Keeping on keeping on

No real updates on my front. I pulled the cacti inside for the time we were out of town (seems like a good thing since my weather app was telling me there was going to be a freeze in Austin while we were gone). By the time I came back, the fall garden had gotten bigger, though it still seems so compact, and it looks like there was some hail maybe? I don't know--the chard and beets seemed a little beaten down. Most of the plants have gone dormant for the winter (like the lantana and wildflowers), but the shrimp plant was still blooming away and the passion vine looks like it's finally thriving without caterpillars eating all the leaves.

The plan for this weekend is to thin and weed the fall garden, take out all the plants in the spring garden and probably replant it with more fall garden stuffs (beets, chard, spinach, and peas come to mind). And I'm sure the husband can't wait to go suck up all the leaves for mulching purposes. :P

freezing

I am typing this from my phone, so please disregard spelling errors and what not.

The fall garden has made it through our two freezes in the last week, the spring garden, however, did not. This isn't very surprising as I did cover the fall garden with a bed sheet and did no such thing for the spring garden. To be fair, I was going to try to save the black krim tomato, but fate had other plans. Mostly, those other plans involved going to the husband's office holiday party. So, when we got back home it was already 30 degrees outside. And it was alteady obvious the eggplant was done for.

Thankfully, I had decided to save as many tomatoes as possible and pulled the plants the night before the first freeze--just like we used to do in colorado. That is, I pulled up the plants and hung them, root end up, in the garage. So far I've eaten maybe three romatoes from those plants...all of which have been damaged by bugs, but they still had good parts.

I'll post pictures of the hanging tomato plants when I have time.

Onion

My friend Ross ordered some onion starts from the web a few weeks back and they arrived about 2 weeks ago. Of course, it's not onion planting season yet, but the starts only live for about 3 weeks so it was plant or die. I obtained a small handful and just planted them today in the two black flowerpots and around the spring garden.

I also had another run in with the leaf footed bugs. I have found that pulling a leaf off of the eggplant and then using it as a 'smusher' works quite well.

Pictures

Quazi--I don't like the feel of being so squished on the top and open on the sides, but it's rare that my cats will actually do what I want them to and he had been laying down for all the other pictures (see below)

Quazi--again. Once again, still kinda squished on the top, but it would have required me to go over and close the front door in order to prep the shot correctly. And I am lazy.

Shrimp Plant from Bob at Draco Gardens

The fish head (I have no idea what it actually is supposed to be)

Succulents--once again, from Bob at Draco Gardens

Bulbine--from the spring Garden Bloggers Get Together

Leaf Footed Nymphs. If you see one, it's actually an assassin bug nymph. If you see hundreds, then they're Leaf Footed bug nymphs.

Click to embiggen--I think the gall looking thing is (are?) nematodes. Vunderbar.

Fall Garden Update

While out checking on the spring garden, I also did an inventory of the fall garden. I think everything I've planted has come up except for garlics 2 and 4. They may just be taking their sweet time though. I thinned all the carrots and spinach. I cut all the extra beets and chard at the ground. I haven't yet thought about thinning the onions and chives because they're still ultra small and I have a while before they'd start crowding each other. I also still haven't planted any strawberry plants. This is because I am lazy.

I did notice though that I have quite a few carrots in random places--the result of washout. Meh, so what if I have a few carrots in the pea and spinach squares at the right end of the garden?

Garlic | spinach| garlic |chard|garlic|spinach|broc |chard|garlic
Carrot| onion | beet | broc | beet | garlic |beet |chives|spinach
pea | straw |chives|carrot| pea | straw |onion|carrot|pea

Spring Garden Updates

Yesterday, I went outside to check on the spring garden. At this point, the reason for checking on the spring garden is because of the 5 tomato plants, 4 of them have tomatoes on them. Of course, the Krim only has 1 tomato, but still, it counts. In any case, since I figured at this point in time that any current flowers were not going to be able to ripen into tomatoes so I might as well pull off all the flowers on all the plants (including the pepper and eggplant).

Since the Brandywine Tomato didn't have any tomatoes, I went ahead and pulled it out. There are a couple of growths on the root (I have pictures, but I'm outside babysitting the cat to make sure she doesn't eat any plants so I don't have access to the pictures I took), which I'm pretty sure means something was wrong with the plant. The Krim has one tomato on it, the BHN and Viva Italia both have about 5 and the Roma is so loaded with tomatoes it's starting to fall over and take the tomato cage with it. This is the plant I'm most worried about with the upcoming freezes. With the soft freezes I can just put a sheet over it to give it some protection, but once a hard freeze is projected then I'll either have to make green tomato chutney (using Lancashire Rose's recipe) or I'll have to do what we did in Colorado--that is pull the whole plant out and then hang it upside down somewhere in the house and wait for the tomatoes to ripen. Of course, doing it that way, you only get the tomatoes that were close to turning pink to ripen, the ones that are itty bitty on the plant and are no where close to even beginning to turn pink usually are thrown away.

The Eggplant has about 10 golf ball sized or slightly bigger eggplants on it. It was during the inspection of the eggplant that I found out that I had an infestation of nymph leaf footed bugs. I immediately sprayed the plant with soapy water and then I came back out about 2 hours later and smashed up all the bugs I could find. This morning when i went back out, I didn't see a single nymph. The eggplants I can pull off whenever to use, but I think I'll let them grow until the first frost so they can get bigger.

The Corno di Toro pepper finally has some peppers on it--one is pretty big, and the others...not so much. I hope the big one can ripen before a hard freeze kills the plant.

The Thai pepper plant is in much the same situation as last year--that is there are about 5 peppers on it that are green, and they probably won't turn red before I have to pull the peppers off of the plant.

The butternut vine is keeping on, keeping on. It has one butternut squash on it, and the squash is already bigger than the one I pulled off in the summer--apparently squash plants do not like the head of summer. Also keeping my fingers crossed that the squash will ripen before a freeze.

Garden: Growing

I went out yesterday afternoon and checked on all the plants. Everything looks to be going along swimmingly. Garlic hasn't sprouted yet, but I think just about everything else has. Plan for this weekend: thin.