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.

We got a new camera last week.  I’d say it takes pretty good pictures.

These guys hatched out about 4 days go.  Mom and babies seem to be doing fine.

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.

We had a freak storm come through tonight that broke off our main hibiscus stems leaving us with only one of the original three that came up this year.  That one left is pretty stumpy and sad.  We were looking forward to a nice bushy plant this year but I guess we’ll have to wait another year.

I’m bummed.

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.

We pulled up the pansies from the winter tonight, probably 3 weeks later than they should have been pulled.  They were mostly starting to look pretty scrawny and torn up.

We’ve been getting a decent amount of rain this spring which should really help with the water levels.  Last Wednesday, we had 70-80 mile an hour winds come through and while we didn’t lose anything, several things got beat up pretty badly.  The Texas Star Hibiscus lost one shoot and the crape myrtle and autumn blaze maple are both a little wobbly.

We’re going to replant the front bed this weekend with either zinnias or sunflowers, not sure which.

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.

Our first day lily bloomed April 27th this year.  We have several more blooms on the way but this one is nice.  We’ve planted about 6 different kinds of day lilies but haven’t marked any of them so it’s always a surprise when they bloom.