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.

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.

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.

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.

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’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.

Our summer garden had some decent successes and some spectacular failures.  Our cowpeas were the main success, we got probably 3 full size quart jars out of 10 plants or so.  Mark that one down to plant next year.  Our tomatoes and peppers didn’t do nearly as well in the summer but got decent in the fall.  I’m not sure exactly why but that’s how it goes.

In the fall garden, the collards and lettuce were good as were the tomatoes.  We had such a warm fall that we harvested tomatoes up until December 3rd.  One thing to remember for next year when planting the fall garden is that it only gets sun on about half the plot because of how far south the sun is.  The neighbor’s fence really blocks it a lot.  Our garlic chives are dead because they just don’t get any sun.

Last week, I pulled everything up from the fall and summer and mulched really well.  We have 15-16 heads of garlic growing and that will be about it until January when I’ll plant potatoes and onions.

In other garden news, the satsuma was a success this year with 18 or so oranges.  The snapdragons and mums in the front are doing well though I need to do some work on the sprinkler system to get better coverage.  Because our bushes have gotten so high since they planted them, the sprinklers don’t fully cover the front beds.  I think I can get some of the 4 foot risers and fix the problem.

Another thing to remember for next year in the veggie garden is to plant more flowers around it so that the bees and wasps are attracted as pollinators.  My yellowneck squash never did anything this year but the luffa went crazy because it had so many more flowers.  The mexican heather by the back porch was really good at attracting bees so I think I’ll plant some of that around the garden next year to help with the pollination.

That’s really it for now, we’ll probably plant a tree or two later in the winter but most of our planting is done until spring.

From the veggie garden, really the only thing doing well at all is the southern cowpeas and pink-eyed purple hull peas.  The okra is producing but with only two plants, it’s not a lot (which is fine with Kat).  Everything else is pretty much useless.  However, the peppers are starting to look like they will put on a late burst of production.

The vitex is growing like crazy and the live oak in the front has really begun to put on some growth.  However, lots of plants are looking rather unplantlike and I’m hoping that the cooler fall weather will help out a little.

We fertilized the roses this past weekend in preparation for the fall display though in reality, our roses have been a bright spot throughout the summer.  The Belinda’s Dream has beem especially prolific in the back yard.

We haven’t planted much lately, though I’m planning on put in some veggies next weekend for a fall garden.  I’ll probably do some collards, maybe a lettuce of some sort and a root veggie, though I’m not sure what.  I want to try brussel sprouts as well even though my recollection of those are some of the worst memories of my childhood.

We got 2.9 inches last night and it was raining when I got up.  We’re due for 1-2 more inches over the next 24 hours.  And yet, we have two neighbors who were watering this morning.  It’s hard not to shake your head and wonder how clueless some people can be but then I know I do some pretty clueless things sometimes too.