It’s the week of Christmas. Here in Texas, we don’t usually expect a white Christmas, and this year is no different. Our first freeze was a couple weeks ago. I took that as an opportunity to clean out of the garden anything that couldn’t survive a really cold night. What was left were the various greens: lettuce, radishes, kohlrabi.
The weather is getting a lot cooler now. My utility bill arrived the other day and it’s under $200 for the first time since the beginning of summer. My garden is liking the cool weather and rain, too. I don’t have a lot growing right now, but what is there seems to be a lot less stressed than it was during the summer.
It’s a little early to start working on the spring planting, but I think this is a good time to look back at what worked, what didn’t work, and what I want to do differently.
We’ve finally had a few weeks of less than scorching temperatures. Almost nothing in my garden survived August. The beans, squash, radishes, and spinach all withered away eventually. I was out of the state for most of June, so I wasn’t able to give the garden the daily attention it needed. The heat hit while I was gone.
The peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, cabbage, kohlrabi, and greens survived, though they didn’t thrive. With the cooler temperatures and intermittent rain, they should get back on their feet and produce something.
The heat of summer is coming. We’ve been hitting the the high 80s and even 90 the last week or so. Everything is blossoming though, adding a nice bit of yellow in the morning—-no blossoms have come in yet that aren’t yellow and can still be seen from a distance. The lemon tree’s blossoms are a nice white with some purple coloring. The beans, squash, tomatoes, and lemon tree are all blooming. Even the volunteer prickly pear I’ve been avoiding the last few years when I mow has produced its first blossom.
What a difference three weeks makes! The last photos I posted showed almost all dirt with a few green things. After a near freeze and a near deluge, the garden is looking healthy. I’ve harvested a bit, replanted a few, and added some more plants. For now, the rain is coming in about the right intervals to prevent the need for much watering.
It’s only been a few weeks since I planted everything, but I’m already starting to harvest. I expect everything to slowly ramp up over the next few weeks until I’m bringing in enough to eat most of the time. Hopefully I’ll have more than enough and be able to store some away for the winter. I’m going to try some canning, pickling, and freezing. Freezing is the easiest, but also the most dependent on modern technology—canned and pickled items can survive a power outage. We have pretty dependable power in B/CS, but we have had it out city-wide for most of a day before.
I went out to the garden yesterday evening to see how it was doing and got a nice surprise. The first radishes were poking their way through the soil only four days after planting. This afternoon, I found that the marigolds and cucumber had their first leaves above ground as well. Unfortunately, the marconi ross sweet pepper looked like something had nibbled on it. A few leaves remain, so we’ll see if it pulls through.
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