Claude Has Another Flower

This time Claude has a more developed flower. It really opened up and showed us how big they are going to be. This is of course zoomed in a little but it's easily visible and showy. Looking forward to when it has hundreds of these guys blooming at a regular basis.

The trunk is still a little small to be carrying fruit but flowers are always a good sign that the conditions are right for producing.

Some of the other flowers we have around the garden are our daylilies and of course the green onion is a regular feature. One of the green onion blooms was almost 100 percent pollinated and is currently full of seed pods nearly ready to harvest. The bean plants are also regularly blooming and making beans. They are trailing up some of the closer plants to them and spreading fast.

The new job has kept me busy and not a lot of time to focus on keeping up here but I'm still going.  The next thing I'm going to plant are some dragonfruit seeds.  I hear they are relatively easy to sprout and grow.  Don't be fooled by the one that shows the fruit being soaked in water and sprouting though. It's all fake.  That would just rot in the water and destroy the seeds.  The plant also doesn't grow like that. It's a sprawling plant that loves good soil and rocks. So hardy.

Wallapini Gardening

 

Recently my wife sent me a text about a sunken greenhouse.  This looks like a good idea especially since the HOA's main concern is that things don't stick up over the fence line and make the neighborhood look bad from the street.  This would make the greenhouse significantly lower and in turn make the HOA happy.

On the down side though there are some factors that may make this less ideal.  I looked up some information on what goes into making one of these and came across a site specifically on helping people decide if this was the way to go for them.

First off you need to consider the land.  North Central Texas land in general has a lot of clay which makes an issue for drainage of this kind of structure.  The solution they propose for clay is to put in French drains to get the water out.  This could work if the drain had somewhere to go.  Our lot is pretty flat and thus doesn't have anywhere to go really.  I'd have to run a pipe all the way around the house to drain out the front near the sidewalk and that would be to the lowest point inside the greenhouse.  That point is not the floor level but below the cold sink which is needed to regulate the cold air inside the greenhouse.  Apparently within a greenhouse (supposedly warm) there is often a cold air that sinks to the lowest point and can possibly keep your plants too cold if they are the lowest point.

Second concern I though of was what to do with all the dirt that has to be dug out.  Where do you put it?  The site assumes you have a bit of land and are able to choose an appropriate location.  Pretty limited here but some of the dirt can go into planters after construction.  Again clay, so not ideal.  A possible idea that just came to mind, make bricks.  Not sure if it's the right clay but I haven't dug down to see.  Another idea is to use the excavated material to berm up around the outside.  This would make the insulation twice as tall as what was dug out.  More building a hill around the greenhouse for insulation.

Third, it's labor intensive to build.  To do this properly and not give up in the middle I'd need help making it.  Friends would probably help some but in the end it probably means hiring some help to finish it.  Also renting a truck and possibly equipment to dig and haul stuff.  Gardening is not for the lazy.  It takes time to do a lot of it and persistence to keep it going.

There are many more concerns than this when deciding to build but these are some of the first thoughts after reading a page on Wallapinis.

Drones and the Garden

So, many years ago we got onto the "go get a drone" craze and bought this little thing with a camera thinking we would be able to get some good drone shots like everyone was saying you could get.

Suffice to say those pics never happened. This was due to many things.  The most inhibiting factor was the extremely difficult steering of the drone itself.  We at first thought this was a user error.  We'd never flown a drone before and who were we to think it would be just so easy?

Well, after many years we broke the drone back out for some very simple shots.  We figured we couldn't miss now that we had met someone who actually flies drones for a living.  Yes this is an actual job where you deliver goods by drone.  He looked at the little thing and told us how cute it was and that it shouldn't be difficult.......  Then he wept.

Not only is the drone super hard to fly for ANYONE, it's size makes it doubly so.  Within 30 seconds he had nearly lost the drone over a fence. In less than a minute he had crashed it twice and one of the guards fell off.  So no, we aren't necessarily bad drone pilots, we just have a crap drone.

So what about the fact that it has a camera and can take pictures?  Well, due to its crappiness, and low signal strength, if we ever got it high enough to take a good aerial photo, the wind would carry it off into oblivion and we would probably never see it again.

Looks cute hovering 1 foot above the ground though, doesn't it?

Sean and Addi

Just under 2 weeks before we can bring our new kitties home with us!

Of course that's because we don't yet have the new home to bring them to.  We're finally moving back into a house though and one of our friends was kind enough to find these two for us.  She also helped nurse them back to health after they had been found abandoned and did a great job socializing them.

Sean is going to be a bit bigger than Addi but they are the cutest siblings.

This also means we will be getting back to some larger scale gardening!  I'm going to plan better this time since we have a new home and a fresh yard to map out.  I can get things where they should be instead of where I can fit them in with everything that's already there.  I'm not sure about trees just yet though, they are a bit more than I think I want to take care of just yet, except for Claude of course but he's an inside tree...

Sprouting Patio Garden

 We were so happy looking at the pictures our friends posted of their gardens that we dug into the seed box and planted a few of our own.

Several of our friends seem to have gotten the gardening bug and thus have peppers, herbs, tomatoes, etc. growing in abundance.  Some unfortunately have gotten lost along the way but for the most part it seems to be a nice gardening year.

One friend offered us seeds to plant but we already have so many it would have been a waste of seeds.  Others need them more than we do so we just planted what we had.

 The pictures shown are some beans, since they grow so fast and we got a pretty late start on the growing season.  We also planted some herbs, carrots, and radishes.  The smaller radishes should grow quicker and be a nice addition to salads.

Depending on what actually grows we might also plant some lettuce or other herbs, space allowing.

If I had more room I'd like to grow beets but they require more space and depth than I can give them at the moment.

 These planter boxes are also not quite what I wanted but the'll have to do for the moment.  What I was looking for was what I would describe as saddle bag pots for the railing of the patio. I've also looked for a bracket that might fit on top of the railing for pot support with no success.  If anyone knows where I could get such things, feel free to leave it on the comments and I'll go look.

In the mean time these boxes are sitting on the ground and I'm just hoping the rabbits don't come and eat what we've planted.

As you can see there are only a few carrot sprouts but these seeds are over 6 years old.  I was actually surprised how well these seeds are doing.  It's only been a few days since we planted them and already we're getting exciting results.

So if you're wondering if you should toss those seeds just try them first and if they don't sprout then you've only lost a little time.  There's still plenty of time in the growing year to plant more seeds.  Just keep them watered and the weeds out and you should be doing just fine.

Asian (Asiatic) Jasmine

If you've lived in, or even visited, DFW for any real length of time, you've seen asian jasmine.  It's everywhere.  Any place someone doesn't want to maintain very well and is all by itself in a boxed area or even lining sidewalks, this stuff is used like a cure all.  But it's far from it.

Asian jasmine will take over areas before you know what happened.  Sure you think it's nicely isolated by a five foot sidewalk, but no....  It will send roots under and vines over that sidewalk to reach the other side.  And then it will just keep on growing.  It's not as fast or invasive as kudzu or as entrenching as some bamboo but it's doing its best considering its size.

So is it always a bad idea to grow asian jasmine?  No, but you have to keep in mind what it is and the time it will take to keep it under control.  I've seen it used very well around trees where grass won't grow and kept there with a beautiful lawn surrounding it.  You just have to keep at it.

That being said, if you do have lots of it growing and you want to replace it with say, a little garden.  You have to more or less cut down a ways and pull up the roots, sifting the dirt as best as you can to make sure it doesn't pop up and choke out a once thriving tomato plant.

Possible Garden Site

So, our office has a mostly unused courtyard.  It's overgrown with jasmine, as you can see, and rarely even cleaned out.  There is a drain in the middle of it so it doesn't flood but currently it's covered in leaves so I'm not sure how effective it really is.

My wife has heard me talk about the little courtyard and decided recently that it might be nice to do a little gardening in it.

The area shown really is the best spot in it for gardening but it'd be a lot of work to get it in a state that you could grow anything there.  We're already pretty busy people with her writing events going on throughout the spring and summer but we'll see.  First I'd have to ask my boss anyway but I think there's a pretty good chance he'd not mind as long as it really was kept up.  The only real pests would be the squirrels.  So as long as I plant something they don't mess with I should be ok there.

It's about 5 feet wide there and a bit longer so I can see something growing pretty good.  I'd have to figure out how to water it though.  And keep the water from getting into the building since it's up against the windows.  Maybe a strip of daylilies there?

Garden Blogs Forum Now Open

The Garden Blog Forum is now up and running!
Garden Blog Forum
I hope to convince other garden bloggers to join up and share their blog links.  At some point I'm going to try to get a google map going with pins showing where the different garden blogs are located.

I know this is a far cry from Blotanical but I figured something is better than nothing. Of course there's a suggestion area and any suggestions are totally welcome.

I already started it off with my own login and post (here in Texas). If you think any more regionality is needed we can look into how that might better be handled.

Right now it's pretty vague and needs a bit of work but you have to start somewhere.  I was really disappointed with some of the sites out there who didn't really care what kind of blog you really had and were just after your money.  My blog is not a money maker.

I plan to reach out to some of the blogs I already know might want to at least get the word out more about their blogs and get a bit of conversation going.  Hopefully I'll find some new gems out there with something interesting to say and words of wisdom to impart.

EDIT: This forum has been closed due to 0 activity apart from spammers. If you know of any forums for garden bloggers I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Google Garden Group for North Central Texas

I've gone ahead and set up a group for North Central Texas Gardening. Hopefully this will get people who don't usually have a lot of time to read blogs to more easily share information on gardening in this more specific area.
This will be a member group to reduce spam posts from bots and hopefully we'll be able to get some good information on what to do from every day gardeners in the area.

Neighborhood Gardening

More gardens are popping up in the neighborhood. I already knew about one of them down the street, a nice large garden in neat rows. Now my next door neighbor is preping a bed just by the fence. I just happens to be one of the only place in the yard to grow anything since the tree in their back yard shades the rest of the yard.
They have decided to grow squash, tomatoes, okra, snap beans (blue lake) and possibly others. We said they could have some of our starters if they had room that needed to be filled. We're currently trying to water twice a day, morning and evening, to keep the moisture even. So far it's working but still no fruits.
The sunflowers are producing though and I hope to have more seeds in the next few weeks. We also toyed with the idea of going out to the highways and harvest the flowers on the sides of the roads. there are literally tons of them growing wild.

Cats vs. Kitens

Kittens are cute when you find them playing among the plants and napping in the shade. Cats on the other hand are not so cute since they have the bad habit of napping on plants that aren't quite big enough to be able to take it.
Recently we have had several snow pea plants crushed under the weight of a not so large cat who knew that he shouldn't be where he was. He left very deep tracks in his haste to leave. If he returns he will find his favorite bed filled with pepper and chili powder and hopefully not so inviting. So too are the other beds and the top of the ice chest just in case he keeps looking for a resting place.
The plus side to having cats in the neighbor hood is squirrel control. There are fewer pecans planted where they shouldn't be.
My wife thinks I should go ahead and put cages on the planting beds to keep the cats out. In the long run this is probably the best and most economic method.

Spreading Out

There are just too many places for people to garden. Everywhere I look there are vast open spaces that just sit there, many of them ugly and a mess and they've been this way for years. Likely the land owners don't want liability in case someone chops a finger off or some such thing but the likeliness of something like that happening is so unfathomably small that it shouldn't even be a factor.
I'm not talking huge crop farming either, just plot gardening with hand tools and a little elbow grease. Not only would it cut back on the amount of mowing and ground keeping, since the garden would be tended, but it would look better too.
Looking around at people at the mall or driving along in their cars I doubt that there would be enough people who wold care to take them up on the offer even if it was there. People in this city just don't have the roots that make gardening worth it. The average time spent in one house is less than a year on average. Some of the more permanent residents have their own gardens already or aren't as interested.
In some of the surrounding cities it would be more likely to have a centralized gardening area since more of the residents are less transitory and have roots and ties to their neighbors. For most community gardens in nearby cities there seems to be a group already who just want a little more space and a place to get together. Gardens tend to be from twenty to fifty people and tended by a fairly small reigon of people but there still aren't very many compared to the population.
The hot months in Texas don't make it any easier. Daily watering is a must for any garden to survive and if it's too far to go every day then it's hopeless unless you have someone watering for you.
In short there probably won't be a centralized garden any time soon unless people start setting down their roots and making a home and learn to rely on eachother for getting things done. In today's society that alone seems nearly impossible.
It could happen.

Wouldn't You Like To Have A Pepper Too?

My pepper experiment this year has been an overwhelming success. I threw a bunch of pepper seeds out on a very fertile raised area of the yard and *POOF* up come pepper plants. With a little watering they survived the summer and now in the cool part of the year they are producing a hefty crop of peppers.

The first frost has been pushed back a little longer so they should get nice and big. I've already picked a few and used them in pastas, sandwiches and a gumbo. I have to admit that they aren't as big as the ones in the stores but they taste way better.

Here is a view with several different peppers in the picture. Unfortunately I don't know what some of the peppers are since I sprinlked some mixed pepper seeds in with all of it just in case they were still good. No sense in wasting seeds. It's made a very interesting grouping of peppers. They are all different sizes and hopefully soon more colors will come to the fore.

I just better not forget to pick them or my wife will probably shake her head at me and sympathetically pat me on the back to comfort me in my time of mourning.

Gardening with Style

I've heard of stylish gardens and people who have a flair for gardening. A garden can be very complex or so simple it's gorgeous. Our garden is none of the above as far as I'm concerned even if our friends say it's wonderful. I think they're biased.
One thing I don't think I can ever forget is the time my wife and I went strawberry picking and one very cute couple decided to dress up for the event. It was a bless her soul moment because she really should have known better than to wear high heels and such a short dress to pick strawberries. Sun dresses, on the other hand, work beautifully. Unless you're a guy....
Curiously, as far as I can tell, a guy can wear just about anything he would normally wear and still be modest while gardening.