Author: Cat C L

Yes, its over 100 degrees here. If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard from me its because not much is happening in the yard. We’ve been hovering in the high 90’s with the nights barely lowering to the mid 70’s, and the yard is just trying to stay alive. We’ve lost the squash plants, and the peas and bean plants. Its just too hot. But the carrots are staying alive, and the swiss chard is hanging on.

We also realized we had one other funny problem. As you might recall my DS took ill about 9 months ago. We had a friend helping in the yard. For the winter we had closed off water valves so they didn’t freeze. Well we forgot to turn some of them on. We recently spent some time going thru the watering system and finally go everything turned back on. Which was good to do as its been simply hot. So hopefully we won’t lose much of anything. We have had to make some replacements. The soaker hose in the yard died – actually it broke. And some of the water heads need to be replaced. Nothing horrendous to do, but with this heat we need to get it done and quickly. Since August is our hottest month usually, we’re just trying to keep everything alive until we begin cooling down.

Hopefully we’ve managed to do that and in the fall we’ll have more things growing. I’m already thing about what to begin planting for the fall. It can’t come too soon.

I got a new garden toy. I got a smoker/grill, and yes my husband put it together. I had to help as it really is a two person job. Here’s what I got:

I picked it up at Home Depot. Its small, since I don’t cook for large crowds, and it was inexpensive, since its for me to learn. I’m glad I went this way.

Things I’ve learned so far:

• You will go thru more charcoal briquets than you think. I lot more! I did chicken thighs last night and it took me quick a while (over 2 hours) since I didn’t use enough briquets. I added more briquets every 30 minutes, so I went thru a lot of them. Also, its helpful to figure out an easier way to add briquets. I found a small pail that I used to scoop the briquets from the bag into the side box. But it took so long I actually had to finish the thighs inside on the stove. But they still came out well.
• If you get an inexpensive grill/smoker, don’t use wood – use briquets. I put soaked wood chips and that was fine. But I put in some dry wood chips and it wasn’t a good idea. I now have blisters on the paint. My own fault.
• You need to get it hot to begin with. Don’t put briquets in and the meat at the same time. I actually used a chimney started to get the briquets started, put them in the side box, then just added more briquets. I’ve had trouble getting the temperature up to 200. Most of the time I’m cooking at just under that. Which means my food takes that much longer. But the chicken last night was tasty, so I’ll have to learn how to get the smoker hotter.
• The colder it is outside, the cooler the grill seems to be. Maybe I didn’t have enough briquets in the side box, but we had a sudden cold front yesterday, it dropped 20 degrees, and I found as it cooled down outside, so did the smoker. At one point I had the smoker at just barely below 200, but then it dropped down to about 150 degrees. Like I said, I finished the chicken inside. 
• Its helpful to figure out how you’re going to clean it out afterwards. One – with constant briquets it may take a while for it to cool down. Two, you don’t want ash in there if its a windy day. You’ll just end up with ash on your food. Since where I live I get wind, that is something to figure out.

All in all I’m glad I got it. But it will definitely be a learning process. And I’m going to get more briquets next time.

We’ve had rain off and on for the past two weeks. Its been nice. Its been just a couple days of rain last week, and we’ve had rain off and on this week. Here, we’ve had just less than an inch, though other areas have had flash flooding and hail. But the plants love it.

Right now everything is growing well, plants are lush, trees are growing, grass is green, and the four legged lawnmowers, aka deer, are fat and sassy. I bet we’ll have quite a few young ones this year.

Right now in the garden we have pretty much everything coming up well. The only problem we’ve had is bugs eating the collard greens. Other than that the peas are coming up, we’ve been getting asparagus, even the apple trees have apples already. With the warm spring we’ve had I’m not surprised at how things are growing. The concern is how warm will summer be and will it arrive early? We’ll have to wait to find that one out.

How to find tools in the yard

I figured with this sunny yellow I would be able to find my gardening tools when they are in the yard. I hope it actually works. The tools all have wooden handles, and most are in bad shape. So it was sand them down with sandpaper then paint them. I used good old Rustoleum paint, in a can not spray paint, and gave them two coats. They were still drying when I took the picture. I set them in the holes on the table so they would not touch anything and let them dry. Now we’ll see if this color works. Hopefully it does.

Weather here has been strange. We had such a cold, but short spell of weather. Then it warmed up. Overall its been warm now, at least warm enough for plants to begin growing. Seed has been sown and lettuce is coming up. The artichokes are growing back as are the asparagus. We’ve even begun harvesting a few asparagus. The snow peas are just starting to produce though I haven’t picked any yet.

Since we did have such a cold spell, when we got down to 17, the fruit trees (apples) have already begun flowering. One weekend we even went out and used paint brushes to pollinate them. Small apples have already begun growing. But with that cold we did lose at least a few trees. Some of the citrus frozen back as did at least one avocado. All in all I don’t think it was too bad.

Even the green house lost a few plants. Some of the house plants that had lived there froze and died. Though overall most everything survived. Even the aloe is still growing. But I think the bougainvillea is history – its branches just snap and crack when bent. 

But with the warmth we’ve had the blueberries have begun putting out berries. Even the strawberries survived the cold and are starting to produce. Though I think we’ll need to add a few to the patch.

But the new trees, especially the pomegranate Wonderful is doing well. Its actually doing better than our older pomegranate. Maybe we’ll finally get some pomegranates. I do like them.

We are having some problem with trees along the fence line. We’ve had problems with them dying. Now we’ve lost about 8 (maybe more) plants. They were trees/bushes. They were to provide privacy, but with them dying that’s not happening. So now we’re looking at pulling those trees out and putting in something new. We’re thinking about putting in Mountain Laurels. They should be a good tree/bush for Texas. They don’t tend to require much care, they certainly don’t have to be babied to grow. We’ve already put in four, but we do need more.

Today we’ve a cool day. Yesterday we had slightly warmer weather (63), but rain. So who knows. Today may be cooler (48), but at least no rain. Tomorrow we should be 70. So when I say this is strange weather, the temperature has just been up and down. 

Its been so nice the fruit trees are trying to bud. Not the best time for that. But the weather has been mild, even though some nights have gotten down to 35 or so.

Planting reminders (old farmers almanac emails):
Under cover or indoors – start seeds now:
broccoli, summer cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant, kale, leeks, leaf lettuce, onion, peas, peppers, spinach, large tomatoes.

We started most of these outside in the garden since the weather has been mild (no eggplant or leeks). If we actually get cold I’ll cover them. But I’m not expecting that.

We did have some problems with our watering system. We had a pipe leak and had to get it fixed. We actually lost quite a bit of water (almost drained the tanks) from that. Luckily after we got it fixed we got rain so the tanks are full again. That was not a good experience. But we are back up and running again, sort of. The pumps used to be able to be started by an app on the cell phone. Well that is not running so we have to go manually start up the pump. Basically we just have to hit the button to start them up so its not a big deal really. Its just we cannot do it remotely. Not the end of the world.

We hit a low this morning/last night of 17.4. That’s low for anywhere. We’re supposed to warm up to 42, but drop down to a low of 24 again tonight. Crazy Texas weather. Not sure what all has frozen, but I’m sure we lost plants. I’m hoping we didn’t lose too many pipes too. Plants are so much easier to replace than plants.

New notes:
Plants to sow indoors or under covers:
summer cabbage, celery, eggplant, leeks, leaf lettuce, onion

Our high today was at midnight. Its now 4pm and the temperature is dropping again. We got up to 30, but its now down to 28. They are saying tonight should get down to 20. It will be interesting to see if we drop below that.

Tomorrow will hopefully be warmer during the day, but tomorrow night will be cold again.

Yesterday we hit 60, but last night we dropped to 25. The next couple of days should e cold. Day’s will be cold – today we should be just above freezing. And tonight they are forecasting 21. Tomorrow they say we’ll get up to low 40’s, maybe 42, but tomorrow night should be another 21 degree night. Then it warms back up. Crazy weather. Let’s hope this time nothing freezes.

Our last freeze about 2 weeks ago, one pipe for the rain water did freeze. We were able to get Pat to fix it. Pat came over last weekend and did some work. He actually got a lot done, which I’m very glad about. I’m just hoping we don’t lose any more pipes in this freeze.

Today was warm and nice. By that I mean 79 degrees today. And just as strange is that tomorrow we should hit all of 59. We’ll see what the weather has to offer.