Month: January 2013

Glad to have nice weather back.  Last week was cold, both day and night.  One day we never got above 36 degrees.  Today its almost 1:30pm and we are already at 64 degrees.  Much nicer weather.

I think we may have lost a few plants from last week’s cold, but we will have to wait and see on that.  Some of the plants in front look just brown, like they may have frozen.  But I don’t know if they have died.  Some of the bulbs I planted are trying to grow.  They would do better if the deer would leave them alone.  But the deer outside are not looking good and are looking for whatever they can eat.  Hopefully they will leave my bulbs alone long enough for the bulbs to grow.  We can hope, and wait and see.

The plants in the green house are doing fine.  I did move some of the house plants that were outside into the green house.  Most of those house plants look like they will survive, though they do show some signs of damage.  One in particular, a spider plant, does not look good.  I’m not sure if it will survive.

But I repotted one lemon tree and it is doing much better.  The repotted lemon tree was the older of the two trees.  The younger tree is putting out blossoms.  Since it is in a green house, and I haven’t seen any bees in there to pollinate, I will have to take a paint brush and go pollinate my lemon tree.  We’ll see how that works.  I hope it works well.

I received my 3 x 3 foot planter.  I haven’t put it together yet.  Bill and I have been discussing what to do for a fence in the back yard.  If the weather stays this nice, I may want to put up the planter sometime soon.  But right now we are on a wait and see.  And of course if the weather stays this nice, I will need to start planting seeds soon.

But we are starting to get some more work done on the front yard.  Today Aby’s workers are working.  They are grading the front area, near the street and will lay down rock.  This should help with weeds and drainage, at least we hope it will.

UPDATE:  I went into the green house with a paint brush to pollinate the lemon tree.  There were bees on the flowers.  I guess with this nice weather the bees made it into the green house and found the lemon trees.  I just hope the bees know how to get out of the green house before the top louvers close tonight.

They didn’t say how much rain, but we are getting some light rain again.  We’re not even up to a quarter of an inch, but at least its a slow light soaking rain.  The ground will be happy even if we don’t get a lot of water into the tanks.

One interesting lesson – we had a green breathable plant blanket covering a set of plants.  The plants were under  a PVC frame, then the plant blanket on top of the PVC frame.  Well, it may be breathable, but not a lot of water got to the plants.  The center of the plant blanket, where water collected in a pool, was letting a small drip of water thru.  We had a pool of water on top of the blanket.  We just went outside to take the blanket off and realized that we had quite a pool of water on top of the blanket. Interesting thing to remember.  They may be good blankets to keep frost off of the plants, but they don’t necessarily let a lot of moisture thru them.

Yesterday we had to go to Home Depot.  I picked up a new pot for the lemon tree and two blackberry plants.  They are small blackberry plants, the inexpensive $8, in paper cup kind of plant.  They seem to be essentially bare roots stuck in dirt – definitely dormant plants.  I have them soaking in water, but I don’t think they will get potted today.  I did repot the lemon tree, and in the process used most of the potting mix I had.  So hopefully tomorrow or Thursday I can go pick up more potting soil and pot the blackberries.

Yesterday I also ordered a raised bed system.  I ordered it from Gardeners Supply.  I ordered:
3 X 3 foot raised bed
liner for the bed
garden hoops – not sure if I will need them but I figured I could use them to keep critters out
grow bags – I’ve never used them but they might be useful to grow things in.

I also ordered some seeds from Park Seeds.  Actually I ordered a whole mess of seeds from Park Seed. One problem I’m finding here is that Home Depot and Lowes seem to sell on a national date system.  What do I mean by that? Well, here we have a long growing season.  Our average first frost is November 21-30, and our last frost date is March 11-20.  So we can grow frost free at least 8 months out of the year.  But right now, early January, both stores have little to nothing available.  So if you want to start plants in a greenhouse, and I have a greenhouse I can use, you can’t get much out there.  They don’t even have much in the way of pots to purchase.  So I ordered stuff online.  I’ll try to order roses sometime soon.  Those will have to go into pots, otherwise they are deer candy.

The weather seems to have warmed up today.  Its 1pm and we are up to 54 degrees.  Its pleasant outside.  I went out and checked the greenhouse, haven’t done that in a few days, more like over a week.  Surprisingly, everything seems to be doing well.  I did go into the greenhouse last week to move some house plants in there, but that had been all.  So today I went in to check everybody.  Actually all those poor seeds I had put in the pots seems to be more then happy.  They are coming up.  IN DROVES!!  I think I planted too many seeds.  But they are coming up. It is I admit nice and warm, not to hot and with some pleasant sun in there.  I think the house plants will enjoy it for a while.  

Guess what!! I think we actually got a light dusting of snow last night.  It didn’t last, but you can see this fine, and not quite so fine line of white in the angles of rooflines.  So I think we actually got a little bit of snow sometime last night.  I’m not sure if we actually got rain too, but it is wet outside. Its still pretty cold out there, so until it warms up its probably not the best place to go driving.

Weather update – They are saying we may be in for an actual winter weather event.  What is that you ask?  Possible snow/sleet tonight.  Right now I’m not so sure it will happen up here where we are, but you never know.  I’m sure it would be unusual.  On the other had, if it actually happens, I wouldn’t want to have to drive up or down our driveway.  Our driveway is just too steep and I could see it getting treacherous. This new weather is due to hit tonight and last thru tomorrow, Friday, around noon.  We’ll see.

Wicked weather.  We’ve been cold, cool, and still no real rain.  The weather has been up and down, some cold and cool days – right now at 8:30 am its all of 35, after a low of 32.  We’ve even had some below freezing nights.  But not any real rain.  I say not any real rain because the other day we had heavy fog – the houses across the street were mere shadows.  That much moisture registered on the rain gauge, but no rain fell from the sky.  So the water catchment tanks didn’t get any new water.  So I can’t say it really rained.

And with some of these cold days, the humidity has varied widely.  One day it was cold and blustery, very windy, and the humidity level was down to 11% – that is dry.  Right now humidity is 78%.

But the holidays were nice.  We saw some family on Christmas Day.  Then the day after Christmas we went to see some other family here in Austin.  That day it was so cold I wore one of my down jackets.  That’s how cold it was around Christmas.  By New Years Eve we were just foggy.  Today its clear enough to see across the hills.  Not much wind, but its expected to be cold/cool for the next few days. Next week it should warm up enough for the nights to be out of the low 30’s and into the 40’s.  That will be good for the plants.

That might also be good for the deer.  The poor deer have not been looking too good out there.  Actually some of them look a bit scrawny.  And since its so cold, they are eating whatever green shrubbery they can find.  Between the deer and the cold I’m sure we’ll be replacing plants come spring.

The lantana is not taking this cold well.  It actually looks in pretty bad shape.  The plumbago is well eaten by the deer now, but what is left of it also looks pretty scrawny.  And the esperanza has been munched on and looks almost black from the cold.  The bulbs I put in are putting out their tops and those tops are being nibbled on by the deer.  I know most of the deer will survive, but I’m not sure which of my plants will.  Sone of the irises have been pulled out by the deer.  The deer don’t seem to care for eating the irises but they seem to try them anyway.

I’m starting to think about plants for the spring and what and how I want to plant things.  I’m thinking I may just figure out where and how to do some raised beds.  I’m hoping to find some sort of recycled material raised beds on Amazon.com.  I’m not sure what I will find, but its either that or large pots.  I did pick up some large pots but right now the photinia are living in them.  When we got back from the Nov. trip and I was watering plants I realized the photinia were not absorbing water well.  So I purchased three large whiskey barrel type plastic pots and put the photinia in them.  This way I could water and let the photinia sit in the water a bit to absorb some.  The good news is I’m pretty sure the plants absorbed the water well before we hit this cold weather.  Though I’m not too worried about them as they are sitting right next to the house.  The house type plants I had in the front of the house are not sitting under the sheltered back patio.  Hopefully they will survive the cold. I’m sure I put them back there a bit late, but we’ll see what happens and if they survive.