Filed under: Austin, food, Garden, go green, lifestyle, outdoors | Tags: austin gardening, better boy tomatoes, bhn-444 tomatoes, gardening in central texas, growing corn, growing tomatoes, linkedin, square foot gardening, vegetable garden pictures, vegetable gardens
It’s been well over a month since my SXSW post. It would be natural of you to assume that my disappearance was because I was spending my time recovering from that experience – resting, sobering up, reading, running… but alas, that hasn’t been the case.
This weekend was the first in two solid months that hasn’t seen me traveling or hosting out-of-town guests. Two months! But I’m not complaining. It has been an absolutely wonderful two months and I wouldn’t change a second of it if I had the chance. I’ve had family visit, have traveled to Houston & San Antonio & Galveston & Lake Texana. I’ve been putting in some overtime at the office, have seen some awesome shows (White Rabbits!), and have been plotting to train for the Philadelphia Marathon & a duathlon sometime before the marathon. It’s been an amazingly busy, productive & rewarding spring. Life couldn’t be better.
While my busy schedule kept me in constant motion & with a perma-grin on my face, my garden and house became the victims of unintentional neglect. I spent some time caring for both of them, but not nearly enough. This weekend I finally had the opportunity to reacquaint myself with what’s been happening in the garden, as well as get some new things going in it. The biggest accomplishment was setting up drip irrigation in both beds.
Below are some photos of the garden as of today – more photos of this year’s garden progress are on my flickr page if you’d like to check them out!
The Better Boy tomato plant has set the biggest fruit thus far... yum!
The BHN-444's are most productive, but only cherry-tomato sized... not sure what's up with that. Any thoughts from my fellow gardeners?
First major pest problem of 2010: potato beetles destroying my potato foliage. 
The tops on most of my onions have already fallen, but several giants are still growing & now flowering! Can't wait to see the bulbs waiting for me under these huge greens!
zuchinnis! I hope these don't turn out to be a disappointment like last year's crop...
Tassles starting to emerge on the corn, woohoo!!
The payoff: fresh onions, potatoes & garlic. Nom nom nom!
Filed under: Austin, food, Garden, go green, outdoors | Tags: broccoli plants, front yard garden, growing from seed, growing lettuce, growing spinach, growing vegetables, linkedin, oregano, spring garden, square foot gardening, texas vegetable gardening, volunteer lettuce
Yup. Just like my him – minus the ponytail, of course. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night keeps my garden from making vegetables. Our Texas winter has been just about as predictable as the stock market for the last two months. One day it’s 75 degrees and sunny, then two days later it’s 32 degrees and snowing. My plants aren’t sure what to do with themselves, but they continue to trudge forward in spite of it all. Seeds have been slow to sprout & transplants have been hesitant to grow. The only thing showing zero regard for the erratic conditions are my strawberries, who seem convinced that now is the perfect time to set fruit.
crazy strawberries.
I keep catching myself thinking that this harsh winter has set me back in the garden but in reality I’m right on track (if not a little ahead). At this time last year I had 2 types of lettuce, 2 types of onions, and edamame planted. I didn’t even have an herb garden yet! This year by the 1st of March the garden will boast 3 varieties of lettuce, 2 varieties of onions, spinach, arugula, 2 varieties of radishes, beets, strawberries, carrot seedlings, potato starts and broccoli. Not to mention the cilantro, mint julep, catnip, camomile, oregano, rosemary and sage in the herb bed. In 2 weeks I’ll start planting the March crops: summer squash, corn and tomatoes. I can’t WAIT to plant the corn. It is going to look absolutely ridiculous in it’s tiny raised planter. I fully intend to relive my rural Lancaster County childhood by running back and forth through the single row, 8 stalks long. It’s going to be great.
lots of goodies growing!
Milo helps keep the weeds down between trips to the catnip.
Though the garden will soon be bursting with productivity, there are a few problem areas still needing to be solved. For one, I’ve got a cat problem. For the sake of being positive, let’s call it a challenge. My challenge has two parts. One: my lovely neighbor kitty Maybe, thinks that I built the raised beds for her to use as a litter box. I had this problem last year too but it wasn’t such a big deal because my direct seeding in the garden was limited to edamame. This year is a different story. So far she’s made ditches through my beets, piled mountains on my radishes, and hollowed out pits in my carrots. I can’t really blame her because she had no idea that seeds had been planted there and were germinating under her paws. And I have to admit that the beds do look like glorious feline restroom facilities. I’m hoping that she’ll find other places to bury her treasure once larger plants prohibit her from breaking & entering (& pooping). But for now I have to keep my eyes out. My second cat challenge is with the catnip. It took several months but the kitties have finally figured out that they can climb into the herb bed and roll/graze/burrow in the catnip whenever they like. I’ve come to expect the catnip to look brush-burnt. Cat hair covers it like a wispy mold-like disease. Kitties roam the neighborhood looking dazed and haunted. I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do about this challenge. I’ve considered moving the catnip to grow light indoors and charging by the leaf. If anyone has any better ideas, let me know.
My second garden problem is the soil loss out of bed 2. I followed the bed-building method we were taught in the Citizen Gardener class last fall, but I did not follow it as closely as I ought to have. Because I didn’t put mulch down around the planter, soil is slipping through the cracks. Each week I inspect the bed the soil level seems to have sunk another 1/8″ inch. The whole thing looks a bit messy. The messy part doesn’t bother me much, but it would be nice to keep the weeds down around the bed. This is an easily solve-able problem and the next time I head out to the Natural Gardener I’m going to pick up some of their hardwood mulch.
Beyond those small challenges I’m really pleased with how the garden is coming along in 2010. I’ll be even more pleased once I can begin harvesting. The lettuce is getting close, and I’ve been enjoying the herbs all winter long. I’m tickled pink by the volunteer plants I discover each week. The volunteer lettuce is absolutely out of control. This week I saw that my mint julep has fully escaped the herb bed and is coming up randomly throughout the front yard. I imagine it won’t be long before my entire front lawn is edible landscape!
Filed under: Austin, food, Garden, go green, outdoors | Tags: first frost, gardening in texas, linkedin, square foot gardening, vegetable gardening, what vegetables freeze
Two months ago I dropped my camera face-first into the soupy mix of treated sewage at this year’s wet and wild Austin City Limits music festival. While I was without the graphic support of images, I took a short break from the blogosphere and rejoined the land of the living. I spent a couple of weeks working in our Dallas office. I spent time with my friends. I ran the Race for the Cure. I saw some great bands. I discovered new artists on the East Austin Studio Tour. I spent a few Saturdays at Johnson’s Backyard Garden and celebrated Citizen Gardener graduation at the Barr Mansion. I reunited with a friend who returned from Afghanistan in August, and discovered an exciting new relationship. And all the while, my garden kept on growing.
first carrot. suspicious.
Since the last update in September I’ve added radishes, cilantro and sage to my garden. My baby carrots exploded into tall ferny greens, and my heirloom tomatoes had finally started to push out golf-ball sized babies. My green peppers were still producing wildly, and my fresh basil continued to be the backbone of the tomato/feta/basil salads I’ve grown to love so much. Things were looking pretty darn good. I was really excited about my heirloom tomatoes. Mother Nature, however, had other plans.
frosty.
On Friday afternoon little tiny snowflakes ran panicked in the air, clearly confused as to why they’d been sent to this part of the world. Friday night brought temperatures in the 20′s. Standing water froze solid. But water in other areas froze solid too – water in plant leaves and vegetables, particularly. In spite of my pathetic attempt at blanketing my plants with an old shower curtain, my tomatoes, peppers & basil plants didn’t survive our first hard freeze. The good news is that my carrots & radishes are going to flourish now that they’re out of the shadows of these larger plants. I’m also excited to begin clearing out these less hardy plants so that I can begin implementing my plans for the garden next year. With the experience gleaned from this first year, plus the expanded space from the new raised bed that I built last week, 2010 should be a year with a little better productivity, a few less mistakes, and perhaps a few more experiments!
Here are more pictures of the destruction. Next year I will harvest before this happens – so much food wasted!
droopy peppers & tomatoes.
compost fodder.
more compost fodder.
all cleaned up & almost ready for 2010.
Filed under: 30th Birthday Party Benefit for SFC, Austin, events, food, friends, go green, lifestyle, outdoors | Tags: 30th birthday party, boggy creek farm, break it down austin, farmhouse delivery, greenling.com, independence brewery, linkedin, miscellaneous rentals, non-profit benefit party, paula's texas spirits, sustainable food center, sustainable food center benefit party, the cake lab, tito's vodka, u-clique studio, waterstone aesthetics, wheatsville co-op
Let me tell you all – it has been one crazy month. And I’m not just saying that because I’ve turned thirty and the world is suddenly flying by me at a rapid pace. I’m saying that because just one month ago I made the decision to put together a benefit for Sustainable Food Center and I only gave myself three weeks to do it. While it was admittedly a stressful & challenging three weeks, I don’t regret the decision for one minute. I had the help of some fantastic friends (Sara P., Andy, Melissa, Hollie, Sarah Cash – you are awesome). And I had the support of an entire community of people who are genuinely interested in our food future. I want to use this post to look back and appreciate all that came together in such a short time and provide some insight into some of the phenomenal things that came from it.
First of all, we raised $374 for Sustainable Food Center - a fantastic little chunk of change for a non-profit! Susan Leibrock, Community Relations Director from SFC, shared with me that just 5% of SFC’s annual budget comes from private donations. Events like this soiree are critical to helping SFC generate funds through private donations.
The second amazing and unexpected thing I experienced while organizing this event was the involvement of people & the community. I have never seen such a tremendous outpouring of support - it was downright overwhelming. I sent cold-call emails to folks I’d never met before and they were happy, if not eager to support the cause. Paula from Paula’s Texas Spirits was the perfect example. I emailed her to see if they would be willing to donate a small item to give away as a raffle prize. Paula responded with this:
”Absolutely. We have a gift pack with half-bottles of both productsthat we can give you. What about drinks during the party? As you
know, we can mix a mean drink.”
How do you respond to that? Words could not express my delight over receiving this email. Of COURSE I wanted Paula to come mix some drinks! And that’s exactly what she did – showed up on Sunday with a cooler in hand & mixes of some of the best cocktails our guests had ever tasted.
Through similar cold-call emails I received gift certifcates from Greenling.com, Wheatsville Co-op, Farmhouse Delivery, Boggy Creek Farm & Waterstone Aesthetics. Tito’s vodka & Paula’s Texas Spirits chipped in gift baskets to raffle off. Trey from U-Clique Studio agreed to come out and set up his hilariously fun photo-booth for the day (and was kind enough to put the “NSFW” photos in a secret, seperate account for us) and Jeff from Break it Down Austin brought out a compost bin. Throughout the day we loaded it up with corn-starch plates, compostable tableware & kitchen scraps. Amy from Independence Brewery chipped in a keg of delicious Austin Amber, and even Miscellaneous Rentals got in the action by giving us a sweet discount on rental tables & chairs for the day. One of the crowd favorites was by Diana of The Cake Lab, who brought by her famous carrot cake cupcakes that gave us visions of sweets all through the next week.
That all of these folks contributed at all was such a gift – but that they agreed to contribute on such short notice was a blessing.
And then, of course, there were my friends & co-workers who came out to show their support. Whether you were there to party, to support SFC, or just to say happy birthday & support my cause: thank you for coming out and contributing to this event with your time, $ and cooking skills. This event could not and would not have happened without you – I am so grateful!
For more pictures from the event, check out Melissa Robledo’s photographs: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cooperella/sets/72157622437122066/
And our photobooth pictures:
http://ucliquestudio.blogspot.com/2009/09/mindys-birthday-bash-and-benefit-mixer.html
Filed under: Austin, food, Garden, go green, Heath + Beauty, outdoors | Tags: austin gardening, citizen gardener classes, dick pierce, john jeavons, linkedin, mel bartholemew, raised bed gardens, square foot gardening, texas gardening, vegetable gardens
Temperatures are finally dipping below the 80′s during the evenings here in Central Texas. In the last month we’ve had a few rainstorms blow through, cooling the region & providing .25″ of desperately needed rainfall. With the cooler temps and shorter days, the garden is beginning to blossom again after a few months of heat-induced hibernation.
Last week I wrapped up 10 hours of Citizen Gardener classes at Austin Botanical Council. Under the instruction of permaculture expert Dick Pierce, our class built two raised bed gardens & one amazing compost pile (you can check out the photos here and here). While I have previous training with John Jeavon’s double-dig garden method, this was the first time I’d actually seen Mel Bartholemew’s square foot gardening method put into practice with my own eyes. It made me realize what things I’d done wrong with my own raised bed garden (mainly that I have no cardboard base layer to kill Bermuda grass and didn’t employ food scraps + wetted cardboard base to encourage microorganisms.) I also learned that my compost pile is terribly, terribly wrong. Fixing it is a daunting task that may need to wait till I make friends with someone who owns a pick-up truck.
Since taking the class I’ve started to make plans for a 2nd raised bed garden (built the proper way) & can’t wait to start laying out a design. This time I am going to put more consideration into the placement & timing of my plants, and I will need to look into soaker hoses instead of a sprinkler system. Before any of that happens, though, I’ll need to find a way to dispose of the tree stump that lives in the middle of my next garden. The termite population just isn’t doing it’s job fast enough.
Before I get too ahead of myself with the planning, here’s a brief pictoral of how the garden’s looking these days. It’s also fun at this point to go back and look at photos of the garden’s progress since it’s inception in January – we’ve come a long way, baby!
The pepper seedlings from the spring are finally producing! These are transplants that were grown from seed I collected from bell peppers bought at Boggy Creek. The peppers these plants are producing are SO much larger than my pepper plant that I received from Green Corn Project. Their leaves are longer, darker & more attractive as well. I’m planning to once again seed save off of this variety for planting again next year.
Broccoli & cabbage transplants are barely hanging on – these are just two seedlings that remain from our repotting day at Green Corn Project several weeks ago. With any luck they’ll survive the next few weeks & find themselves transplanted into the garden soon!
Sweet potatoes that I harvested last week – 8 potatoes under one slip planted in the spring! I can’t wait to unearth the others to see how many more are under there…
The first two squash plants of the fall are beginning to produce. Happily, the seeds that germinated were not the same types – I have both a yellow squash & zuchinni squash growing. Two more baby squash plants just broke ground a few days ago, and will continue to provide squash after these two older plants stop producing.
The baby carrot tops just keep getting taller! These seemed to germinate really well. This weekend I also planted radishes in this bed, and added cilantro seeds to my herb garden. Radishes only take 22 days to mature – in just 3 weeks I will be eating radishes I planted yesterday. Amazing!
Now here’s an experiment I’m REALLY proud of: I’m growing red yuccas! A few weeks ago I harvested the seed pods of the red yucca that grows in the planter box above my mailbox. I never thought my experiment would actually work, till I noticed these sprouts popping up out of the seed tray yesterday. With any luck, I can keep them growing & start producing my own landscape plants. How cool is that?!
Red yucca momma. I wonder how long it takes them to get this big??? Guess there’s only one way to find out… 
