We’ve got approximately 200 square feet of vegetable producing beds on the south side of our house.  I’ve built three raised beds ranging from 5×5 to 20×5 and I keep things planted in them almost 12 months a year in the long growing season we enjoy (though enjoy is a difficult word to understand during the summer when it’s been 98 for 20 straight days or so).  Last year, I installed a watering system around the beds that runs on a timer.  That has really made the difference, allowing me to consistently water the garden even during the hottest months of the summer, keeping plants producing like tomatoes and cucumbers that typically shut down in the hot months.

Last year, we harvested over 40 pounds of both tomatoes and cucumbers.  This year, the wacky spring weather we had seems to have set back those plants though we are starting to catch up.  However, the onions and blackberries have been unbelievably prolific.  So far this year, we’ve harvested the following:

• Strawberries: 4 pounds
• Fava Beans: 4 pounds
• Tomatoes (Early girl, Cherokee, yellow and red cherry): 10.82 pounds
• Onions: 10 pounds
• Blackberries: 20.15 pounds

Raised beds can really increase production in our heavy clay soils and they are amazingly easy to build if you use the no-dig method detailed here. You can build them right on top of existing lawns with no problems. Kids can help with the entire process which is often fun. I built a 20×5 bed in about 4 hours. Putting in a watering system takes a little bit of engineering but if you have basic DIY skills, it’s straightforward. The hardest part is finding fittings that you connect soaker and sprinkler hoses to of the main PVC lines.

We don’t grow nearly enough food to feed us year round but it’s nice to have fresh veggies most of the year to supplement buying them from the store. I’m tracking the costs involved this year as well. We’ve spent $233 so far on plants, dirt and sprinkler extensions (this doesn’t include the actual construction of the beds or the original watering system since they were put in last year). That works out to about $4.75 a pound of veggies and fruit. That’s not an exact calculation because water isn’t figured in but on average, I’d guess it ends up being about $5 a pound. By the end of the summer, it should be down lower than that as we harvest more with fewer costs.

Unless you turn your entire yard into a vegetable garden, you will never be able to feed a family but you really shouldn’t go into it expecting that. A backyard garden is a way to have the fruits of your labor (pun fully intended) supplement your groceries. Plus harvesting fruit and other veggies after a long season of work is highly rewarding.

This year has been pretty tough for our vegetable garden, what with the 7 inch snow on March 21st and then the last week of 100 degree heat.  However, we have managed to harvest a few things along the way.  The fava beans were probably the first thing we pulled up.  We got about 4 pounds of unshelled favas which seemed pretty good until we found out you have to shell them twice, once before you blanch them and once afterward.  I didn’t end up weighing them once we had the shelling work out of the way but I’m guessing we got closer to 2.5 pounds, still not a bad return on 10 feet of plants.

The onion harvest didn’t turn out to be as successful as I had hoped.  I planted them in a bed that doesn’t get enough sun during the early spring and so we had bad development on many of the bulbs.  The red onions were worthless in general though that was to be expected.  Most recommendations for onions in the Wylie area talk about yellow and white onions and say not to plant red ones.  I didn’t listen and also didn’t get any red onions, losing 10 feet of them.  This was probably largely due to the wacky weather as almost all the red onions shot up flower stalks which happens when the onions have radical changes in temperatures.  All told, we got about 8 pounds of yellow 1015Ys which isn’t bad, enough to last us most of the summer wrapped up in foil in the fridge.

The garlic has been pulled up as well now and though quite a bit of it was planted in the same unsunny bed as the onions, we got good production.  Lots of the purple garlic I tried developed quite well.  I haven’t weighed the garlic yet to see what the production was but overall, it looks good.  The stalks didn’t flower this year, I wonder if that also had to do with the weather.  The purple stuff smells fantastic and though I haven’t had a chance to cook with it yet, I’m looking forward to it.  Roasted garlic sounds pretty good right now.

Other than that, we haven’t really had any harvest to speak of.  The cherry tomatoes are just starting to produce, we’ve probably got a pound or so off of two plants.  The cucumbers are way behind this year due to the snow and then a late replanting on my part.  We’re probably a month away still from any of those showing up.  We have a jillion blackberries that are slowly ripening, I’m hoping to be able to keep the birds off them long enough to get half of them.   Finally, the peach tree has quite a few peaches on it but I’m not sure how many of them are actually going to ever ripen.  I struggle every year with some damn insect that comes along and bites the unripened fruit, causing sap to bleed out from the spot and eventually ruin it.  I sprayed reasonably consistently this year to no avail.

We started some long overdue garden work and preparation today and yesterday as we finally had a weekend with really good weather here in Wylie.  K did a lot of pruning of woody perennials as well as some boring weeding work that really needed to be done.  I got the veggie garden ready for planting by pulling up all the winter weeds, adding some compost to replace lost material throughout the year last year and planted snap peas, brussel sprouts and strawberries.

Our strawberry patch had 3 good years but really got knocked out this winter by both cold and some pretty compacted soil.  I have read that strawberry patches need to be replanted in halves each year so that the compacted soil from the runners can be opened up and the soil can accept water and nutrients better.  Our harvest last year was definitely sub-standard so hopefully, this will help.  I hoed up half the patch, added a bag of compost and then planted three new plants.  I use Gardens’ Alive strawberry fertilizer (as well as their veggie and tomato fertilizer, I’m a big fan of the results) and added that to the new planting as well as the remaining old.  I planted Sequoia everbearer plants which may or may not be suited for Texas but was what Lowe’s had in stock.  We usually get several baskets from our little patch but I’m guessing this year will be a smaller harvest unless I decide to go back for more plants.  Three look pretty lonely right now.

The sugar snaps should mature about May 10 and the brussel sprouts are a gamble entirely at this point.  I also ran PVC to the bed I built last fall where garlic and onions are currently trying to produce.  That will allow me to run soaker hoses along the length of that bad as well as possibly run a drip line to our blackberry patch.

The gardening to-do list is always long in spring and I’ve got a ton more to do over the next few weeks.  I’ll update as it goes.

They’re larger than normal, hardier than your average one and much more productive. They bear sweet, sweet juicy fruit and once you have one, you can’t go back.

Of course, I’m talking about Apache Blackberries, a thornless strain adapted to this area. We bought one at North Haven Gardens on impulse after much careful consideration and research about 2 weeks ago and it’s been waiting to get planted. In that time, it’s actually flowered and set fruit, a whole 2 blackberries, though it supposedly won’t do much this year.  You can actually just make out one berry at the top of the picture above.

They are cold hardy to -20 which makes them a 50-50 bet around here in DFW after the next ice age sets in. You fertilize them in the spring just before new growth appears which probably means end of February. I may actually buy another one and plant it as well since 1 seems so lonely. They set fruit on last year’s canes and thus, once you’ve harvested, you should prune the bush fairly soon afterwards.