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.

It’s getting to be growing season here in the Metroplex and after a long, especially cold and snowy winter, the gardening bug has bitten pretty hard.  We’ve got quite a few new things planted so far along with several transplants but we’ll just focus on the herbs today.  We have some herbs that are perennials, namely thyme and rosemary but typically each spring involves replanting herbs to season this years dishes with.  Last weekend, we planted Italian Oregano, Purple Sage, Italian Parsley (we prefer Italians in our cooking apparently) and Marjoram.

Italian oregano is a cross between Greek oregano and sweet marjoram, according to Papa Geno.  We’ve had Greek oregano in the past but haven’t really done much with it other than to sprinkle some on pizza.  This species is supposed to be hardy in Zone 7 which means it may survive here in Wylie.  It’s probably a tender perennial here if I was guessing and will likely need to be replanted each year.

Purple sage, made famous by Zane Grey in the classic Western novel Riders of the Purple Sage, is a small woody herb that has a slight peppery taste and is often used to flavor fatty cuts of meat.  We have used sage in the past sauteed lightly in oil or butter and then stuffed rainbow trout with the sauteed leaves with excellent results.  Our sages in the past have not been as perennial as we might be led to believe but maybe this one will be different.  Modern research, according to the Wikipedia page above, indicates that sage may be useful as anhidrotic, antibiotic, antifungal, astringent, antispasmodic, estrogenic, hypoglycemic and tonic.  It’s also been shown to treat mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease.  So apparently, if we just eat sage, we should live a long healthy life with no infections, shakes, low blood sugar or loss in mental faculties.  Sounds like a winner to me!

Parsley is entirely uninteresting so we’ll skip it in favor of the marjoram.  It is another perennial herb that will likely be an annual here in Wylie.  It has sweet pine and citrus flavors according to Wikipedia which is good because I hate sour pine like a cat hates water.  Except for your cat, mister person with the cat who likes water exception to every rule.  I don’t think I have a thing for marjoram but it just happened to be on sale at Lowe’s and I can hardly pass up plants on sale.  There is actually a recipe on the back of the plant tag that sounds excellent and since we are growing the two main ingredients, I’m looking forward to trying it, once the snap peas mature.  The recipe is listed below for anyone looking for a way to eat more marjoram.

Sugar Snap Peas with Fresh Marjoram

2 tsp extra virgin olive oil

3/4 lb sugar snap peas, trimmed of stems and strings

1 1/2 tsp fresh marjoram, chopped

1 tsp fresh lemon juice

1/4 tsp lemon zest, grated

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp ground black pepper

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet.  Add the peas and saute until tender-crisp, about 4-5 minutes.  Stir in remaining ingredients and toss gently to mix.  Serve immediately with an entire bottle of Chianti.

Ok I made up that last part but the recipe sounds fantastic and there is nothing like producing vegetables and herbs from your own garden using your own abilities for your table.

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.

It happened today, put in 18 ft of 1015Y and red Super Sweet.  They are in the bed with the garlic which probably isn’t really getting enough sun yet but that will change soon enough.  18 ft is something north of 100 onions though many of those will be weeded out for cooking along the way.  Both varieties should store reasonably well so if we get 50 (which would be amazing), we’ll be set for onions for quite awhile.  They need to be fertilized in 3 weeks and then every 4 weeks after that up until harvest.  Here in Texas, that probably means late May, early June.

Last weekend, February 3rd to be exact, we planted our early spring garden.  We put in broccoli, red cabbage, rhubarb (mmm, strawberry-rhubarb pie), swiss chard, brussel sprouts and onions.  This week, I’m going to plant Irish potatoes in tires which helps not take up as much space in the garden since it takes until June for them to be ready.  I planted garlic in late October and it’s going well, looks like we’ll have about 16 heads.

It’s been really mild here lately so I’ve been jonesing to plant stuff and last weekend helped scratch the itch.  In another 30 days or so, it will be time to start thinking about summery type veggies.

We’ve been doing some pruning here and there and we’re going to redo a significant section of our back flowerbed once we get our new wrought iron fence in because several of the plants don’t get enough sun.  The fence will make the yard look a ton different and we’re both excited about it.  I’ll post pictures when the fence is up.

Since I hate to blame myself for things unless I have to, I’m currently blaming the soil for my veggie woes (it’s June and I’ve harvested exactly 2 cherry tomatoes, even though I’ve had a ton of stuff planted since March).  So I bought some garden soil and humus from Home Depot on Thursday and planted two more tomato plants, a sweet bell pepper, two slips of sweet potato and half a row of pinkeye purple hull peas.

We’ll see how this goes.  By my calculations, the peas should be ready to harvest on August 26th.  That sucks.

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.

I planted two okra plants, an orange bell pepper and some cilantro today.  The okra plants mature in 50-60 days which puts them at mid-July and the bell pepper is 70-80 days which means it will probably get killed by the heat before it ever does anything.  My optimism knows no bounds.