January 2008 Archives

We've been having some lovely weather interspersed with January chill, but I haven't been able to enjoy those as much as I would like.  I fractured my ankle, it would seem, and my boot, while allowing me more mobility than crutches, is not really all-terrain footwear.

I'm posting a picture I took a few years ago, as a bit of a consolation prize.

It'll be a few weeks before I can legitimately get back to the business of gardening, aside from some pruning.  The digging and planting will have to wait, or I'll have to get my husband to do it for me.

(On that note, my husband tilled up our side yard over the last couple of weeks, and we now have a plot of potatoes growing there.)

In nicer news, we got beautiful teak patio furniture a couple of weekends ago, which has made spending time outdoors without gardening implements in my hands far more enjoyable.  I have much I want to do with my garden, but it's nice to have a reason to appreciate what I have already done.

I'm reading other garden weblogs with great delight and interest at the moment, enjoying others' adventures in the outdoors, and I'll try to continue my question series soon.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to get my next garden project, a large bed of herbs and vines to camouflage our garden shed, designed and ready to go when I'm back on both limbs.

It has been an interesting experience, buying a house that predates our moving in.  It's a bit like reading a story by starting from Chapter 9, without any of the exposition that tells you why the protagonist is on this crazy mission in the first place.

As best I can tell, the previous owners of our house planted vegetables in the fenced-in garden, and the rest of the back yard was just meant to be kept tidy.  I don't know whether they used chemicals, and I don't know how successful they were at growing what they planted, or what worked and what didn't.  I don't know what varieties of grapes we have growing along the back fence, or whether they've ever produced well; they didn't do particularly well last year.  I have no idea what the garden was like in the spring, or how well it did in years that weren't as rainy as the last one.

Our first attempt at growing vegetables was only marginally successful.  We started late in the season, we had to contend with a lot of rain, and we didn't have a lot of experience under our belts.  But one of the problems I didn't anticipate was a general lack of bees.  We had issues with our melons and pumpkins, regardless of variety -- they'd bloom, but they'd never fruit.

I've read a lot in the last year about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and the alarming decline in bee populations.  Just as I want to plant strategically to attract and aid birds and butterflies, I want to plant to aid the local native bee populations, as well.

Is this something that others are thinking about, as well?  I went to a grape pruning class at the Natural Gardener this past weekend, and John Dromgoole mentioned it in passing.  Most of the specific strategies I've found on the web are regionally specific and may not apply to central Texas.  What I've heard so far includes:

1. planting bee-friendly plants and flowers - but which of these are native or well-adapted to central Texas?  What flowers seem to attract bees to your garden?  I'm hopeful that my African basil, which brought bees to my mom's garden by the droves, will work well in mine, too.
   
2. providing shelter for bees, by leaving brush piles and dead wood in the area, as well as by building bee houses
   
3. maintaining an organic/pesticide-free yard to keep from inadvertently killing the bees - but the reality of living in a suburban neighborhood is that chemicals can drift in from neighbors' yards, or from the drainage ditch behind our property.

Do you have strategies for attracting and fostering the bee populations in your area?  I'd love to hear feedback and ideas.

Carol at May Dreams Gardens invites us to tell her what’s blooming in our gardens on the 15th of each month.

The promised December freezes came eventually, taking with them most of the blooms in my little garden, but not the wildlife. This giant philodendron, from which peeks a little green anole, suffered quite a bit of freeze damage to its outermost layers, but in the shelter of its big prehistoric leaves, it looks healthy still.

Underneath its thick layer of hay and leaf mulch, my vegetable garden appears to be healthy and happy, and we’ve gotten a few salads’ worth of pickings from the lettuce.

Carya illinoinensis

Elsewhere in the garden, we’ve planted a few fruit and nut trees from bare root stock. They look so dead and sad right now, so I've taken it upon myself to adorn them, to help them feel a little less naked. This, I think, is the definition of hope: to bury a stick in the ground and wait for it to grow into a tree.

Pea Blossom

Inside the vegetable garden, the snap pea vine is the only thing truly blooming at the moment. Legumes make pretty blossoms, don't they? I'll admit that peas aren't my favorite vegetable, thanks to their texture, but since they're nitrogen-fixing, I'll grow them anyway. I imagine that garden-fresh peas are preferable to the store-bought ones anyway. If you look closely, you can see the first pea pod developing in the bottom-left.

Henbit (Lamium amplexicaule)

Henbit is the only exception to my statement above; this winter annual weed is blooming, too, in great abundance. I pull it out of my vegetable beds, but everywhere else, I mostly let it be. I might regret that later, but I like the tiny purple blooms right now.

Oxalis

In my shade bed, the oxalis blooms cheerfully under the protective shelter of the giant philodendron. I love oxalis, both in its cultivated and weedy forms, and I don't mind it spreading where it will. I dug up some little tubers from the shady greenbelt behind my last place and transplanted them here; I can't wait for them to start blooming, and the way the leaves are growing, I think they will before the next bloom day. This white oxalis has bloomed continually since we moved here in June.

Bulbine frutescens

After slowing down for a few weeks, the bulbines in the sunny front yard look like they're picking up steam and starting to bloom more vigorously again. According to that old adage, they're supposed to be either in their 'sleeping' or 'creeping' year right now, but they seem to be growing healthily. That makes me happy - I can't wait to start dividing and conquering the world with bulbine.

Salvia greggii

Another consistent good performer in my yard, this salvia can always be counted on to bloom. After taking this photo, I pruned it way back, so it might be another couple of months before it shows up on the bloom report again.

African basil

And last but not least for this month is African basil. This plant is somewhat frost-sensitive, so it isn't actually in my garden yet. The picture doesn't make it obvious, but this is a cutting that has been sitting in my kitchen window since September. This is the easiest propagation I've ever done: cut new growth, remove lower leaves, and place in water in a vase. This crazy plant is putting on new growth and blooming already in its vase. In my mom's garden, from which I took these cuttings, the African basil grew huge, and I'm looking forward to finding a place for this one when spring comes.

That's everything blooming in my Austin garden this month. I'm hopeful that our periodic warm spells will bring out more for February. I can already see the beginnings of buds on my mountain laurel!

I'm so bad these days at posting regularly.  It's been near a month since I last posted.  In that time, my wonderful readers have identified my mystery flower as Grapes Gomphrena, and I'm most appreciative!

We've survived our season's first freezes, but not all our plants have been so lucky.  I'll admit to being fairly demanding of my plants -- I won't do a whole lot to care for them unless I have a lot invested in them, and that includes being very diligent about covering everything when I'm expecting a freeze.  To be fair, we've had some relatively hard freezes (for our area, that means temperatures in the 20s) that no one (not least the meteorologists) were expecting.  So some of what I posted for December Bloom Day is brown and crunchy now, and the rest has found its dormancy finally.  But everywhere, I see signs of life waiting to jump forth in spring.  I've never spent so much time looking at plants before.

Now is the season in Austin for digging for new beds, planting dormant trees and shrubs, and pruning things back to encourage spring growth.  That's what I've been busy with, on these last few beautiful days.  In the last month, we've planted a pecan tree and two peach trees in our back yard.  All three look like dead sticks sunk into the ground, but I'm hopeful that they'll start looking like plants again soon.  We're tilling up our side yard (southern exposure) to plant blackberries, potatoes, and whatever else suits our fancy, and we're planning to build our second raised bed in the area where we've pulled up our peanuts in our fenced-in garden.  I'm starting to covet a separate bed for an herb garden, as well.   And we're making plans, this first January in our new house, for other improvements we'd like to make, short-term and long, inside and out.  We have lots to do, from reducing our turf to adding in rainwater collection.

I find myself with more gardening questions lately, and I'm hopeful that my readers have answers.  I'm starting a series of questions, general and specific, and I hope you'll provide input.