Going Radish Crazy

So some of you know that I have been spreading radishes throughout my garden in the manner described by Dick Raymond's Joy of Gardening book. The idea is that when you are planting, you plant a few radishes along with everything else. The radishes grow quickly, showing you where you planted, as well as helping to shade the soil (which is important in our Texas heat), and also leave lots of loose soil behind when you pull them.

Well, the first time I tried this I planted way too many, and my chard and beets had a hard time coming through all the radishes. I pulled all the radishes, and the chard and beets are thriving (although that could be because of all the cool weather and rain we have had!). This time, I planted what I thought were a lot fewer radishes, but I replanted almost my entire garden, so cumulatively I still planted a lot of radishes. So yesterday I picked 12 pounds of radishes! I have no idea what to do with them all. They are very good, not the pungent nasty radishes from the heat of the summer, but there sure are a lot of them.

Any ideas?

The Fall garden is taking shape

Okay, so I don't have any picture sof my garden, but I did take a picture of a salad I had for dinner today, which got much of its contents from my garden. I will admit, the lettuce is from Costco, but this salad has radishes, beets (if you haven't tried them raw, they are delicious), beet greens, red chard, and bok choy from my garden.

This has been a very good gardening year for me, but a very slow summer. The summer was long and hot, but we are finally seeing some cooler weather. A few weeks ago I planted broccoli, cauliflower, rutabagas, turnips, bok choy, spinach, carrots, onions, radishes, and scallions. Some of these are doing great, while others are more of an experiment for me. An example of this is the onions. I have little tiny onions plants growing all over the place, but I have no idea how they will do--I have never grown them before!

In addition to everything I just planted, I still have winter squash, chard, beets, tomatoes and peppers from earlier in the year. I am hoping that with the cooler weather the tomatoes and peppers will hurry and put on some fruit, but I am not really getting my hopes up.

Squash has been the most difficult thing for me to deal with. I planted about 40 feet of winter squash in the summer, and have harvested from it about a dozen tiny squash. I blame all of this squarely on the vine borer, which I have posted about before. I knew they would take a toll on my plants, but some of the varieties of squash have given me just a single fruit off of about six vines. It could be that the extra hot summer prevented the plants from thriving, but I can guarantee you that the vine borers didn't help things at all.

Well, I will start posting updates as things progress in the fall. I need to plant some garlic and lettuce in the coming week (once the ground dries out!), and we will see just how much variety this garden can pump out all winter.

July is melon month!

So our melons have been coming on strong during the past week. We have picked all of our Suger Baby watermelon (about 5 of them), and we have so far harvested 8 cantaloupe. The Suger Babies were a little bit overripe, but still delicious. The cantaloupe have been very good as well, although I have learned that you really need to let them sit around a couple days before you eat them, or else they are crisp like a sweet potato instead of chin-dripping gooey like you want a cantaloupe to be.

The bottom picture shows the reason that cantaloupe from the store usually aren't very good--RIPE CANTALOUPE ARE YELLOW!!! All of those green things at the store aren't even worth the time to look at. When they turn yellow like this they literally fall off the vine and are perfect.

After this we should have about another half-dozen cantaloupe, followed by a half-dozen Tennessee Rattlesnake Watermelon which are still growing.

My First Tomato Preservation

So our Roma tomatoes have finally started ripening like mad, so I have been trying to figure out how to use all the tomatoes I have been picking. A few days ago I canned the whole tomatoes you see in the top picture, which consist of about half Roma and half Juliet tomatoes, with a few Early Girl and Better Boy thrown in.

On Friday, I picked about 13 pounds of tomatoes, mostly Roma. Not everything is completely ripe when I pick it--some go in a paper sack and wait a few days before I can use them--so the bowl shows all of them I had ready to be used on Friday. After spending hours laboring over them, I ended up with four measly pints of spaghetti sauce and two pints of tomato juice. It really makes you appreciate just how cheap our food is...I don't even want to imagine what the cost per jar for this spaghetti sauce would be once you factor in all my garden expenses and labor.

Anyway, there is something fulfilling about making things myself, even if I can only justify the expense by calling it a hobby.

Tomato Salad

So today I picked the largest tomato in my garden, a 25 ounce Brandywine. It is really quite large--that is my hand in the photo! It's probably not quite ripe yet, but I honestly am not sure how to tell, I have never actually seen a Brandywine before!

All the information I have seen says that Brandywines get to be about 14 ounce, so I am quite pleased with my monster! Hopefully it tastes great, because from two plants I only had 4 fruits set!

The bottom picture shows the array of tomatoes from my garden this year. From largest to smallest they are Brandywine, Better Boy (Probably the closes to a normal "supermarket" sized tomato), Early Girl, Roma, Juliet, and Sweet 100 cherry.

I tend to pick them a bit early and ripen them inside. This seems to help avoid problems with birds, bugs, rain, and sun, and supposedly they will still taste the same.

Potato Time!

Well my Butte potatoes have been dying back, a few weeks earlier than I had expected. I am not sure if the die back is due to the heat or disease. Only a few of the plants seem to have really been damaged by insects, so I don't think they are the primary culprit.

In the end I have decided to go ahead and dig the potatoes. What I found has been a lot of small potatoes, with only a couple of the baking-sized potatoes that I had hoped for. It got dark before I could finish today, but I dug 15 pounds of potatoes--which seems in-line with what I would have expected for the amount of plants which I dug. This makes me think that the plants may have put on smaller tubers because the soil was pretty heavy around them--it may have just been too hard to push it out of the way to grow a large tuber.

When I finish digging up the row tomorrow or Saturday, I will be able to tally up my harvest to see how we did.

Canning starts...NOW!!!

So far green beans have been our most reliable crop here in Texas, so this year we planted a bunch. By a bunch I mean approximately 400 plants on two 40-foot rows. The beans are just starting to come on. We did our first real picking two days ago, and picked just over two pounds. We expected to have to wait a while for more, but yesterday we picked another two pounds, and I only expect the yield to increase as the plants get more into their bearing streak.

So, we will be busy canning. Last night I canned nine pints, with a full load being ten. I find that it takes just about half a pound of beans (before snapping off the ends) per pint, so if we get to the point that we are picking more than five pounds at a time we might be in trouble!

In other garden news, we harvested ten pounds of Reddale potatoes. If the rest of the plants have yielded about the same, then we should be digging up about another fifteen pounds soon, as the plants are really starting to die back now.

Fresh Potatoes for Dinner!

I have two types of potatoes planted in my garden this year, Reddale (a waxy red potato) and Butte (a russet baking potato). Due to my impatience I occasionally dig around under the plants just to see if anything is growing. The Reddales have been easy to find, but I had never been able to locate anything under my Butte plants.

I week or so ago I dug up my sickliest looking Reddale and harvested several potatoes from it (sorry, no pictures). Today I decided just to dig up one of the Butte plants to see what was underneath, and the picture shows what I found. To put it in perspective, this is a salad plate (9"?). The skin is mottled because they are still young and the skin rubs off if you scrub them at all. All in all I pulled out 1lb 11 oz of potatoes from that plant. Given that the portion of potato it grew from was probably no more than 2oz, that is a 13.5::1 ration of harvested potato to seed, not bad!

Like I said, these potatoes are still young. Left in the ground they would have continued to grow into much larger potatoes, for an even better yield. Lets hope the rest of the plants continue to do well and give us a huge pile of potatoes in a month or so.

It lives!

It has been a while since I have updated the current progress of my garden, so here is another photo tour of what is growing in my backyard. The conventional wisdom around here is that it is a waste of time to try to grow things in the existing dirt, and that you should instead grow everything in soil you purchase and install into raised beds. Buying all new soil was way out of my budget, so what you see here is grown in Round Rock Dirt...amended generously with the cheapest compost available at Lowes.

I am using the cheap composted cow manure from Lowes because (1) it is really cheap, and (2) it seems better than a lot of the more expensive stuff. When I was deciding what to buy, the fancy Black Kow manure seemed to be mostly wood, and is about $5.50 for a 50 lb sack. The cheap stuff is $1.35 for a 40 lb sack, and is a whole bag full of fine and dark compost...with no wood chips in sight. Through my various plantings this year I have bought 40 bags of the stuff.

Now on to the pictures!

Blackberries on my new (tiny) bushes. It looks like we will get a couple cups this hear, with hopefully many more next year.

A look at my beans. You can also see a little bit of garlic an an artichoke on the bottom. I suspect the artichoke is just going to end up on the compost pile soon.

A look at the first Juliet tomatoes to appear. Several of my other varieties are starting to fruit too, so we are already doing better than last year!

An overall view of my backyard garden.

Bigger pot == bigger plant

One week ago I posted about moving some of my tomato seedlings into larger pots. Today you can see the difference between the seedlings in the large pots vs. the ones in the original small Jiffy pots. My thought was "how there be this big of a difference in one week." Well, there are a couple obvious solutions for this:

• Small Jiffy Pots are really small


• Really small pots mean really small roots


• Really small roots mean pathetic plants

Ok, so that seemed like a reasonable explanation, but no amount of free space seemed to explain the rapid growth to me...and then I figured it out. You see, I am what I would consider a "pretty much organic" gardener. This means that in general I utilize organic options, but I am not opposed to straying from that when I feel the situation justifies it. Given that my seedlings are growing inside my pantry, I was scared of the potential smells of fish emulsion or seaweed extract, and instead utilized some water-soluble Miracle-Gro fertilizer. Both transplants pictures receive the same single application of fertilizer. My new explanation of why the plants differs so much is:

• I bottom-watered the plants, meaning the water and fertilizer was pulled up through holes in the bottoms of the pots.


• Large Pot == More Dirt


• More Dirt == More wicking capacity


• More wicking capacity == More water


• More water == More Miracle-Gro


• More Miracle-Gro == More Plant

Since the plants were allowed to wick up as much water as they wanted, the moisture level in the big pot was probably about the same as in the little pot. This gave the plant in the larger pot a reservoir of fertilizer which it was able to pull from, while the small plant only had a tiny reservoir. Since I do not fertilize continuously, the small plant quickly consumed the fertilizer and then only had the plain water I gave it, while the large plant was able to work on its collection of fertilizer much longer.

I am amazed at how geeky I was able to make a post about tomato transplants, but there you have it--I am a geek!

Life Creeps Into My Garden

As it gets close to time to plant, life is appearing all over in my garden. The grass is starting to turn green, and plants are springing to life. Rather than talking about it, I thought I would post some pictures of what can be seen around my back yard right now.

This Bradford Pear became a fatality in my yard--it was threatening to shade my garden so it had to go.

Leaves are emerging on the Black Spanish grapes I planted a couple weeks ago. I discovered that it can be very hard to prune a plant after you start seeing the leaves appear.

These are the late emergers of my Butte Potatoes.

Most of my potatoes are getting fairly large. I will be mounding soil around them once the rest emerge.

I just finished shaping my garden yesterday and laid the necessary drip irrigation. My grapes and compost are in the back corner, while my potatoes are visible in the front.

The seedlings that have been tucked away in my pantry are now getting their first tastes of the outdoors.

A look at one of the Arapaho blackberries I put in last week.

Closeup of the blackberry leaves.

I found a head of garlic in the compost bin, and planted them in a nearby row. It looks like I will be growing garlic this year!

These two rows are about 40 feet long, and will be primarily planted with green bush beans. Beans have been one of our must successful garden items here, and are easy to store, so we will be planting lots to try to stock up.

It's almost planting time!

Well it is almost time to start putting transplants out in the garden. The picture shows the current state of my tomato and pepper transplants that have been growing in my pantry for the last two months. I just put some of them into larger pots and moved the grow light up to accommodate their growth. I had the light hanging under the shelf, but the plants were growing up into it. Rather than find somewhere else where I can properly hang the light above the plants, I just set it on top of the wire shelf to let the light shine through. Hopefully the light is still bright enough to keep everything nice and stocky.

I have learned some things from this experience growing my own transplants.

• A two foot grow light fits over lots of small transplants, but not lots of big ones.
• It is painful to have to decide which seedlings to throw out.
• The little Jiffy pots from Lowes are way too small to keep a transplant in.
• I should plant with the expectation that I will repot my seedlings a couple times before putting them out in the garden.

The last of these points is interesting. Why would not not just start my transplants in something big enough to leave them in until they are ready to plant? The answer is that tomatoes have the incredible ability to quickly grow roots anywhere that they are in contact with the soil. By removing all but the top few leaves and replanting the seedling, I am encouraging it to grow a large root system prior to going out in the garden. If I had just left it to grow on its own in a large pot, I would not get this extra boost of converting stem into root.

Earlier I posted a picture of my little spindly seedlings. I was able to save them by replanting them all as deeply as I could, and they are the same seedlings in the picture today.

I have been busy getting the garden ready for spring. Last weekend I tilled under all of my pea plants, freezing the few peas I was able to get off of them. I just figure that they are serving mostly as a green manure to get some organic matter into my soil. I have also planted grapes, blackberries, and a pomegranate tree in the past few weeks, so hopefully they will all get off to a good start this spring. You can see in the next picture the peas I froze. We managed to get a whole three cups of shelled peas, and another 3 cups of young pods.

Goodbye Grass!

As much as I love my garden, I hate grass. This is why I was so happy to see about 60 more square feet go away today. I just don't understand why we work so hard to have nice green lawns that give nothing back but a need for maintenance. Today I put in a new planting bed along our front porch, which will (hopefully) have some dwarf blueberries planted in it soon.

I opted to haul all my supplies back from Lowes in my van. It was feeling a bit heavy on the drive back, because I had it loaded down with 600 pounds of manure/compost, 9 cubic feet of pine bark, and about 12 cubic feet of peat moss. The bed is intended to give the blueberries a more acidic environment than they would normally get here in Central Texas soil.

Not all of the manure and compost was destined for the new bed. Some of it went into my garden so I could prepare for potato planting next week. You can see from the picture the four ridge of soil, which will become two rows once the dirt is all pulled in over the growing potato plants.

Making Room

It is almost time for me to plant potatoes, but I had to get rid of all my carrots and beets to make room. This morning I was watching two of the kids, so I couldn't spend the day working outside, so I decided to pull all my beets and carrots so that I could work inside. We didn't have a whole lot out there, but there was enough for me to can 6 pints of beets and 3 pints of carrots, in addition to a few pounds of beet greens in the freezer.

Now that the row is clear I will be putting adding some organic matter to the soil, adding to my drip irrigation system, and planting my potatoes within the next two weeks. This was my first time growing during the winter here in Texas, next year I will have to plan better so that I won't have to tear out my Winter crops in order to make room for the early Spring planting.

Starting Seedlings

Five days ago I planted seeds in a starting tray as you can see on the right. I planted a variety of tomato seeds, a couple peppers, and artichokes. Of course all of the seeds say they will take two weeks to germinate, but many of my tomatoes only took three days! This was a bit of a problem because I hadn't figured out yet how I was going to provide enough light for them. On day three there were just a few barely poking up out of the soil, and when I came home from work on day four they were already all long and spindly due to a lack of light.

Today I am trying to get more light to them, but I only have a single compact fluorescent grow light. We do get some sun through our windows, but we don't really have any windows that get sun all day.

Yesterday I was looking at grow lights online, and was surprised that the entire low-cost industry appears to cater to home marijuana growers. All of the websites brag about "discreet packaging," have disclaimers that "our products are only intended for legal uses," and all eBay auctions are private so that others cannot see who is bidding. When I did a Google search for reviews of one of the lights, every single "reviewer" was from one cannabis growing forum or another.

It seems weird to contemplate buying lights from a company that so willingly supplies drug growers, but when they are half the price of any of the "normal" gardening stores, I may just go for it.

Yes, I could just buy transplants and not have to spend money on starting supplies or lights, but this is half the fun. By growing my own transplants I can grow any variety of plant I want, instead of what the nursery decides I should grow, and with transplants now costing $2-$3 each, it shouldn't take long to pay back the investment.

What makes the cut?

The winter gardening break is just about over as I get ready for planting this spring. The other night we planted seeds for transplants, and I started trying to plan the layout of my garden since I will be planting potatoes in a few weeks. When trying to decide what made the cut, and was important enough to dedicate space to, I decided the inevitable...my garden was too small.

So...today I brought out my newly repaired tiller and added about 250 square feet to my garden. About half of this is a long stretch along the back fence, that is very likely to be planted with grean beans, and the other is a square that will likely become home to canteloupe, watermelon, and whatever other vining plants I feel the urge to put there.

Overall my gardening philosophy is that I plant what I can store. We had moderate success with green beans in the fall, canning 27 pints from a small patch. This spring I am hoping to have enough tomatoes, peppers, and beans that we will be able to put some up. We will be planting potatoes as well, but they are an experiment, and we don't know how well they will keep in our warm home.

Once I figure out how to keep the basic growing here in Texas, then I will likely add some more variety for the garden for fun, but for now I am happy if I can just get these to grow!

Round Rock Dirt

Well, I decided that maybe not everybody following my other blog cared when I pick a few carrots or add a row to my garden, so I decided to dedicate a blog to my gardening endeavors. I am probably what you would consider the average Round Rock resident--I live on a small lot in a dense neighborhood. This can make gardening a challenge since I have lousy "builder special" dirt (read "road fill and clay"), a wide swath of limestone not far underneath, and very little experience dealing with the Texas heat.

As spring approaches I am drawing up plans for this year's garden. I have seed potatoes ready to plant last month, tomato and pepper seeds planted inside, and more to do than I have time.

I would consider my approach to gardening "mostly organic," and "somewhat successful." In general this means that if my plants can't really fend for themselves, I just won't plant them. I don't have the time to go picking off bugs, nor do I have a desire to swath my food in chemicals, so I am in an ongoing quest to find out what can "grow itself" here in central Texas. I do not care if my seeds are organic, and at the present time I plant a mix of hybrid and open-pollinated varieties.

Right now my winter garden of peas, beets, and carrots is in full swing, hopefully to wind down before I need to plant in the spring. I will be posting updates here as I go. This is as much for me to keep track of my progress if it is for anyone else, so don't be surprised if you see excruciating detail here about how many pound of beans I picked, how many fruitless tomato plants I have, or how much cheaper it is just to buy vegetables at the grocery store.

Thanks for reading Round Rock Dirt.