What a difference a few weeks make.  From 12 inches of snow to 66 degrees and sunny, our winter weather has been pretty extreme this year.  The picture below is our backyard after the record snow last month.  It was absolutely beautiful and made me long to live in Colorado.  Of course, it melted in 2 days which wouldn’t happen in Colorado so I might have to be careful what I wish for.

Today, we did some spring transplanting that had been on the list for quite awhile.  We had an Argentine Senna (Senna Corymbosa) planted on a slope in one of our backyard beds and it wasn’t doing well there.  I had tried to support it but it kept growing at an angle.  In the front of the house, we had a Texas Star Hibiscus (Hibiscus coccineus) that the Wylie Police had tried to pull up thinking it was the green ganga, mon.  I kid.  Actually, while it did look a lot like marijuana, it needed to be moved because every spring, it would get nice and tall and then we’d have a thunderstorm blow in that would break half the stems.  Our front yard is a wind tunnel of sorts during storms and we never have been able to enjoy the hibiscus fully.

So, we swapped them out, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best.  The hibiscus moved pretty well and seemed to have a lot of the root ball intact.  The senna wasn’t so successful but once planted, as you can see below, actually looks pretty good.  At least it’s upright, something it never was in the back.  This was its second transplanting and I hope it pulls through.

Your faithful gardener’s apprentice, Seymour:

My early spring vegetables haven’t been too successful yet.  The onions are about 50-50 right now, some have really started to take root while others look like they just got planted.  I fertilized them for the first time after planting last weekend.  The four collard plants I put in the ground immediately froze and died so I replaced them with a brussel sprout and a line of radishes.  The snap peas are just starting to pop out of the ground after being planted last weekend.  We’re due for a really nice week after some early rain tomorrow so they should really start to grow.  The fava beans planted last fall are starting to bloom and may produce a decent crop.

I’m itching to start planting tomatoes and peppers but we still have at least another week before I can verify the 10 day forecast.  Our final spring frost averages March 20th here in Wylie so I’m better off waiting.

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.

We finished up most of the remaining planting this week. We put in 3 1-gallon containers of sweet potato vine, 2 variegated and 1 purple. Also, 3 1-gallon blackfoot daisies and 3 1-gallon mexican mint marigolds went in. The mint marigolds are very pretty and replaced a bunch of seeds that weren’t coming up too well.

The daisies are cold hardy to 0 which will probably make them perennials here in our area. They should be fertilized in early spring and again in early fall. They get 18 inches tall and 24 inches wide which should mean they fill the space they are in perfectly.

We also planted two 1-gallon Texas Rock Roses which don’t really look like roses at all. They are Texas natives and drought tolerant which will work well here even though we now can water twice a week again. They are cold-hardy to 10 degrees (zone 8 ) which will be borderline north of the Metroplex. They grow 15 inches tall and 24 inches wide.

Other things I don’t have the tags for right now are another duranta, this one white, 2 camillias and 2 abelias where were on sale in the half price house, 1 new sage, a bat-face cuphea and some verbena. Still left to go in are the mexican oregano in the garden, a firebush and a firecracker plant which both have no homes yet. The last two get pretty big so I’m having trouble figuring out where they will go.

The pinkeye purple hulled peas all germinated today and the southern cowpeas that I planted last week are also up. Three new kinds of basil got replanted last weekend and are coming up as well so I’m cautiously optimistic about my veggie garden. Now if I could just manage to kill more grasshoppers, all would be good.

This was a plant weekend for us as we made an impromptu trip to Covington’s and came home with a ridiculous amount of new stuff.  We still hadn’t planted the zinnias that we got at Home Depot last week and we added a flat of petunia to go with those in the front.

We bought an EarthKind Livin’ Easy rose that has apricot colored blooms and planted it by our bedroom window.  It’s really pretty but I’m worried it may not get enough sun to thrive there.

For some reason, I decided it was a good idea to go ahead and plant more stuff where the dog runs around.  A flat of Graffiti Pentas went in, colored in white, red and purple.  Scooter doesn’t seem to notice as he runs right through them.  He also proceeded to dig up one of the Mexican Heather plants about 10 minutes after I planted it.  That behavior will soon get modified.

I dumped another $4.25 into the veggie garden with some Pinkeye Purple Hull peas going in as well as some beans and cucumbers.  Rumor has it it will be too hot soon for the latter but the peas should thrive.  Though thrive is relative in my veggie garden.  I think that I haven’t been watering enough and I’m experimenting with watering schedules, specifically on plants that are freshly planted.

We have a ton of other things that we didn’t get time to plant.  I’ll start work on those tonight as well as taking pictures to post here.

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.