Author: Cat C L

We were gone for a week and the garden took off.  Its like everything is coming up.  I have pea plants, bean plants, the corn is coming up, the stick of a fig tree (new) has a baby fig, the thyme is taking over the pot, and even the lemon trees are showing new growth.  I guess spring has actually sprung. 

Oh, and the fruit trees have leaves and some buds left.  But you do have to be careful outside.  Some areas are swarming with bees.  Yes I know, lucky us.  We have bees.

But we still haven’t had any rain. They keep teasing us and saying 30% chance.  But nothing has come of it.  We can hope.

The good news is we have warmish weather for the next 10 days. By warmish I mean mid 70’s maybe, high 60’s.  Not hot by Texas standards, but warm enough for seeds to sprout.  Right now the seeds I planted a while back are growing, at least most of them are.  I did plant new seeds earlier this week.  I planted corn, some squash, watermelon, tomato seeds (probably be better off with plants), and some more lettuce.  We’ll see how they do.

The fruit trees are doing well.  At this time, everyone has at least some flowers on the branches.  The Anna apple is the only one I’m a bit worried about.  Its the smallest of the trees and doesn’t look so happy after last week’s cool front.  I’m hoping with the warm weather it will begin getting happier.  But it does still have some flowers, just not too many.  The Dorsett has far more flowers, but it is a larger, taller tree.

Even the pear is starting to flower and the plum has lots of happy flowers.

I did go out this morning and pull some weeds in front.  I also threw out some annual flower seeds.  I’m not holding my breath on those, but you never know.  They are last year seeds. I did plant some flower seeds in the pots in the back.  I also added some plant food to those pots.  I figured they could probably use the help. Now to see what will grow.

Well, today we finally got some rain.  Not a lot mind you, so far only .13 inches.  But the weather has been nice.  We had one night that was supposed to get down to mid 30’s, but only made a low of 41.  So we haven’t had a cold spell for a couple of weeks. 

So the garden is growing pretty well.  I did lose the tomato plant, but that appears to be all. The lemon trees have lost their leaves, and I’ve had to cut them back, but the branches look healthy so I’m hoping it will come back. 

The peas are growing well, the strawberry plant has flowers and baby strawberries growing, and the fruit trees are blooming.  Well, the apple trees are blooming and the plum tree is just getting a few blossoms.  The pear is getting buds, but no flowers yet.  The fig tree even looks like its coming back after the freeze.

Since its rained today I will do some more seed planting tomorrow.  The next 10 day forecast show no cold weather so I think seeds should be good to plant now.

What a lovely cold front.  We hit a low of 21 last night.  They had forecast a low of 26, but we hit that around 4-5 PM yesterday.  But this morning is lovely, and we’ve warmed up to all of 31degrees by 11:30 AM.  Tonight they are saying a low of 31 degrees with a 50% chance of rain/freezing rain.  And we’re supposed to hit a high of 47 today.  So it will be a roller coaster weather the next few days.

And again, no gardening for me.  Glad the plants are covered.

Just a side note, I’ve already had a few irises blooming, purple irises.

We had a lovely mid-70’s degree day yesterday.  Today it has dropped from 69 to 48 in about an hour, this morning.  And now we have rain.  Tonight it due for a cold low of about 29 degrees.  We had 80 degree weather just the other day.  The other day when we had the cold come thru I had covered the plants out back.  I had not uncovered them.  Now I’m glad I left them covered.

Weird weather.

I guess no gardening for me today.

Update:  Its 12:30 and it has dropped to 38 outside.  And we’ve now had 0.35 inches of rain.  Like I said, weird weather.

2nd update:  its 4pm and we have gotten down to 32.  Now they are saying a low of 26 for tonight.  Cold evening here tonight.

So much for our lovely warm weather.  The other day we woke to foggy weather.  Today we woke up to cold drizzly weather.  Cold has been 35 to 37 since 6 AM and its now 4 PM.  Drizzly, we’ve had enough rain to measure on the weather gauge, but we’ve only had .16 inches and its taken 4 hours to get that.  Its just been a damp cold web day.  But tonight we might get just below freezing, we may hit 31 tonight.

So this morning we jumped up and covered plants we could cover.  Did not do anything with the fruit trees.  For those, I’m just hoping for the best.  Tomorrow we should hit 61 and on Friday we should hit 76.  So its just one of those things – a short cold spell.  Don’t know if its the last one of the season or not.

Oh, and I have carrots, lettuce, radishes, and some pea plants popping out of the ground already.  That’s why we had to jump up this morning and cover them.  Don’t want to lose them.

We’ve had nice consistent weather lately.  Had some fog in the morning, just a day or so ago.  But it burned off by afternoon to nice mid 70 degree weather.  Today its 3:30 PM and a nice 75 degrees outside.  The 10 day forecast shows night low not lower than 41, with most nights between 45 and 54 so the nights are not so cold I have to cover anything.

We bought some more large pots for the garden.  They are large plastic half barrel pots.  I have transplanted two berry plants into two of them, put a fig tree (Celeste) in one, and put yukon gold potatoes in the fourth pot.  I have planted 10 more strawberry Sequoia plants in the square planter I used last year.  I did put more potting soil in it.  I also put in 3 asparagus plants (Jersey Giant) in a bed.

The radishes appear to be coming up already, they have leaves.  Some of the lettuce and the mesclun also are popping out of the ground with leaves too.  All in all, I’m hopeful for the coming year.

I’m going to wait until we hit March 1 to plant any more seeds.  By then we’re more likely to be past any frost, the soil will definitely have warmed and I can grid out one more planter.

I’m getting excited.

We’ve had a cold few days here.  But yesterday we hit the mid 60’s and today, Friday, we made it to 81 degrees briefly.  And we should stay in the mid to high 70’s for the next week.  How’s that for weird weather.

But I took the time today and started planting a few things.  I put in:

• Sugar Ann Snap Peas
• Champion Radish
• Lettuce Master Chef
• Broccoli Major Hybrid
• Carrot Scarlet Nantes
• Little Marvel Pea

We’ll see what if anything comes up.

I also took some time to slash at the cactus.  We have a cactus patch I’m trying to keep under control.  It has spines so I’m not trying to let it grow.  I’d rather kill it off.  We have cactus in other areas of the yard, but this patch is just in a bad spot.

Another lovely day in paradise.  Yesterday we hit the low 70’s, it was nice and sunny outside.  Today not so much.  The temperature dropped over the evening and has been sitting at a nice cozy 38 degrees since about 7AM.  This may well be our high temperature for the day.  Tonight its supposed to drop to about 33, then tomorrow’s high should be about 38 with tomorrow low of just below freezing – 30.  By Thursday we should be low 60’s the Friday in the 70’s.  Not sure if this is our last cold front of the season or not.  Time will tell.

But with the warm weather we did get a grid down on one of the beds.  We ran out of stakes so I need more of those.  We didn’t exactly do them as one foot square blocks, like those used in square foot gardening.  The garden beds are roughly 4 feet by 10 feet.  Roughly.  They actually measure more like 4’2″ by 10’5″.  And those measurements are rough since the walls are actually made from blocks that are not exact.  The blocks have lots of bumps and lumps so its not quite precise.  But its close enough.  So the squares are basically 1 foot by 16 inches, or 1 foot by 1 foot 4 inches (1′ x 1’4″).  Close enough to work with.

Since we were warm yesterday we set up one grid.  With the cool weather today, I’ll wait until it warms and then I’ll begin some planting.  We’ll see how that goes.  But at least this time I can get things in early.

Today we went out to Lowe’s and I picked up a fig tree, grape vine, potato starters and some more seed – corn and sweet small peppers.  So I expect to be able to begin planting sometime this week.  Hopefully.  And hopefully I’ll get a better crop this year.

Its been a cold past few days.  Today, Saturday, we’ve begun to warm back up.  Thursday never really warmed up at all.  It just stayed cold, below 32/freezing cold. Yesterday, Friday it took until the afternoon until we got above freezing.  Then last night stayed just above freezing, 34 for the night.  But today since about 7AM it has begun to warm up.  Its about 12:30 PM, just after noon and we’re already up to 56.  Its still cool but not as cold as it was a few days ago.

So now maybe its time to start thinking about the planters.  I need to get actual measurements for the four planters.  Then I need to start thinking about what I’m going to plant where.