March 23, 2017

Good morning, Trial and error is most likely the best way to learn. I remember as a landscaper with a landscaping company I would try and save crew members the grief of failure.

Since this time I have come to redefine failure. Traditionally failure is considered any time you do not succeed. Failure and success go hand in hand. Failure is anytime that you make a mistake, you A: do not learn from this mistake or B: you decide success is not attainable and you give up.

When I moved to Alpine from Central Oregon I tried some of the techniques I used there and soon found that I was not having as good of success as I had there. It also soon dawned me that the gardening seasons in West Texas are quite different from anywhere else that I have gardened.

I set out to define the seasons and what veggies to plant at those times. I found there to be 3 distinct seasons. This changed everything.

With this new season description I was then able to match veggies with the times that they would grow best for me. Broccoli and other Cole crops would over wintered crops. This allowed them to mature during the coolest time of year and thus develop the best flavor. When these crops are grown in the spring ( which is very short) they became aphid magnets and harvests were dismal. Peas I tried also in the spring and found it to be a non starter, so I tried them as a fall crop. Sowing in late August early September (if you could get them to germinate in very warm soils) would start to bloom just as the freezes hit. Pea foliage is more forgiving of freezes but the blossoms would just drop. So I thought why not sow in late fall (a time of year more favorable to cool loving peas) over winter as small seedlings and mature just as things are warming up. This has worked 2 years in a row, the third year the peas are now enlarging and the harvest will start any day. Bulb onions also had their trial and error. I always thought having a nice sized onion plant going through the winter would make larger onions in the Spring. I would start the plants in September only to get few if any to bulb up. Most would bolt. I just could not figure out what was going wrong.

I like gardening books. I especially like to find out the tricks that the various authors have discovered and then relate to their readers. One such book had my “bingo” moment. Onion seedling over 1/4 inch is big enough to be a mature onion. This means when the temperature drops below 50 degrees the seedling will go through vernalization. Which means when the soil warms the onion plant thinks it has gone through its second year and begins to flower and thus no bulb. I start the seedlings on the first of November, over winter as seedlings less than 1/4 inch, transplant in early March for bulbs in June.

I have always thought that if something is not working, I like to default to operator error!! All the solutions above took time to trial and error, evaluate and then try something different until success came. The operator error default worked.

I remember a few years back that a gardening class took a garden tour in my garden. The instructor was “gob smacked” to see that I was growing snow peas successfully in West Texas. The instructor recently had discouraged the students of growing peas in Far West Texas. Having defined the seasons in West Texas then allowed me to pair up veggies with the best time of the year to grow them. This makes for less stressed plant and more likely harvests. Trial and error combined with patience ha paid off. I am still working on Irish potatoes!