January 8th, 2012 by Marc Opperman

We’re supposed to get a new deluge of rain tonight, but I’m a little reticent to revel in that. I could jinx our chances.

That said, I got all the leaves mulched into fine particles suitable for direct mulching or the compost bins. I made perhaps 6 wheelbarrows of fine leaf litter, some of which went around the raspberry and blackberry canes. Much of the rest went into the compost bins, where I turned it in to be amongst the happy microorganisms that are already burning overtime to create some rich soil.

I finished my rain barrels last week in time for anything that might happen tonight. I’m really happy with the setup. Two barrels, a small length of garden hose between them, and some swank brass spigots. They are happily leak-proof after the application of both silicon and construction adhesive. The best part is that the pair of them cost about $70. And that includes the concrete block-and-brick bases.

I have radishes, lettuce, onions and carrots in progress right now, as well as some baby kale, cauliflower and broccoli. I probably could have planted these earlier, but they seem happy for now, and the radishes, for one, appear nearly ready for harvest.

November 23rd, 2011 by Marc Opperman

I have mentioned more than once I want to incorporate chickens into my garden work. I’ve collected materials for the coop construction – cedar posts, scrap tin roof material, etc. – in an effort to use as little new material as possible. After all, one aim in doing this is to be as resourceful as possible in reusing materials. And to keep costs down.
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August 20th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

Since Austin is hurtling toward heavier restrictions on outdoor watering (Sept. 6 if our rainfall doesn’t improve), I’m considering a rather drastic experiment – no supplemental watering of anything in my yard.

This more or less means no Fall vegetable garden. But it will be an opportunity to see how tough my various natives are. And if I lose some St. Augustine grass in the deal, so much the better.

I was rather spooked by an article in the New York Times yesterday on the possibility that Texas could see another decade-long drought – it has seen droughts lasting as long as 50 years in the past – and that what we’ve endured so far this Summer could appear mild by comparison.

I’m trying to convince my family to accelerate our plans to move to Portland. So far no success.

drought, natives, water

May 7th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

It may be a little late for such things, so we’ll see. Planted okra and jalapeño transplants this week, as well as bush and vine green bean seeds, sweet corn seed, and summer squash seed. The bush beans are already past seed-leaf stage, while the other stuff seems to be biding its time. In a year with actual rainfall, the lateness might not matter much. But I think the drought may impact my success. We’ll see.

However, to help with all this, I am still letting tap water outgas its chlorine, and I have used parts of a bag of Revitalizer Compost from The Natural Gardener to make two 5-gallon buckets of compost tea. I was inspired to do this because I had potted a passionvine cutting directly in Revitalizer. Every time I went to water the sprout, the water in the saucer below was a rich dark-chocolate color. I could hear my other plants begging for it.

Today I need to strain that into storage jugs so it doesn’t become a haven for the blood squad. Though, a b. thuringiensis dunk would probably help that, and not hurt the compost tea.

A limitation I ran into this year is not having enough open planting space to plant certain crops on time. Basically, I’d love to have the corn where the potatoes are, but the potatoes have yet to vacate the space (but they are seeming close to digging time). The strawberry bed would make a good spot for squash, but they still seem happy…even if my total berry output this year could be measured in the single ounces column.

Notable Arrivals
I’m reading reports of ripe tomatoes all over the Central Texas blogosphere, and my garden is not one to be out-performed in this regard. So far I’ve picked several handfuls of a small cherry tomato (don’t know the variety, but they are about the size of small marbles and VERY sweet.) I’ve also plucked the first two Viva Italias. Basically very much like Romas, these are a paste tomato that should be good for sauces and cooking. Verdict on taste is not in (I had a lot of tasteless tomatoes last year), but they are gorgeous, unblemished and heavy.

Also, we had one blackberry. Jenna reported it to be delicious. She got it since she requested the blackberry brambles back in January. We may get one more ripe berry. This is only notable since one shouldn’t actually get berries on first-year brambles. Berries develop on last-year’s canes.

What Else?
I was supposed to be going to the Wildflower Center’s Gardens on Tour today, but the boy is still sick, and would probably be pretty fussy. Momma and boy are sleeping right now, so plans are up in the air.

beans, compost tea, corn, okra, squash, vegetables

April 25th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

Great ideas for a raised bed that costs $10 in wood. Cedar, to be precise.

Not sure I’d bother with the glue, though.

Raised cedar beds

April 19th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

I robbed a couple potatoes from my still-growing forest of potato plants. I hand-dug below a red pontiac plant and a kennebec plant, and came up with a pair of pretty tubers. Both of these would be considered “new potatoes” since they are the earliest from the crop.

The small one was from a smaller plant I pulled a few days ago. The larger red pontiac’s skin is torn from me trying to wrest it from the ground. Maybe I need to cut my fingernails.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the red pontiac had a couple sizable scab lesions.

Potato scab is lesions on potatoes caused by the presence of a bacterium in the soil, Streptomyces scabies. It causes various forms of lesion, either pits or raised welts, seemingly dependent on the growing conditions and variety of potato. It isn’t harmful to humans, but it does render the otherwise pretty potato unsightly. In extreme cases the lesions take on a corky, pithy form that is unappealing to eat.

I knew my soil conditions might be right for scab when I planted the seed potato slips, but I had done some work to try and condition my alkaline soil to help ward off the pathogen. The bacteria doesn’t do well in soils with a pH below 5.2, so boosting the acidity of the soil with compost is something growers often do. (Compost can raise soil acidity). However, I’ve seen warnings that using manure-based composts might aggravate the condition. I used Natural Gardener turkey compost to help acidify my soil some.

For next year I may have my soil tested professionally and amend it accordingly with something more like coffee grounds or another acidic agent that doesn’t contain manure compost. Another factor seems to be to maintain consistently-high soil moisture. This allows other non-harmful soil bacteria to out-compete s. scabies.

Whatever the case, my two potatoes will be breakfast tomorrow. The scab on the red pontiac is easily cut off. I plan to enjoy thinly-sliced potatoes sautéed in olive oil with minced garlic and maybe a bit of chopped garden onion.

bacteria, kennebec, pathogen, potaotes, red pontiac, scab, Streptomyces scabies

April 10th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

I meant to post sooner this past week, but life shot me a sneaky-fast curveball and I lost my job Tuesday. Does this work for me financially? In the short-term, not exactly. Too much uncertainty. Is it the best thing for me in a thousand other ways? Totally.

But maybe I’ll talk about that in another post.

I took a lot of photos on one of my new days “off” because it was overcast and the light was diffuse. They document my garden’s progress pretty well. I had another ulterior motive for these photos, but… again. Another post.

Onions:
Nearly all of my onions are out of the ground, only a handful are still in place. The stalks haven’t fallen, and the bulbs aren’t very big, so I’m optimistic they’ll still mature a little more.

Strawberries:
I get 1 – 2 berries a day, and they are delicious. But the quantity isn’t very useful. I had five plants this year, two of which aren’t producing because the pill bugs attacked them too strongly in the beginning, and they are now just recovering. Next year I want to plant about 15 plants and dedicate one whole bed to berries.

Broccoli:
So far, one head out of two plants. Both plants were the same size, but only one produced anything. I’m not sure why. I am trying to figure this out, and whether I should whack the non-productive plant or wait. The good head went in an all-garden stir-fry tonight (along with onions, green beans, carrots and snow peas), and it was all delicious.

Lettuce:
Next year, less lettuce. More butterhead. The red sails… gets too flobby in the heat, and develops nasty spines? hairs? along the leaf axis. But it sure is pretty.

Potatoes:
The potato patch looks amazing. I catch a leaf-footed bug occasionally out there, but otherwise the plants look lush and healthy. I certainly hope there are lush things happening below ground, too.

Flowering things:
Gulf Coast penstemon

Texas primrose

Other Things:
My friend Phoebe gave me some of the pink evening primrose I have been seeking. I’m hoping I didn’t wait too long to get it in the ground, and that it snaps back. Otherwise, it looks pretty pitiful. Hmm.

Been seeing Texas spiny lizards multiple times a day in the yard. I love these critters. I’m not sure why. I have yet to get a good current photo of one, but here’s me harassing one somewhere I shouldn’t have been harassing one. (Though I will assure any of my City of Austin Wildland friends who might be reading, this was NOT one of their lizards!)

April 5th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

I took a weekend off from garden projects and maintenance, and went camping at Pedernales Falls State Park instead. The weather was perfect, and the river cold. There were lots of wildflowers to marvel at, and I have a few pictures of some I have yet to identify for myself. It’s Tuesday, and my legs are still sore from backpacking with a 70 pound pack, and my chigger bites still itch. But I enjoyed myself anyway.

A few pictures from Pedernales:

Sunset:

As I mentioned, no real gardening this past weekend to speak of. But I have a morning ritual, and it tends to involve making coffee and eating breakfast until it gets light, and then wandering out in the garden for ten minutes before getting ready for work. I check for bug or critter damage, pull a lot of weeds, and harvest any produce that’s ready. In the past few days that has meant strawberries!

Today or tomorrow, too, I’ll be harvesting a head of broccoli. There’s tons of lettuce ready, and onions falling over daily.

Otherwise, I’m pretty much just waiting for things to get ripe, finish growing, or whatever it is they do.

Snow peas:

Potatoes are flowering, so presumably they are growing some tubers, too. Tomatoes vines are all setting fruit, most of my cantaloupe are past the seed-leaf stage and developing a few real leaves. Everything is doing what it’s supposed to be doing, just slowly. Well, “slowly” for a human.

This is the part of gardening that teaches me patience.

March 29th, 2011 by Marc Opperman

Well, things seem to be humming along outside. I have strawberries, blackberries, Viva Italia tomatoes and broccoli all setting fruit (though, broccoli isn’t technically a fruit… a head or a crown instead.) The blackberries are unexpected because I was under the impression the fruit would develop on this year’s growth but next year. In other words, on old growth. The canes I planted this year, however must be considered last year’s growth, so maybe that explains it.

Sunday I took the boy outside. He loves it. He’s a brave little explorer, and seemingly pretty tough, too. It’s not uncommon to find him bouldering over the various landscape features, carefully picking his way with huff-puffs of determination, and gingerly brushing the plants aside or avoiding them. So far he has not ripped any up. Most of the time, he dabbles in whatever dirt he can find, or waves sticks around. Sometimes he wanders, but he hasn’t gone too far yet. It helps that the back yard is enclosed.

While he explored, I modified my sprinkler system. I replaced one of the high-volume reciprocating heads with a drip irrigation tap and half-inch tubing. I also ran several eighth-inch tubes and spray heads to cover much of the former area of the higher-pressure head. One immediate and obvious benefit is decreased water consumption, and better-targeted watering. However, the nicest benefit so far is that the “chik-chik-chik” sound of the old head has been replaced by a gentle hiss. Watering just got a lot quieter.

My cutworm problems are in remission, and the green worms that were eating the lettuce are completely gone, too. Perhaps this was the application of Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki last week, the cooler weather, or the worms are just in natural decline having passed whatever their season is. This seems like a nice reprieve, though I know other pests will soon be along to fill the voids.

In non-food news…
I met with a group of Austin garden bloggers for the first time this weekend at the home and gardens of one of the group’s members. It was wonderful to meet all these dedicated gardeners and plant aficionados. Part of the fun was a plant swap. And although I was remiss in taking anything, I brought back several nice natives that I installed around my yard. Among the haul: Mexican buckeye, Hill Country penstemon, Gregg’s mistflower, and a tradescantia gigantea. I’m excited about all these plants, and hope they do well.

March 22nd, 2011 by Marc Opperman

Pretty sure Michael Stipe of REM mumbled all of the words to his song, so I have no real idea why HE would be gardening at night. But for me, tonight, it was to go find the bastard cutworm(s) doing in my potatoes. I’ve now had two plants in 2 contiguous nights all but decimated. I only have 15 plants, so they just can’t have any more of them!

Armed with Petzl LED headlamp and trowel, I carefully dug around the cut stems of the plants. Around the most badly-damaged plant, I found nothing. But shortly after starting to search, a stem on a plant next to it fell! I had the bastard. Sure enough, curled in the soil near the scene of its misdeeds, was the worm. Possibly a black cutworm based on how it looked and its habit of eating the stem below the surface. I don’t really know how to tell, though. Nor do I even know if it matters much… they all can devastate young plants, and controlling any of them seems to require the same methods.

I spread diatomaceous earth around most of the plants afterward (you can see it in the photo) but I’m not convinced that will affect the usually-subterranian cutworms. I’ve read that collars of tinfoil or paper tubes can help, but my potato plants might be too large for that already. So far, searching for them near the affected plant just below the soil surface has been most effective. Manually picking them off by hand and applying traumatic compression is no longer a thing to make me squeamish. Just glad to get even.

Just by chance as I was going back inside, I looked for any bolted onions I might have missed. Sure enough, a similar looking worm was at the top of an onion leaf. Because it was climbing, it makes me doubt what kind of cutworms I’m dealing with, whether there are more than one type at play here, or whether this was something different altogether. I have been seeing caterpillar damage of some sort on onions in the side bed, but that could be anything, perhaps even the same green worms that are eating my lettuce. Or who knows… onions probably have their own caterpillar pest, while the lettuce worms are perhaps unique to it. The whole freaking insect world seems to be coming for my garden all at once.

But I’m going to defend it!

cutworm, insect, integrated pest management, IPM, potato