January 31st, 2011 by Marc Opperman

I’ve been quietly and patiently excited for the time my baby son can finally appreciate the backyard experiences of chasing bugs, digging in the dirt, inspecting leaves, poking under plants, eating his first vegetable straight off the vine, and, hopefully, helping tend a small flock of chickens. At nearly eleven months, he’s getting there. Not quite walking, but standing and VERY mobile otherwise. But it’s very clear he LOVES the outdoors. From breezes to all the rustling sounds, from one bright color to the next, his little head is constantly back and forth with the excitement of it all. Give him a sprig of Italian parsley and he’ll jubilantly wave it around and tear it apart, pieces of it stuck to his chin. A stick becomes a valued keepsake, a wand, a baton.

This weekend, momma needed a nap, so daddy took him outside and stuck him in an apple crate near a vegetable bed newly top-dressed with compost. Within seconds he was standing, his little hands were digging like the paws of a puppy after a buried bone. All of this was accompanied by a happy string of wondrous chirping and ooo-ing. The cute nearly slew daddy. And even though he ingested an unknown quantity of compost, he seems to have made a full recovery.

I read something on an old acquaintance’s blog a bit ago: model what you want to see in your children. Yup. Check. Got it. With any luck, my son will be a rock-tossing, dirt-diggin’, plant-nerdin’ kind of guy. At least on my half of the model.

child, learn, lukas, son

January 26th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

This past weekend was somewhat productive in garden-land. I finished up my 30-minute compost pile. Why “30-minute?” Because I tossed most of it together in about 30 minutes last Thursday evening after work, that’s why. In the immortal words of Han Solo, “She may not look like much, kid, but she’s got it where it counts.”

See what I mean? Ghetto. (As is my photography). But it will do the job. And for those of you following along at home, that’s two wooden shipping palettes ganked from work with a liner of metal window screen I had left over from a failed window-rescreening job. All of it is lovingly and skillfully nailed to the side of my existing compost bins. (Snort!)

In other doings, I got myself to the Natural Gardener for seed potatoes (Kennebec and Red Pontiac), three bare-root Brazos raspberry bushes, and dirt… a few dig-yer-own bags of Hill Country mix. The dirt went in my third raised bed, and the raspberries went behind the bed along our fence. Should be a good place, as they’ll get some run-off water from the sprinkler system, as well as a decent amount of sun. Might also, however, be a little too close to the squirrel highway (the fence.)

The potatoes will go in the ground. I cut them and dusted them with sulphur as suggested by the Natural Gardener potato fact sheet, and they are presently curing in the garage. Hopefully I’ll get to plant them this weekend, but I think I need to work in some compost first. Probably an entire pickup load from Natural Gardener (yet to be procured.)

Also yanked some miscellaneous plants, mainly helianthus maximilliani and pavonia braziliensis that, together, had taken over a very large portion of the back. They, in turn, shielded from destruction a great amount of bermuda grass, St. Augustine and the other major scourge of my yard, straggler daisy (Calyptocarpus vialis – should be called strangler daisy). I did a LOT of digging and composting, but I did consign the bermuda grass rhizomes and stolons to the fire pit. I’m not letting that stuff near anything resembling soil if I can help it.

bermuda grass, compost, natural gardener, potatoes, straggler daisy

January 17th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

I’m very excited about these little radish sprouts. They made it through our worst freeze so far. I looked at them today at lunch, and I swear they’ve grown visibly since I took this picture over the weekend. The sun has been out for a number of hours now, and they (as well as probably every other living thing in Austin) have been drinking up the sun as much as the land swallowed the rain over the past few days.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this really. But I did notice the rain must have caused the soil in this box to compact considerably. Previously, the dirt was a couple inches from the top. Now it’s maybe 4 or 5 inches down. Sometime last week, I calculated the volume of soil this box can hold: 14 cubic feet. That does seem like a lot in raw numbers, but most of the bags you can buy at Home Depot or the like hold .75 cu. ft. each. So, almost 19 bags at about $3.50 each equals $66.50 to fill just one box. The Natural Gardener, with its bulk soil yard, starts to seem like a good deal. My truck – a Toyota Tacoma – only holds a little over a half cubic yard, or roughly 14 cubic feet. That’s a long drive to fill one box, but it costs roughly half the bagged compost at Home Depot.

January 13th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

It appears all the veggies in my yard survived the deep-freeze, though the “deep-freeze” was nowhere near as low as what I thought had been forecast. I can’t honestly say the “heat cisterns” did the trick, but they certainly did give me peace of mind. Lugging over 160 pounds of hot water each of three nights, however, was not fun. At one point I tried to hook a garden hose to the hot water heater tank in the garage to fill my 5-gallon jugs, but that proved slower and sloppier than I cared for.

The frostweed made its annual big show. Being a weekday, I didn’t take new photos even though this year’s display was more spectacular than last. More photos of last year’s frostweed display here.

cold weather, freeze, frostweed, vegetables, water, winter garden

January 12th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

I’ve been casting about for a shift in how I see my life. Mainly, I’m looking for a way that work doesn’t rule everything I do or my definition of myself. I’d like to see art and creativity take over that role. I have a fair amount of frequently untapped talent for making things in a somewhat improvised but lasting manner. I’ve crafted a bench out of two pieces of limestone and a plank of wood, fountains from flower pots and scrap copper pipe, and innovative landscape features with nothing but piles of stone, a shovel and sweat. Most landscaping or garden construction techniques I have attempted I can master, adding a personal flair to them as I go. Much of what I do uses materials and tools I have at hand. Sometimes, however, I treat my lack of ability to buy materials as a handicap as opposed to the opportunity for craftiness it really is. I have to, at the very least, suppress that message of “lack” if I want to nurture my creativity.

Enter Berthold Haas. (Or in my case, hopefully re-enter.) I haven’t kept up my friendship with him in the years since I got married, but now seems like a good time to get in touch with him. I was indelibly inspired by his use of limestone in making everything, but particularly landscape features like fountains. I used to live next door to him as he transformed his rented house into a garden oasis of fountains, walls and a limestone grotto.

His particular rough-hewn, but classically-inspired forms are perfectly in line with my aesthetic given that mine is informed by Texas Hill Country landforms (lots of limestone and “cedar”, or ashe juniper) and an earlier life as a hobbyist caver (more limestone). And while I could never even begin to copy him adequately, there’s not a time I work with karst limestone (that swiss-cheese limestone named for cave-bearing landforms) that I don’t think of him.

It might be time for me to try my hand at more fountains and benches, stuff that’s a little bigger and better than I’ve already done. I’d love to try a fountain somewhat like Berthold’s – hulking slab of uncut, natural limestone with a perfect well and channel cut into it, water entering from a hidden source over a hand-hewn race or nozzle. I might not be able to match that scale – he works with pieces that weigh tons, and has the studio and employees to help deal with these thing – but I know I can at least create forms that are pleasing.

bench, berthold haas, creativity, fountain, garden, inspiration, karst, landscape, limestone, sculpt, stone, structure

January 10th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

Here comes the freeze! We only get a couple of these a year, but this is the first time I’ve been on pins and needles about it. I have a lot of vegetables seedlings out there – radishes, lettuce, onions and carrots – and they stand to fare badly below temperatures in the mid-twenties. In the past I never worried about freezes much as the natives I had planted generally withstood the cold or the they didn’t. If they didn’t I reasoned I didn’t really want them around anyway.

So, I’ve covered everything vegetable-like, and have renewed the sense that I really dislike covering plants. Still, I’m much more committed to these vegetable starts.

No stranger to last minute improvisation and experimentation, I’m trying something based on a comment my dad made here. I have a number of five-gallon plastic jugs from work that normally carry a non-toxic press chemical. I filled five of these and placed them under the covers and near the vegetables. Over a few of them, I put large clay pots as additional insulation:

(Note: the hose has nothing to do with the arrangement.)

My reasoning is that the clay pot will insulate the hot tap water in the jugs a little more than the straight plastic. And if that helps raise the surrounding temperature by even a degree or two, it might make all the difference. For some reason, the term for these contraptions that popped into my head was “heat cistern”.

On my deck, too, I covered my potted herb garden. I took the splashy “bobbler” out of my fountain and dumped 5 gallons of hot water in the fountain. Again, just a degree or two…

Update tomorrow on my experiment’s results. Wish me luck!

freeze, heat cistern, hot water, vegetables

January 7th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

It’s technically Winter here in Austin, just as it is elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. But as is usual for Central Texas, you wouldn’t really know it. Especially if you grew up somewhere more northerly, like I did.

Well, it’s about to get a LOT more winterly in a few days – with sustained lows in the city hovering in the mid-20s. That means I’ll be scrambling to protect some early Winter crops – onions, carrots, newly-planted lettuce and radishes. Since my budget for gardening has been hovering pretty close to $0, I have no fancy row cover or hoop structures for covering things, and must instead rely on a mish-mash of old sheets and towels. It’s more work and sometimes tougher in windy weather, but it usually gets the job done. That said, it is going to be in the 20s… will my things actually survive that, covered or not?

Well, I snapped a few pictures with the iPhone… a couple reminders of what my Winter garden looks like. Might look radically different in a few days.

January 4th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

I should probably just start a column titled, “Letters from Dad About Gardening” or something witty like that. But this note from him was too good not to pass on.

If you are considering potatoes, you might try this. I have never done it this way, but supposedly it works. Grandpa Berger used to grow them in a big compost bin type contraption. The only difference is you probably want to plant them in mid February at the latest in Austin. I usually shoot for end of January. They will be ready in May before the really hot weather hits. Seed potatoes are usually available at garden centers or better yet at Feed and Seed stores on the edge of town. You can buy a couple pounds for a couple dollars. Sometimes potatoes from the [grocery] store are treated so they will not germinate at the eyes, so make sure to buy seed potatoes. Dad

Anyway, here is the article:

Growing Potatoes in Containers
Q. I don’t have room to grow potaoes in the ground, but have heard they can be grown in containers. How do I do that?
A. Potato towers are an easy and fun way to grow potatoes in containers without taking up precious garden space. Here’s how. Find a spot in your yard with full sun. Ideally, the spot will also be near a water outlet. Make a cylinder that’s 3 to 4 feet tall and 2 to 3 feet wide out of chicken wire, heavy gage wire, or even wooden fencing. Set the cage in the sunny location and secure the ends of the cage with wire fasteners. Line the inside of the cage with hay, straw, cardboard, or newspaper to prevent the soil from falling out and put a 4-inch-deep layer of compost In the bottom of the cylinder. Place 4 or 5 seed potatoes containing at least 3 “eyes” on top of the compost, spaced 6 inches apart. Cover the potatoes with a 3- to 4-inch-deep layer of soil. Water well.

As the potato plants grow, cover them with more compost. When the soil line is 6 inches from the top of the cage, stop adding soil and let the potato plants keep growing out the top of the cylinder. Keep well watered. In late summer, when the plants start to yellow, remove the the wire fasteners and open the cage — the potatoes will come pouring forth.

As I read over at Carla’s blog, Natural Gardener will have seed potatoes in 2-3 weeks. I think I may try this since I’m not terribly sure of the quality of my ground space yet. And it sounds like a fun excuse to tinker.

potato tower, potatoes

January 4th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

Still a little slow around the garden. But while reading of people buried by snow in the northeast and elsewhere, I’m thankful we here in Austin have a year-round growing season. This weekend I got off my butt and acted like it.

I built another 36″ x 60″ x 12″ raised bed out of lumber from Home Depot (gift card burning a hole in my pocket) and filled it with soil and compost I brought back from my parent’s yard. Had to supplement, though, with some of my own compost from the bottom of my pile. I shouldn’t be surprised at this point, but I am always delighted when I dig down to the very bottom and find lovely rich compost.

In the box, I planted two varieties of radishes and two varieties of lettuce. All are suited for this time of year, and hopefully I’ll see some germination in 5-10 days. The radishes are “french breakfast” (row 1), and “cherry belle” (row 2). The lettuces are “leaf / red sails” (row 3) and “butterhead / tom thumb” (row 4). Both the radishes claim they’ll be ready for harvesting in about 28 days, but I’ll believe that when I see it. Both the lettuces claim 45-50 days. All the seed is from Botanical Interests courtesy my parents (a Christmas gift).

I have space for another row of something in the back. Since I sited this box against my porch, there is a ready-made trellis for climbing beans or peas. I’m thinking peas. I also have wood for a second box, but not the 14 cubic feet of dirt to go in it. So the second box will wait a little bit.

I also worked a lot of shredded leaves and pine needles into some of the soil in the back part of my yard, near the back fence. I dug a lot of damnable bermuda grass rhizomes out, as well as a metric ton of straggler daisy. I’m considering trying potatoes in this area, though we’ll see if I can work the soil a little more before then to where I feel it’s ready.

I also thinned my carrot seedlings after a few pointers from Dad and his fifth graders. They are all now dutifully thinned to one inch, and I’ll never plant the seed that thick again. (I did take some of the thinned seedlings and planted them in between my too-widely-spaced rows. We’ll see how those do.)

Lastly, I just wanted to share a photo of my little gardener-in-training, helping his grandpa pick oranges on Christmas Day in Houston.

Not unlike another photo I know.

carrots, compost, dad, dirt, lettuce, lumber, radishes, raised bed