February 27th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

This time of year in Central Texas is not the time of year to skip a weekend of garden blogging. Amassing the activities of two weekends means you’re more than likely in for writing a novella when you do get around to chronicling your garden doings, for everything starts happening all at once. Such is the predicament I find myself in now. Seems like there are a hundred developments and doings to relate. Probably no good way forward other than just to dive in, though.

Probably the most important thing I did the weekend before this one was reduce my brush pile mountain down to a molehill. Some of the material in the pile went back at least 3 years, including the trunk of a former Christmas tree. I created at least three wheelbarrows of excellent mulch, some of which went right back into the compost, while much of the rest went to cover an area that used to have grass.

I did also clean out an area that was my particular windmill to tilt at… the site of the former Chinese tallow that fell last July. It had become a trashpit of discarded brush, pieces of tallow tree, random rotting lumber (most of it from palettes), and broken concrete. Woven into this aesthetically appealing tapestry was St. Augustine grass, straggler daisy, and various hackberry starts. Much of this crap was mulched – except for the concrete. The trusty 20+ year old Craftsman 5.5 HP chipper/shredder did several hours of duty, releasing untold pounds of pollutants into the atmosphere. But at least the mulch was free, organic and locally-sourced.
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cedar, compost, raised beds, soil

February 17th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

This is going around the garden and food-centric blogosphere. A single family has trademarked a term that has been in use (print media) since the 80s, and is now sending out cease-and-desist letters for any blogger who dares use it to describe their lifestyle of growing their own food and living off their urban land.

The controversy is well-documented here.

Basically, I’m just angling for my own cease-and-desist letter from these idiots. It’s an abuse of trademark law, and perhaps the more people who flaunt it, the less likely they’ll be able to continue this stupidity.

urban-homestead

February 16th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

I’m rather excited about this, and hoping I get a chance to go. I’ve been wanting a few chickens for some time now… at least a couple years.

http://fccooptour.blogspot.com/

I could use the inspiration in coop design. Currently I’m stuck on how to build an effective coop as inexpensively as possible. I would like to use reclaimed materials For instance, my friend Grog has a bunch of leftover tin roof material he’d give me. In addition, I have raw Eastern Red Cedar posts to add into the finished product… to give it a little more rustic (read: funky) look. Maybe in a few years I could be part of the Funky Chicken Coop tour.

The picture is was taken during a Travis County Master Gardener Association garden tour from a couple years ago. I don’t remember the name of the garden’s owner, but it was in Crestview and the owner also ran a landscaping business. The yard was very impressive. I’ve been borrowing ideas from there ever since.

UPDATE:
The coop in the photo is from Cheryl Goveia’s garden. Her blog is at Conscious (Un)gardening.

austin, chicken coop, tour

February 15th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

On Valentines Day I ordered a bunch of seed from Botanical Interests, and am attempting to be patient while it ships. I should probably have done this a couple weeks ago so I could start transplants, but perhaps better-late-than-never.

I ordered tomatoes and peppers, specifically:

• 1 ea. Pepper Chile Jalapeno Organic Seed $2.39
• 1 ea. Tomato Bush Celebrity Seed $3.49
• 1 ea. Tomato Bush Italian Roma Organic Seed $1.79
• 1 ea. Tomato Cherry Gardeners Delight Seed $1.69

Seems like a bargain for so much potential food and life.

Their stance on organic, non-genetically-modified seed appeals to me (especially since Monsanto appears poised to take over the world’s seed supply otherwise), and their status as a family-owned business is the icing on the cake.  Support the underdog!

I’m hoping the cats, my wife, and Lukas don’t object to me setting up a few seed trays in our spare bedroom (a.k.a. Lukas’ future bedroom). I will use a clip lamp on a timer and a full-spectrum bulb to help ‘em start. I saw someone somewhere had used paper cups to hold small amounts of soil, so perhaps I’ll try that. I already have a nice wooden rack that will hold a plastic nursery flat.

So… just waiting for the postman!

botanical interests, monsanto, peppers, seeds, tomatoes

February 14th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

I’m tempted just to post a few pictures of my son’s adventures in the yard this weekend and let them say it all. But I probably wouldn’t convey what kind of proud daddy I am after watching him scoot around and explore. Saturday we let him crawl around, and he opted to scoot right into a freshly-dug bed and play in the dirt there. He seemed particularly interest in using daddy’s shovel even though it is at least three times his size. We had a moment of cautious anxiety as he teetered over the edge of the dry creek feature, but he caught himself and decided to return back over the stone bridge.

Sunday, I took him out in the front yard just to sit in the sun. He was loving it so much – the scrunchy Fall leaves seemed to be his favorite – that he cried when I picked him up to take him in. So I took him around back and plopped him down again. He happily crawled around, played with some sticks, chewed on some dried salvia twigs, tossed some pebbles around… and cried again when I picked him up. It had gotten chilly, so I persisted and took him in. He was not happy about that. I let him bring a piece of a grass – a wispy frond of little bluestem – which made him a little happier. He continued to carry that around for 45 minutes inside.

He might have been a muddy mess after his first big adventure, but his enthusiasm made me wonder if the outdoors is a thing in your blood, a genetic predisposition. At the very least, I was hoping I was seeing the beginning of much father-son collaboration in the garden. It made me very happy.

dirt, garden, lukas, play, son, yard

February 10th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

My dad thought I was crazy paying $10 for onion starts from Dixondale Farms when the same starts can be found at the big box stores for $2-3.

Well, had they been $20 or $30, I might have given pause. But as it is, $10 still seems like a bargain to me. Especially since they’ve been posting instructional videos about the life and times of an onion plant. I think my extra few dollars are paying for a sort of onion owner’s guide – not something I’d get at Home Depot.

This video explains all the specific fertilizer needs of an onion plant, what the plant uses some of the nutrients for, and at what stage. Particularly interesting to me, as a plant nerd, are the benefits of potassium in relation to protecting the plant from freezes, and how they themselves discovered them.

If you’re not a fan of them, their extremely helpful and thorough information – as well as their folksy, personable nature – might win you over… if you’re considering growing onions. They’re available on Facebook, too, where they post regular crop updates, helpful tips, etc.

dixondale farms, fertilizer, onions, potassium

February 9th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

This “WX event” roared in much faster than it was forecast, and the temperature dropped far quicker than I expected. I had hoped to cover the plants after the rain and before the cold set in. Unfortunately, that window of opportunity appeared to be about 15 minutes long and occurred at about 7 am. – not noon like I’d planned on.

With some horror, I found ice on everything just after 7:15 this morning. So, in biting cold wind – my face still feels chapped – I went into overdrive and covered all four raised beds with cloth and a layer of plastic. Under all that are the mini christmas lights I’m crediting for helping all of my plants survive the last hard freeze. Managed to finish my rapid deployment in 30 minutes. And I didn’t bust my ass on the back deck which was already iced over.

This routine is getting old. Where’s the Austin I know and love? I suppose I’m glad the potatoes haven’t sprouted. Though, I don’t blame them for hanging back. It’s a cold, cruel world out there.

cold, freeze, ice, protection, vegetables, weather

February 6th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

So, the first wave of really cold weather is over, and this weekend has been completely glorious… the sort of Winter weather most of us signed up for with our Austin citizenship cards.

Saturday for me was the big unveiling of all the heavily-covered food crops. Lots of towels, bedsheets, blankets, tarps, drop cloths and a roll of carpet to pull back, air out and put away. Not to mention a number of extension cords, strings of lights, and jugs of water.

The happy news is that nothing at all got nipped by the cold other than a few onion leaf tips that refused to stay inside the raised bed walls. I even noticed that a few plants thrived under the blankets, most notably the strawberries. They seem eager to get some growing done, as several of the plants developed new growth in the three days they were under wraps.

I spent the latter half of Saturday planting bricks in the ground, completing the walkway entrance to my new garden areas. Part of the equation was to knock out more grass and extend a native plant bed.

The brick is all reclaimed, most of it begged-for and received on Freecycle. The bricks are held together (or perhaps locked in place is a more apt description) with pea gravel brushed into all the cracks and crevices. All of the stone and brick walkways I’ve made have been put together this way. Some of the installations are 4-5 years old, and seem as durable as mortared brick.

Now, let’s hope all that newly-planted brick doesn’t freeze this coming week when the temps drop into the 20s again.

February 2nd, 2011 by Marc Opperman

It’s what doctors say to people or the loved ones of people who have some crazy illness no one can pronounce, and the nutso experimental, last-resort drug appears to be doing something positive. But that’s what I am about the life-support my tender little veggies are on right now: cautiously optimistic.

Having abandoned large jugs of hot water as a method of keeping my plants alive during this prolonged deep-freeze (what a pilot friend of mine would call a “Wx Event”), I turned instead to something that didn’t require back-breaking labor AND promised better results: Christmas lights. Shiny, sparkly miniature incandescent strings of Christmas lights. Pure genius stolen from another website, it took the threat of losing all my vegetables to unpack our Christmas lights for the first time in several years. (Far be it from me to actually use them for Christmas.)

I only had three outdoor extension cords, so I chose the three beds that had vegetables that were the furthest along: onions, carrots, lettuce and radish sprouts… all got two strings of lights and at least two layers of blanket. When I checked late today, cautiously peeking under the blankets, the onions, carrots and radish sprouts were all happy as could be. A fourth bed, one with seeds planted a little over a week ago, merely got blankets and a hearty “good luck!” from me. And when I checked that bed, the soil was frozen near the edges, whereas the soil in the “lit” beds was not only not frozen, it was slightly warm and still damp.

Just for fun, too, I built a roaring fire in the fire pit yesterday evening, as well as today when work was called off (no power). The idea was to heat the rocks and dirt nearby and add a few degrees of radiated heat to the surroundings, as well as warm some of the water in the jugs I was placing near the unlit bed. Mostly I think it warmed only me and the railroad iron I tossed in for fun:

The warm fire gave me a bit of a basecamp to return to after venturing forth to photograph frostweed. This extended cold has produced some of the best frostweed “blooms” I’ve ever seen. As best I can tell, they keep extruding sap as long as it’s cold enough, making ever grander forms that seem to keep growing. I did measure one, so I’ll compare tomorrow to see if it has.

UPDATE:
Frostweed definitely “grows” the longer it remains cold:
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christmas lights, freeze, frostweed, verbesina virginica, weather, winter

February 1st, 2011 by Marc Opperman

ZZ Top wasn’t singing about compost? Hmm. Well, having schlepped a half-cubic yard home from the Natural Gardener, and then wheel-barrowing it all over the yard, I’m sure I subconsciously re-worded the song to honor all the new turkey compost. Mainly I wanted it to work into the new potato bed, hopefully to lower the alkalinity of our native Central Texas soil. (Potatoes dislike high alkalinity. Gives them something called scab, apparently.) If the 18-degree freeze doesn’t somehow do them in (they haven’t sprouted – just planted them Sunday), the seed potatoes ought to be ready for some mounding in 3-4 weeks.

I had lots of leftover compost, so I top-dressed several beds. Hopefully this will result in better-tasting tomatoes and peppers come time for their season. (My tomatoes last year were disappointingly bland. Sort of like store-bought tomatoes.)

I’ve been reworking my entire back yard in an effort to bring more vegetable beds online. Part of this has meant refiguring how to access some of the areas that haven’t had grass in them for a long time. I want to keep removing grass, and I have a lot of various brick around. I’ve been moving rock around, and have begun creating another broken-brick path to keep some of the garden area from being a mud- and/or weed-pit. I like the progress so far:

brick, compost, natural gardener, potatoes, rock, turkey compost