Filed under: Austin, Garden, Heath + Beauty, food, go green, 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… 
Filed under: Austin, Garden, Heath + Beauty, food, go green, outdoors | Tags: arkie's grill, austin gardening, fall vegetable plantings, square foot gardens, summer vegetable garden, texas vegetable gardens, the natural gardener
It’s July 29th and I’m enjoying my first semi-official “snow day” in Texas.
The Pennsylvania snow days that I’m accustomed to usually come in the winter, and they’re usually accompanied by snow. In Texas, there is no snow and there is no winter. Today’s “snow day” was courtesy of an electrical transformer that blew up outside of our office this morning and wiped out all power to the office complex, with no hopes of repair for at least 8 or 9 hours.
In celebration of my snow day, I met Melissa for breakfast at Arkie’s Grill on East Cesar Chavez (which is only open M-F). Not the topic of this post, but if you’re reading this in Austin: GO TO ARKIE’S! And go for breakfast! It’s like stepping into a movie filmed in the early 1970’s. And the pancakes were the best I’ve had anywhere – even better than Kerbey Lane. Bold statement, I know. Just trust me on this one.
Following breakfast I drove out to the Natural Gardener with a shopping list of supplies. After a month of traveling & ignoring important things like home, health, sanity, etc, I’d decided it was time to renovate a bunch of things in my life. The garden was the first natural step.
I came home with mulch, a Purple Cherokee heirloom tomato, an Arkansas Traveler heirloom tomato, a blackfoot daisy, a rosemary plant, cucumber seeds, organic foliar fertilizer, peat pots, and two starter plug trays. In the next 3 hours four tomato plants were removed in their entirety. The two heaviest producers of the spring were spared but cut to 1/3 their size. It’s likely that they will set a second set of fruit in the fall. I cut back both of my basil plants, removed arugula that had already gone to seed, weeded the beds, and added in bonemeal fertilizer. I mulched the landscape bed, planted my new finds, harvested any remaining tomatoes and hung my herb trimmings inside to dry.
BEFORE....
...AFTER. I no longer look like the crazy garden lady in the neighborhood.
In the coming weeks I’ll be adding cucumber, squash, cantaloupe and broccoli to my garden, which will most likely require a garden expansion. Tis the season to prepare for a fall harvest! With one season already under my belt I’m excited to begin a new cycle (but also wondering when Texas farmers ever get to take a break!). Here’s a few more pics from today’s productivity… how’s everyone else’s gardens doing? Any exciting finds to report??
My lemon basil is multiplying like bunnies. I potted a few up to give away... hoping they survive the transplant.
My second set of peppers is coming in - even the Habanero is producing this time!
freshly mulched landscape bed... here's to hoping it will retain more moisture now!
freshly cut herbs hanging to dry
Arugula & broccoli sprouts coming up! (the arugula seeds were harvested from my first planting of the spring).
Filed under: Austin, Heath + Beauty, food, go green, lifestyle | Tags: Alexander Family Farm, alternative food resources, Austin locavore, becoming a co-op member, food co-op, food cooperatives, Green Gate Farms, grocery co-op, Johnson's Backyard Garden, local food, locavore, Pure Luck Dairy, tomato sandwiches, Vital Farms, wheatsville co-op
Photo courtesy Wheatsville Co-op webpage: http://wheatsville.coop/images/expimages/FE715AwningRemoval.jpg
When I moved to Texas in the fall of 2004, I shared a tiny 400 s.f. apartment within walking distance to the University of Texas with Zack, my then-boyfriend. With not much room to roam indoors, we spent a lot of time walking the streets of downtown Austin. One our most regular trips was just across the street to Wheatsville Co-op. There weren’t many weeks that went by that we didn’t pop in and grab a 4-pack of their delicious vegan chocolate chip cookies.
While we were living in that apartment, the old shopping center that stood between us and Wheatsville was torn down and a new mixed use development took it’s place. Years later my hair stylist took a position at a salon that operates out of the new building. Today after having my hair done I decided to walk across the street and do my grocery shopping at good ol’ Wheatsville.
The store has changed a lot since I used to shop there – they’re currently under construction to expand their building footprint. I was delighted to see local farms and producers represented throughout the store – Green Gate Farms, Johnson’s Backyard Garden, Pure Luck Dairy, Alexander Family Farm, Vital Farms… the list goes on and on. I picked up a few pounds of tomatoes from Green Gate Farms, I had attended a lecture on seed-saving hosted by two of their employees at the Sustainable Food Center this week and was curious what their produce was like. I also grabbed a few from JBG, just to compare flavor. I brought home more Pure Luck goat feta (which I am in love with – first on arugula salads, now mixed with my homegrown yellow pear & cherry tomatoes w/a little Texas olive oil, fresh basil & fresh oregano). I picked up a dozen eggs from Alexander’s Family Farm, which I haven’t had the pleasure of enjoying yet. And, of course, some tortillas from El Lago so that I can make some breakfast tacos in the morning.
As I was checking out I decided to make the commitment to become a member of the co-op. As my money seems to be disappearing more and more quickly these days, I’ve been turning to grocery stores more often to make my food purchases (always choosing Texas products when available and turning away from anything out of season in the US!). Wheatsville is the perfect halfway point between my luxurious, expensive mornings spent at Boggy Creek and the high traffic but low-cost insanity of Central Market. Not only that, but I am now part of a democratic organization that isn’t focused on profitability, but maintains a mission to “create a self-reliant, self-empowering community of people that will grow and promote a transformation of society toward cooperation, justice, and non-exploitation.” They aim to “serve a broad range of people by…using efficient methods which avoid manipulation of the customer and minimize exploitation of the producer and the environment” (copied out of the Wheatsville Co-op Mission Statement). Now that’s a warm fuzzy we don’t get from shopping at H.E.B., isn’t it? I’m excited that most of my favorite local producers are represented at Wheatsville, and better yet – as an owner I have the ability to tell the board if there’s another product/producer who I’d like to see offered at the store. It is, afterall, partly my store now.
I came home and fixed myself a tomato sandwich with the Green Gate tomatoes and some yummy yummy fresh multi-grain bread baked by a local Great Harvest Bakery here in town. It was delicious. I’m looking forward to many more years of tomato sandwiches supplied by Wheatsville, and a continued involvement with the cooperative community!
mmm... the first of 2 delicious tomato sandwiches...
Filed under: Austin, Garden, Heath + Beauty, food, go green, outdoors | Tags: edamame plants, growing cantaloupe, growing sweet potatoes, growing vegetables, linkedin, onion plants, organic gardening, rotting squash, soil secret, soil secret fertilizer, square foot gardening, tomato plants, vegetable gardens
It’s mid-May and my garden has exploded in green. I can’t tell where the yard stops and my vegetables begin anymore.
Unfortunately, big green doesn’t equal big yields. Not yet, anyway. My tomato plants are towering out of their cages these days but the tomatoes are growing painfully slow. I got impatient with the onions and pulled the purples and mutant compost transplants out of the ground last week. But they’re too small. I just couldn’t stop messing with them (I admit – they were pulled out of the ground twice a week to check on progress. In hindsight, I don’t think that was such a great idea). I was more successful at keeping my paws off of the 1015 variety, which should be big honkers when they’re done soaking up all the Soil Secret I poured on them last week. I left those in the ground to continue cooking.
My squash are coming along slowly too. It turns out that not all baby squashes grow to be edible squashes. If their flowers aren’t pollinated, the baby veggies shrivel up and rot. It’s very disappointing to have it in your head that you’re 7 days away from experiencing squash up to your elbows, only to return a day later to find rotting carcasses. So far I’ve pulled 4 zucchinis and 1 yellow squash. I’m not nearly as inundated with squash as I’d hoped for, but the plants continue to grow and with any luck will continue to multiply.
While I’m on the topic of garden disappointments, the edamame was an underpreformer, too. This was completely my own fault. I planted too few beans. I’ve planted a second batch of close to 25 plants whose necks have just begun to stretch to the sun. I hope to be able to harvest at least one full bowl of edamame this summer – the fresh variety is so much more delicious than the frozen!
Bell pepper babies.
Cherry tomato babies.
Yellow pear tomato babies. Who will be ready to eat first?
Let’s see, what else…. ah, the pepper plants. The green bell peppers have started emerging and they appear to be in a race with the tomatoes on who can grow the slowest. So far the tomatoes are winning. The pepper transplants that I’d completely given up on in the spring are actually looking darn good right now. They should be in prime position for a 2nd harvest once my first plant stops producing. I dug up the sweet potato last week and found 3 plants with healthy root systems, so I separated them and replanted. My lettuce and spinach have officially bolted – I’m letting them go to flower so I can collect their seeds for next planting season. My canteloupe vines are on a mission to take over my entire front yard. No word on any melons yet.
I suppose that pretty well sums it up. In the next few weeks I plan to continue to water, water, water (it’s consistently over 90 degrees here now) and keep checking the plants daily for progress. I know that one day, hopefully soon, those green tomatoes are going to turn red and yellow and I don’t want to miss it!
Filed under: Heath + Beauty, food | Tags: vegetables, food origins, plants, peanut plants, linkedin
This past weekend at the Passion for Plants festival, I played the “name that seed” game. The “name that seed” game consisted of 8 small bowls containing an array of vegetable seeds of all different shapes and sizes. The task seemed pretty simple – name the seed. I hadn’t hit my head yet, so I have no excuse for the fact that I incorrectly identified a green bean seed.
While playing the game, it struck me that while I’ve got a pretty good handle on the geographics of where my food comes from, I’m still very green (ha) on the botanical origins of my food. In general, I know that fruits & veggies come from flowers on plants that were sprouted from seeds, and the seeds come from the fruit produced by the flower (and on and on and on). And I know that each plant has a different set of parts to offer as food. Some plants have tasty tubers, some have tasty greens, others have edible flowers and some produce delicious fruits. One of my favorite foodie facts is that peanuts, a member of the legume (bean) family, are the product of a flower which has cast a stem into the earth to form a delicious nut. I only know this because I read it in one of my foodie books. But I wonder how many people at H.E.B. know that their Jiffy grows underground?
In the interest of spreading food origins facts & with the goal of broadening our food awareness, I give you this mysterious photo. Any guesses on what this plant provides? Here’s a hint: it’s a relative of Poison Ivy. P.S. I totally did not snag this photo from the interweb. What watermark…. huh?
