Veggie Garden June 2010

A picture of the garden as of Saturday (June 26) morning. The tomatoes need pruning, the squash needs to be ripped out and the basil needs to be harvested...And it's time to start seeds for the fall garden. The work never ends.

Fiends! The whole lot of ya!

looks like I caught them right after hatching. Needless to say, they quickly met their watery demise.

Potatoes (post 2)

As I mentioned before, I ordered the potatoes. I gave them a delivery week of July 19. Somehow that was translated into June 25. According to Caroline, as she ALMOST had the same problem, this has something to do with the potato place thinking that the seed potatoes they have won't all be viable by July. That and the place is in Colorado so they probably think we Texans are crazy to try planting potatoes at the end of the summer rather than at the beginning. So basically what happened is they put a rush on both of our orders. The difference is that Caroline called them and told them to hold the potatoes no matter what.

On a totally unrelated note, why is there a single cat kibble next to the cat litter box? did one of the cats decide they would like a nice snack while they were pooping? so weird.

Anyhow, back to potatoes. Right. So since I didn't realize that they were going to be sending the potatoes until after they had already sent them, I have the ordered potatoes sitting on my kitchen counter...in the original box. I haven't even opened it yet.

According to the Aggie Horticulture site, it sounds like I can store the seed potatoes in the crisper drawer of the fridge. That's good because there is absolutely no sense in trying to plant potatoes now. I mean there's no where to put them, and they wouldn't set tubers anyway.

Artemisia and Rock Rose

Before:


After (avocado tree to the left, random weed tree to the right, and chile pequin front and center):

Mail Orders (Potatoes and Garlic)

I ordered some potatoes for fall planting today. I, like Caroline from the Shovel Ready Garden, ordered them from Ronnigers.com. Since I don't have a specified garden area for potatoes yet, I will likely be building a potato box as per my Mom's instructions.

[aside] My mom found an article in their newspaper about building a potato box in order to grow like 100 lbs of potatoes. She immediately ripped it out of the paper (so I could read it in person), and promptly called me to tell me about it and said that I just HAD to build the potato box and try it. See? Apparently I get this experiment thing from my mom. But the reason why I had to try it instead of her? Because I am the one who gardens. My mom was also the one that insisted I try the Earth Boxes of years past. And that experiment worked out well, so how badly can this one go? However, since she is the one who's so adamant about the potato box, what I should do is grow them and then pay to have them all shipped to her. I think my dad would get a kick out of that. [/aside]

The varieties I selected were a pound of Red LaSoda, 1/2 pound All Blue, and 1/2 pound Purple Viking. The LaSodas are a recommended variety for Travis County while All Blue and Purple Viking are recommended varieties for Texas by Howard Garrett. The other recommended varieties for Texas and/or Travis County were already sold out (except for the Russian Banana and Yellow Finn). I put that the ship date should be the middle of July, so we'll see how this works out.

I also ordered more garlic from Gourmet Garlic Gardens. I wish I would have been able to get the Creole varieties sampler, but they're already out of them so instead I got the Warm Winter Varieties again. They are automatically shipped just prior to the best time to plant in your specified area so they should be arriving in late-August or so.

Succulents, Cacti, and other drought tolerant plants

I finally got around to buying some new pots so I could officially plant the variegated agave from the last blogger get together I went to in Feb. and the ice plant I bought when I met up with Diana at the Barton Springs Nursery in April. I originally planted the agave in a plastic flower pot with some regular garden dirt and the put it under the eaves of the house so it didn't get as much water when it rained. Having it in the plastic pot was a short term solution--I didn't really know where I was going to put an agave--I had a couple of choices--in the giant berm out front amongst the asian jasmine, lantanas and random wildflowers or in a pot in the backyard (in which case I would need a very large pot), or in a pot by my other cacti/succulents (in which case I would need a smallish pot--8-14" diameter). Now then, the husband still doesn't care for cacti and succulents so he didn't really want it in the berm area (besides, I still haven't decided what to do with that area--Agave/guara/feather grass combo or lantana/mountain laurel/verbena combo...actually I'd like to do both--with the agave combo in a large stock tank to either the left or right of the berm...but the husband doesn't like the stock tank idea), which left the potting options...and we all know that I'm a cheapskate, ergo the small pot option was selected.

The ice plant just sat in its little 4" pot by the water barrel while I took my sweet time getting a pot for it. I ended up choosing a shallow terra cotta bowl in the 'chocolate' color. Because the ice plant obviously isn't very big, I decided to add some of my other succulents to the pot. I pulled off some of the blue and green sedums from the other succulent pots and some of the new babies from the ghost plant.

I've topdressed both pots with extra sand I have lying around (even though the ice plant pot doesn't look it), but I'd really like to get some of that recycled glass to put on top instead.




I had decided a while ago that I wanted to plant the portulaca plant I bought at BSN in something whimsical. And I thought I had the perfect container: An old glass light fixture. So I filled it with dirt and sand and then I added the plant. And then I put it in the sun at the end of my walkway.

And then I promptly freaked out that it was going to somehow start a fire. You know like magnifying glasses and ants? only with regular glass and wood chips.

So I unpotted the plant and instead put it in a terra cotta pot. A terra cotta pot which I've been meaning to give back to Bob at Draco. Sorry Bob, you're gonna have to wait until I find a non-fire-starting-pot-of-whimsy.

Glass container AFTER I pulled the portulaca plant out.

Parsley Caterpillar

One of the many Black Swallowtail Caterpillars (on parsley)