Article on Gardening from Slate Magazine

The Science of Gardening: How evidence-based growing beats relying on old wives' tales.

A small amount of rain, and why I didn't know about it

So. This morning, I woke up, looked out the window and said to myself "hey, it looks like Cammie's gate is wet. Sweet! that means it rained!"

I then got up, got dressed and skeedaddled outside to see how much rain we got. That was when I realized that the tarp, (which had previously been sitting in the rock area, and was subsequently blown to our fence during last saturday's wind storm) had blown over to, and was covering my rain gage.

Sigh.

I also spread some wildflower seeds about this afternoon (of course I don't know how many of them will germinate since what I used was the dregs of the seeds we gave out at our wedding...that was 3 years ago).

Bloom Day - From earlier in the month and One Day Late

So, as mentioned in my last post, the wind on Saturday was horrendous. Aside from blowing the flowers all over and making it difficult to take a photo, it also was cold. And despite having grown up in Colorado, I can't stand the cold--as soon as the temps drop below 75, I'm wearing pants, once it's cooler than 70, I'm wearing long sleeved shirts. So, because of the wind, and the cold, I would have had to get dooded up in a snow suit in order to brave going out.

The spinach is taking off in it's various planters. The strawberry is keeping on keeping on. and the carrots finally started sprouting--I did have to cover that planter with some of my green plastic mesh stuff to keep the squirrels out of digging in it. At this time of year you really have to be on top of those buggers and their need to bury all of their nuts for the winter. Of course, you run into the same problem but in reverse during the spring.

Anyhow, here are some photos of stuff that's bloomed over the last month or so.

Spiderweb (Nov 1st)



Turk's Cap (Nov. 1st). Before planting.



Yellow Snap Dragon (Nov. 1st). Before planting.



Lantana (Nov. 16th)



Lupine (Bluebonnets). Nov 16th. I like the bottom picture better, but my husband likes the top one better. Thus why you get to see both. This plant isn't blooming, but it is doing pretty good in the planters.



Cyclamen in the shade garden (Nov. 16th). This is the only plant that is showing it's full potential after the wind storm yesterday. Despite what it looks like, this photo hasn't been touched up aside from scaling the image down so it would fit better on the blog.

Rain and Weather

Rained on Tuesday. I checked the gage on Thursday and there was a quarter inch...so the plants actually probably got a little more than a quarter inch because of evaporation.

On Friday night and all day Saturday the wind was blowing with a vengeance. It made it too difficult to take pictures of flowers for Bloom Day, plus it did quite a number on whatever flowers were blooming.

I must not have been watering the pansies enough because you'd never know I planted 30 of them in the front berm area. I did, however, learn while planting them that both the berm and the area by the Shumard Oak need to have good soil added to them as what's there is complete and utter crap. This probably explains why only a few plants ever do any good in either of those locations.

Operation: Planted

I planted the rest of my plants yesterday. The Turk's Cap bushes were split--one is in the 'upper garden' the other is in the 'lower garden'. This only happened because Shawn was worried that they'll get big enough to take over the stepping stones, so the original idea I had of planting one close to the stepping stones was nixed.

I managed to plant the entire flat of pansies and they're in the front yard--a couple plants by the tree, and the rest in the berm area.

I did 3 pots of flowers and put them next to the pepper plant (hoping that the bright flowers will attract the bees and possibly, maybe, hopefully, pollinate some of the pepper flowers).

Speaking of the pepper plants! I checked yesterday and noticed 3 little peppers on one them. FINALLY! I was worried that I was going to end up with nothing to show for this last growing season.

On a completely different note, I've noticed that MSS at Zanthan reads at least one of the same blogs I do--Svensto. I find this odd if only because it is a blog that has nothing to do with gardening and I actually found it through the blogwriter's granddaughter's (I think, it's either her granddaughter or great-granddaughter) website (The Daily Coyote).

Fall Gardening

I got the gardening bug today. Okay, not really the 'gardening' bug as much as the 'container planting' bug.

I went to the Red Barn, mostly because it's closest and it's not Home Depot and got 2 bags of Lady Bug Garden Soil, 2 small Turk's Cap plants, a cyclamen, a flat of pansies (I don't know where I'm going to plant that many pansies), 2 snap dragon plants, 3 strawberries, a 6-pack of spinach, carrot seeds and a 6-pack of maroon bluebonnets.

I've already got the strawberries and 2 of the spinach plants in a planter, and I put the snap dragons, a bluebonnet and a pansy in another planter.

I plan on drilling holes in the bottom of one of those plastic cat litter buckets and planting carrots and 2 more spinach in that. (I'll wash it out first, of course)

And I'll probably put the remaining spinach and some of the bluebonnets and pansies in another planter.

The Turk's Cap is meant to go in the "shade garden" otherwise known as "the dirt patch where nothing grows because of lack of sun", as is the cyclamen. I think I'll put the cyclamen in a planter though and put it over in the shade area, mostly because I doubt it's in any way cold hardy. I'll probably also totally baby the Turk's Cap this winter to give it a better chance of making it through.

And yes I know it's totally the wrong season to be planting some of this stuff (the bluebonnets, turk's cap and probably the cyclamen), but when I get in these moods, I just can't help it. And so, I baby the plants through the winter instead of just waiting until the spring to plant them.

Trees take two

Sorry for the lack of blogging, but I quite honestly have not been working in my garden at all. But that is mostly because I was gone for 2 of the last 4 weeks, and one of the weekends was completely ruined by having to stain the deck (This homeownership thing sucks).

Today Ross came to my office bearing three Longleaf Pine tree saplings (he got them from a friend's wedding). He did warn me that these trees don't grow here in Austin, but that I was more than welcome to take a tree or two. I went ahead and grabbed two of the saplings. Now I just gotta find a place to plant them...

I actually may plant them in some planters first--especially since they look like tufts of decorative grass.