild? mulberry tree which is my favorite. The property also still has a heavy dose of the wild underbrush that includes youpan, American Beauty Berry, and lots of vines. The vines have been growing on this property for all ages and have literally choked some of the oak trees. The wild vines include grape, trumpet, Virginia Creeper, and........poison ivy. Lots of poison ivy.