November 15, 2018

Good morning, sometimes I can be so brain dead, especially when you know a cold front is coming my way. My focus was to harvest all the summer veggies and root crops, because I knew they would not make it through. The fall and winter veggies, once they have hardened can take cold, but not the first real hard freeze. I have noted that for most veggie that are not covered 20 degrees is the death temp. We had a low of 17 at 4.5 feet (I need to lower the thermometer for winter position). It is likely that my Kale, carrots and green onions will survive, but they sure look bleak today. No big deal with the carrots, they are mature and are quite safe in the ground, as for the green onions time will tell if the tops need to grow back for harvest. Now the kale may be a different story, the growing tips look good for now but all the harvestable foliage is chicken food. If the tips have survived, there could be kale in the near future just not this week. My chard and lettuce seedlings were covered, didn’t check, but experience says they are fine. On the bright side, if this cold did not kill the veggies they are hardened off now.

Welllll after looking under the covers on Wednesday, This first real heavy freeze took its toll. It  has set me back. A person can try and be prepared but Mother Nature gets the last call. Sunday will be clean up day. Like last year, the covers are the difference of plants being dead or able to have new growth.  This year has been a real challenge.

There have been a number of distractions this year and man have I dropped the ball. Ah but this year is nearly done and next year will soon be knocking at the front door. I believe I am ready to greet.

For anyone interested I do have sweet potatoes for $4.00 per pound,, butternuts for $3.00 per pound and garlic for  fifty cents per bulb in storage

 With luck and a little warmer weather the harvests will continue.

November 8, 2018

Good morning, fall plantings by and large are doing well. The stocking in the pea bed  is not full cover but it does look to be about 50%. This should still make for decent harvest, especially since the coverage is well spread out across the bed. Next week it looks like there will be Asian greens, some spinach, and boc choy. There is lettuce to be transplanted, most of the older lettuce has bolted. I am optimistic about harvests for Brussel sprouts, cabbage and kohlrabi. Not sure when they will be ready but they are doing well. As for the broccoli and cauliflower, it looks like a cut worm or more have been having a bit of a party. I had enough replacements but this is a set back for them. With luck the cauliflower will head up after any severe cold this winter but before it starts to get warm. Time will tell. I have only about 15 feet of sweets to harvest. This bodes well for sweets being around for quite a while yet.

Bulb onion seeds have been sown and garlic will be planted this coming weekend.

As for the jungle of weeds in the garden, once the sweet harvest is done, I can work on them. I am thinking of getting a burn nozzle and fry seedlings at a young age. It is with hope by not disturbing the surface that maybe I can prevent some of the seeds germinating. Sounds good on paper.

It has been a bit of an interesting garden year and I am ready for this one to end. With luck next year I can be a bit more focused.

Follows is an updated list of what I am growing, please email as to availability and prices. Chard, kale, green onions, carrots, lettuce, butternut squash, garlic, beets, sweet potatoes, and beans.

November 1, 2018

Good morning, it is nice for the rains to continue. The garden is just about sitting on average rainfall for the year. We are close to 16 inches. This is nice.

Most of the summer veggies are gone except for beans and poblano peppers. Sadly, the beans are slowing way down on their blooming. With luck there will be beans for a couple more weeks. I expect a hard freeze soon.

With luck as the last summer veggies go the fall and winter greens will come on line. It looks like there will be Asian greens, boc choi and spinach soon. My old chard bed has recuperated from the grasshoppers and caterpillars. My new chard and kale bed have a few weeks before harvest can begin. I am curious to see what kind of emergence there is in the snow pea bed. The 2 weeks of clouds and rain cooled the soil nicely so I am optimistic. I have more pea seeds to do a late planting of peas. With luck March will bring bountiful harvests. This weekend I plan to sow my bulb onions and next week garlic. I am not going to make the same mistake as last year with the onion seeds. This year they will be covered with the edges buried. This seed bed will be several feet away from any known harvester ant nest. One curious observation, what with my ankle thingy this past fall, I was not able to keep weeds from going to seed (this will be a problem next rainy season), this seed is being stashed by the harvester ants. I wonder if they may be overwhelmed with seeds and would leave garden seeds alone. Or does the CO2 given off by germinating seeds act like magnets to the ants. With burred covers I hope not to find out.

Any way it is all good, and I am sure that next years gardening experiences will be totally different from this year. One thing for sure there will be new lessons to be learned.

Follows is a list of what I am growing, please email as to availability and prices. Chard, kale, green onion, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, butternut squash, garlic, beets, sweet potatoes, and beans.

October 25, 2018

Good morning, pretty wild ride for a week and some. Amazing cloudy weather. I was very curious to see what veggies did not like the 31.5-degree chill down. It took a few days of warmer weather but the damage did eventually show. I think what was the biggest surprise were the veggies that it did not affect. Which was everything except okra and sweet potatoes. The two veggies that abhor cool to cold conditions. They really do not care for temps below 60 degrees. Storage of sweets below 50 degrees, quickly degrades the spuds. The older okra was already showing the signs of cooler overnight lows and was shedding leaves and the 31.5 finished the okra off. As for the sweets, since they were covered, are doing fine. It was just the portions that were not covered that got real burned. Next week is forecast to be warmer and I am hoping to finish the sweet harvest. There is about 40 feet to go. The harvest got side tracked a little bit due to the rain, which ended up being 1.41 inches total. Save for the last installment, it was all nice and slow with little runoff. But it sure did a kibosh with the sweet harvest. It is really hard to push mud.

Spot checking the fall veggies that I planted somewhat late, seem to be doing fine. I feel a little more confident that they will mature with a harvest. What with the cool rain, the soil got cooled and I am hoping that the snow peas that I did sow will do fine. Time will tell.

I am not looking forward to next rainy season what with ALL the weeds, due to my ankle down time, that have matured and dropped their seeds. This could very easily be a nightmare next year. Oh well, such is life.

I did manage to harvest most all of the tomatoes and they are ripening in a back room. I am not sure if there will be anymore eggplants but they are blooming. Also there are some chilies to harvest. This early light frost did come incredibly early, so this will affect the seasonal change of veggies. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Always a challenge.

Follows is an updated list of what I am growing, please email as to availability and prices. Chard, kale, green onions, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, chilies (several varieties), eggplant, butternut squash, garlic, beets, sweet potatoes, and beans.

October 18, 2018

Good morning, it was a strange day last Monday, the forecast high was supposed to be 38. And through the course of the day it would settle down to near freezing at sunset. This caused me to think with covers the garden would be fine.

I still had my eye on the thermometer.  Monday was not one of those days that I wanted to be outside, overcast, drizzle and 33 degrees at sunrise. No prob because at sunrise the temp would rise.  When it started to slowly drop, I did not know where the bottom would be.

On Sunday I had harvested the okra down to small pods and all the toms that had a blush. I did think that even though it would be cool to cold that everything else in the garden would be fine. No big deal since it would be overcast. This changed on Monday when at 9 AM the temp started to drift downward. At 32.5 I decided that the rest of the garden needed to be harvested. There were eggplants, chilies and a ton of green tomatoes. And the task was completed as the thermometer settled at 31.5 for the rest of the day and through the night. Of course, this whole time it was drizzling, overcast and a cutting north wind. All good indicators for not having a hard freeze. Having been burned with surprise deep freezes I was glad I had decided to finish the harvest.

Wednesdays are my usual greens harvest day. It was plain nasty out. I wimped out as the forecast was predicted to have improving conditions for the rest of the week. The cool damp was fine but the north breeze was cutting. So, I did decide to postpone the greens harvest until Thursday. I did look under the covers and it looked like there would be a normal harvest of chard, kale, lettuce, green onions and carrots.

The thermometer never did slip any further than the 31.5-degree mark and I was not sure what that would do to the summer veggie plants. A day of warmth and sun may cause the plants to wither. But at this time, I do not see any freeze damage. I am glad that I did harvest none the less.

Now it will be interesting as to how long until a real hard freeze. There are all kinds of blossoms out in the garden, and even though everything of size has been harvested, there is no need to rush on pulling plants, so, I think we will see how long until a freeze. There just might be more to harvest or maybe not. Time will tell.

I did get most all of my winter greens planted. There are a couple of different items that still need to be planted. What with my ankle in September I missed the sweet spot for planting. I am not sure how this will affect these plants that I like to harvest during the cooler West Texas time. We will just have to see what happens. Never a dull moment. I am ready for a change in the weather.

Follows is an updated list of what I am growing, please email as to availability and prices. Chard, kale, green onions, carrots, lettuce, okra, tomatoes, chilies (several varieties), eggplant, butternut squash, garlic, beets, sweet potatoes, and beans. Also, there is volunteer basil and dill.

October 11, 2018

Good morning, it is nice to be able to get my fall veggies planted. What with my ankle being sprained in September, I missed the September / October sweet spot but such is life. I will just have to see how they do.

On another note, I have started getting the question of what to do with all those green tomatoes. A person needs to stop watering and if the foliage is dense, it needs to be prune some to let in more light. Don’t go to heavy because the foliage will help the plans to develop sugars. Once we start getting frost threats, blankets or sheets need to be put over the plants. The idea is to keep the tomatoes on the plants as long as you can. Once you have had too much of the covering game, the tomatoes can be harvested. I then like to lay them out on newspaper on the floor in a coolish room. This way you can spy on them and collect the tomatoes that have ripened or even more important collect and remove the nasty ones. Depending on how many tomatoes you have, there could be a supply of tomatoes for 2 to 3 months. Of course, if it is your thing there is green tomato chutney or fried green tomatoes too. Any way you look at it, a person can have a bit of summer in late fall. Enjoy!!

Follows is a list of what I am growing, please email as to availability and prices. Chard, kale, green onions, carrots, lettuce, okra, tomatoes, chilies (several varieties), eggplant, butternut squash, garlic, beets, sweet potatoes, and beans. Also, there is volunteer basil and dill.

October 4, 2018

Good morning,  what a sweet success to have gotten the siding and the new windows on the house along with the hole in the deck that I so casually walked into installed and covered back up. Yes very nice.

As for the weed jungle in the garden it is a step at a time. Soon I shoulld be ready to plant the winter garden. Just a little behind schedule, but such is life.

2018 has had its challenges  and I really  am looking forward  toward next years garden. I will have to say that the nematode resistant tomatoes have been a success. I am cureous to see what their roots look like when they are pulled. It is nice to have tomatoes all season for a change. The other day I harvested about 2 pounds of spuds from a russet potato. With a sustained harvest like that I might be able to offer Irish potatoes in the future.. Time will tell. The sweet harvest continues and I should be able to finish it before the first freeze. Just a bed and a half to go.

Follows is a list of what I am growing, please email as to availability and prices. Chard, kale, green onions, carrots, lettuce, okra, tomatoes, chilies (several varieties), eggplant, butternut squash, garlic, beets, bulb onions, sweet potatoes, and beans. Also, there is volunteer basil and dill.