April 30th, 2010 by Marc Opperman

Here’s an updated photo of the herbs. Their close proximity to the fountain gives them a little moisture from the splash.

April 28th, 2010 by Marc Opperman

And poof! just like that, a little container garden on the back porch. Thanks to mom and dad for the plants and a little extra soil to fill some of the many clay pots I have around.

I now have…

• Two types of thyme: English thyme and lemon thyme
• An orange mint
• A lavender
• A cilantro
• An italian parsley

Since I have a micro-sprinkler line already running to the porch to fill the small fountain I have there, I will most certainly extend that to add a couple dripping things for the pots. I think I already have all the necessary gadgets for that… elbow joints, t-joints, tubing and various little drip heads.

I think the most challenging thing about this now will be to arrange the pots in a pleasing way.

The photo shows just the cilantro and parsley. Taken a few days ago… the thymes, lavender and mint weren’t in yet. New picture in the morning.

cilantro, container, garden, lavender, micro-sprinker, mint, thyme

April 28th, 2010 by Marc Opperman

From the Earth911.com website today… an article on what companies are doing to create packaging that can be composted in backyard composting piles:

http://earth911.com/news/2010/04/26/the-next-wave-in-composting/

As an aside, a large number of the things we commit to the trash or hopefully – at worst – the recycling, can be composted. Paper egg cartons, cardboard, used paper towels (as long as there are no harsh chemicals in them), the cardboard inside of toilet paper rolls, brown paper used in shipped packages, paper drink cups, newspaper, #7 PLA plastic drink cups… and now: the packaging from SunChips.

What can be composted in your household?

compost

April 28th, 2010 by Marc Opperman

Garden doings this past week (last week of April)…

• Bewick’s wren young fledged last night from the front porch house. Probably 3 young, but hard to tell. In the process of helping guide them out of the street and away from the neighbor’s cats(!), I noticed some interesting things about them. There were about six adults – definitely more than just the parents! – shepherding the young and protecting them either with aggressive flying or by masking the locating calls of the young with their own similar sounds. I’m reminded that some wildlife finds my yard a suitable place to raise young – a requirement of NWF’s Certified Wildlife Habitat status.
• Planted a poblano pepper plant on Sunday in place of the jalapeño that died. I hope this one takes. It was started by my dad.
• Tons of wildflowers in bloom in the yard: calylophus berlandieri, rose pavonia, blackfoot daisy, purple coneflower, Englemann daisy, mealy blue sage, herbertia lahue, chocolate daisy, coreopsis, bluebonnets, prairie verbena, zexmenia hispida,
• Planted some coreposis and two-leaf senna seed in various parts of the yard.
• Mom brought a few other plants on Sunday… thyme, mint, and a couple other herbs – need to ask what they are and find good places to plant them. I like the idea of having the thyme in pots on the porch, but might place them in the triangle bed.
• Decided to clean out the western side of the house and build raised beds for vegetables. There is good full-day sun and irrigation spots there, plus it is close to the downspouts should I install rain barrels. Currently there is a lot of stone, palettes and weeds there, but it could stand to be cleaned up.
• Mulched the rest of the ash tree prunings, and made about 4 wheelbarrows of  mulch. Most went near my firepit in place of the St. Augustine I killed off. Some of it went to the compost heap to add some green energy. Today I noticed the compost heap was steaming in the chilly morning air when I went to dump some kitchen scraps. A good sign!
• All the tomato plants now have marble-sized tomatoes on them.
• Wanted to put in some beans or some other vegetable crop, but it’s too late for some of the stuff I wanted to do. I’m going to focus on prepping space for Fall.

April 27th, 2010 by Marc Opperman

Garden in an Environmentally Friendly Way – National Wildlife Federation.

Some great tips on finding lower impact methods of maintaining a garden. I found the NWF website as a whole to be a fantastic resource for good gardening practices with lots of articles on everything from composting to xeriscaping.

My yard is a Certified Wildlife Habitat, by the way.

April 25th, 2010 by Marc Opperman

Wildflower Center link: herbertia lahue

I honestly don’t really know how you’d get this plant. Buy it? Probably not. I’ve never seen it in a nursery. Collect seed somewhere? Maybe, but hard to spot since this short plant seems to like to mingle with tall grasses and the seed pods are a slender grass-like structure. Dig bulbs? Needle in a haystack.

But it’s a delightful one – a diminutive, delicate and exotic-looking member of the iris family. I am lucky to have it inhabiting part of my front yard. It grows in the shade of the Arizona ash amidst the St. Augustine grass, and I didn’t plant it intentionally. Nor do I think I imported this one unintentionally.

Today was the first day it bloomed, and 18 separate plants bloomed simultaneously for the first time this year. That’s the most I’ve seen flower at once in my yard, so I know it’s doing well. Tomorrow a different group of plants will bloom, each bloom lasting just one day. In about 3 weeks the plants will have a developed seed pod that will dry and turn brown. I intentionally avoid mowing that part of the yard until usually late May to give the seeds time to mature. Which might have something to do with their success.

herbertia

April 23rd, 2010 by Marc Opperman

My mom and I were talking last night a little about how monarch butterflies, being a migratory butterfly that winters in Mexico and Central America, suffered incredible losses last Winter, with harsh freezes killing large percentages of their numbers. She was wondering if I had seen any monarchs yet. I hadn’t. Worse, all my asclepias (butterfly weed) froze over the winter, so any monarchs visiting my yard right now won’t have any food for their larva anyway.

Mom and I also talked about how Houston Public Schools now have a mandate to create butterfly gardens on their campuses, and yet no money or expertise provided to do so. I applaud the goal – habitat and learning opportunities – but the execution appears sloppy.

Today I saw this. It offers a way for schools to get a small grant to foster monarch habitat suitable for their migration.
Grants Available to Create Monarch Waystations.

I wonder if Tigerlily Preschool would be interested.

April 23rd, 2010 by Marc Opperman

It doesn’t seem like they’ve been in the ground all that long, but I guess it has been enough. I have tomatoes! Lukas and I discovered them while wandering the grounds last night.

If I recall, this was the cherry tomato plant Dad got at the plant nursery near us. But all three plants have blossoms, and all of the plants are over two feet high. The one Dad propagated is nearly three feet and bushier than the two ‘store-bought’ plants. But all look healthy and happy.

April 22nd, 2010 by marie

[Marie Catrett owns and operates Tigerlily Preschool in south Austin. She likes to get messy and write about it.]

Happy Earth Day! Tending to the garden- the soil, our growing plants and all the little creatures there- is a big part of our day.  About a fourth of our outdoor space is an organic veggie garden.  It’s been my experience that when little ones have a hand in planting the seeds, watering the plants and discovering the harvest they will take incredible care with the space. Wagons roll by, play breaks just short of the beds.  Teaching little feet to respect the bedspace does take some intention and effort. The change in soil usually makes a great visual marker for small feet needing to know where the rambling can stop and the tender plant space begins.  Sometimes I’ll use a line of small stones or even aquarium gravel to make a “line”. I do my gardening in plain old raised dirt beds and my heart really feels the tug I think the kiddos feel towards how fun it would be to, say, take a flying leap and stomp the dirt mounds flat. But with a few reminders they really do extremely well with the limit.  It’s hardest when the plants are teeny tiny seedlings or before anything sprouts. Again, visual markers are my friend. We also do a lot of practice making our feet go around. Free form digging gets redirected to our sandbox, except on one very memorable day, one of my favorite days ever.  Dirt Day.

Back in September the children helped prep a garden bed before planting a fresh crop of leafy winter veggies. As a gardener I’ll admit I get impatient with some of the more practical aspects of gardening- and in the past I can’t say soil prep was my favorite. Add children, however, it’s a whole different thing. Two’s, three’s and four’s with shovels, turning the earth? Oh yes. Yes they can, most happily. We spent a morning pulling out stray rocks, taking care with the earthworms, being both amazed and disgusted at the sight of those strange pale grubs. We talked about compost and added the lovely turkey mix from The Natural Gardener.  I did not manage to capture and can only tell you about the best image: later in the day after buckets and worms and mountains and holes our happy diggers were full of so much dirt love the only thing left to do was to lie belly down on the dirt just being…well, truly one with the joy that was dirt day.

April 22nd, 2010 by Marc Opperman

Garden Austin is now fully compatible with viewing on mobile devices and follows a distinctly iPhone-ish theme. It includes a custom icon made by yours-truly with a photo I took.

The custom icon means that, if you save the bookmark to your iPhone’s home screen, the gorgeous little rose pavonia becomes your launch button to the site.