Good call. The ants in my yard congregate around my fig tree.

It was 80 here Friday and Saturday.  This is what the garden looked like.



Then, Sunday, the weather turned a bit cooler... We had some ice and snow and freezing fog .. and thunder and lightning all at the same time.

An idea of the depth that fell.



Upper garden, there are turnip seeds under this blanket.



These are the salad greens and garlic:



This bed (left) is Early Alaska Peas.  On th right is onions.



Just were beginning to pop up, we'll see how frost hearty they really are... One more reason why I only used 1/3-1/2 my seeds for the early planting.  Last year taught me to be patient and conservative.




TRG

We went from about 78 down to 28. We had one ice related call this morning but above I-10 there are a lot  of areas affected.

My starter garden is a work in progress and needed the rain .  If it will dry out for the weekend I will till it again.

We still had roads covered this morning.  Van Zandt county took the brunt of the ice this time.  

With the equivalent of 1.5" of rain on the ground here it will be a week or two before I can do any more planting and tilling.

We had temps in he teens Sunday night and Monday night.  Never got above 27 yesterday with less than 15 minutes of sunlight.

TRG

Today's update....

10 days ago it was 17 degrees with 2-3" of ice/snow.  Today I planted 19 peppers and 13 tomato plants.  In 2011 and 2012 I planted in Mid-March and had no issues.  Last year (2013) I planted Mid-March and got wiped out with late frosts.   I'm gambling now.  But, the total cost for the plants was 12 bucks.

The tiller that I bought last spring (used Troy-bilt) had a clogged carb when I bought it.  I did get it running, but, it clogged again and ran rough all through the Fall.  I added fresh gas this Spring along with some B-12 Chem Tool and it broke the clogged jets free.  Runs like new now.

It is not a full sized tiller, so it can be hard to keep straight on long rows:



I used the black pots that I salvaged from the greenhouse last Spring and used them to make hot houses for the plants.



Supposedly this will help them warm up faster and grow quicker.  If there is a frost this will help mitigate the effect if I cover each plant.  



This is the low garden, closest to the house.  In the bare spot, prior to the black pots, I plan to put 100 sweet potato sets in May.





The two green rows are filled with lettuce, carrots, garlic, beets, cabbage... multi-crop that you saw in the previous pics.  With warmth, and fertilizer, it is beginning to grow well.









The green row is Early Alaska peas.  The frost did affect some of them.  I will give it a week and if it does not re-grow I will re-seed.   They put on seeds early and once they are done I will probably plant corn or squash here.



I'm still not quite getting my onions to grow as vigorously as they should.  It;s getting too late to plant more without hte heat causing them to bolt.



I also planted 2 rows that are 5'x75' of pinto beans today and the row of 5x75 of turnips has sprouted.

These last three months are now officially that #4 driest on record for DFW.   My plans for another drought riddles garden are going to be well tested.


TRG

Had a trespasser on the back of the place.  Eugene tried to check their ID and they made a furtive movement...



TRG

Ok, got everything planted now for the early garden.

This is what is in the ground... starting from the upper garden and working it's way closer to the low garden by the house.

In 5x75' beds:

Gourds
Peanuts
Pinto beans (2 beds)
Turnips
Oats (4 beds)

In the low garden

Onions (300)
Alaska Peas
Beets
Zukes
Garlic
Lettuce
Carrots

Tomatoes
Radish
Eggplant
Peppers
Carrot (seed)
Marigold (seed)


Radishes and carrots were planted in between the peppers and tomatoes to be harvested in 45-60 days.  They will help control early weeds and aerate.

Marigolds are supposed to help with bug control, so they are planted in/around the pepper, tomato and eggplants.

Bug killer has been applied and should help prevent cutworms and ants.

Rain on the radar.

now it is time to simply sit back and wait for a late season frost to kill everything.  

TRG

Yup.  35 for the low predicted, with some models saying 33.

I will be covering the tomatoes and peppers tonight.  

Good luck on your blueberries.  I planted three varieties last season.  Only one survived.  They are finicky about the soil conditions.

You need to upload some pics.

TRG

A whole half pallet?

As opposed to half a full pallet?

You're sore from getting old, not moving dirt.

BTW, light frost here.  35 this morning.  Had everything covered, but, we'll know tomorrow if there was any frost damage.

TRG

Great thread, good looking garden.  Hope I'm not insulting your intelligence here but I've started putting non-ethenol gas in all my stuff that sits up for a while between usings and it has helped a great deal with the carb problems.  Good luck with the garden,  Lee.

No insult here.  The Troy bilt tiller had been stored by the previous owner with regular gasoline for 3-5 years.  That was the source of the clog.  I had cleaned the carb, sprayed it liberally with cleaner and apparently missed a small piece of lacquer that dislodged.

I now store all my carbed items (mower, tiller, chainsaws) with dry carbs over the winter.

TRG

Doesn't look like I'll be planting anytime soon. I need to re-organize my garden layout and just haven't had time.

It's still a few weeks away from any threat of a surprise frost.... you got time.

TRG

Thanks.

It's been a fun thread to me as well.

TRG

We ducked in to the high 30s two nights ago, 40s last night... Some of the eggplants are suffering from the chills, but, most of the other plants are doing fine.

Lettuce, garlic, carrots, mixed greens.  It's "all you can eat" right now on lettuce.  The more I pull the thicker it grows.  It has also been fertilized twice this Spring and I have watered in the fertilizer each time.  The walkways have been tilled twice and the rows themselves weeded twice.  There is a row of mustard greens and turnips to the right, prior to the black pots that contain tomatoes.  These were planted last week and are just breaking the soil.  The small humps in the walkways are an attempt to catch and slow any rainfall.  Garden is not quite level:



Onions, with a lot more fertilizer than ever before.... going gang busters.



upper garden.  5 solid rows on the left are all oats.  The small prigs in the first bed on the right is turnips.  Two beds of pinto beans just beginning to bud.  Then peanuts and gourds.

These are all going to be left to their own devices.  I do not plan to irrigate this area this season.  Rainfall amounts are already low and drought is still on the news every weathercast.

I live in Fort Bend county and do not know where to get any non ethenol gas  any ideas.

http://pure-gas.org/

channel view and port lavaca are the closest  I need to get several 5 gallon cans and make a trip.  last real gas I got was at a truck stop outside of abiline Texas and it ran real good

Looks good TRG you got a jump start on us. It was 25 deg the other morning and it will be next week when we plant.

Had a little free time, and decided to be nice to the widow woman that lives next door.  I normally take her vegetables, canned stuff and enjoy being nice to her.  She bakes pecan pies that are only second to my mother's.

I put in a garden for her last year, but ... it did not generate the level of vegetables that it could have produced if I had kept a better eye on it.  This year, I planned it out a little better and she should be able to harvest it more easily with fewer weeds and grass.



The right side is South and I planned the garden to be worked from that side.  Lower plants, like peppers and eggplants, then tomatoes, then corn.  Should keep shading down and the hotter side has the more drought tolerant plants (peppers and eggplants).  The less tolerant (corn) is going to be slightly cooler based on soil shading.

Onions, far left, are meant to be pulled earlier along with the fast growing mustard greens.  By the time the corn gets to the point of shading the row those crops will be out and the corn should help shade out invasive grass.

Virginia loves turnips, and even though I have a huge bed of them (5'x75') I decided to make her a plot of her own.  These should last well in to summer for her by being nestled between the corn and tomatoes.  Nice and shady for greens and later for turnips to pull.

Eggplants are on the hot/dry end and they are hardy plants, they don't break easily and she can move through them to harvest tomatoes without worrying about damaging the eggplants.

All of the peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants have deer bones under them for calcium and minerals.

The alaska peas will be done in about 6 weeks and she is going to add in some more peppers on that row.  As the peas play out, they're going to be turned under for nitrogen.  They should not compete with the peppers.

There are red radishes between the peppers I added biferthin crumbles to the soil to kill grub worms and stop cut worms.  

I tilled it the first time two weeks ago and she added 13-13-13.  I tilled it yesterday before planting and watered in some more 13-13-13.

Now, we wait and see if the plants do as they should.

The garden is about 25 feet long and 10 feet wide.

TRG

Neat little diagram.  Once I get moved into my next house, I might come back to that and use it as a template.

Well, let's see if it works first.  

My 'best laid plans' have not always been the genius that they appeared to be at first.

I am reminded of a snake trap ...

TRG

I'm always laying things out in my head for how I expect something to go.  It almost never works as expected.

You are not alone...  http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1606436_Sum_up_your_first_sexual_experience_with_a_gif_.html

TRG

Oh snap.

Hopefully the garden works out for your neighbor this time. That's damn nice of you to do that for her.
We will keep that here in this subsection, don't want people getting the wrong idea in the rest of the forum.

Well, that was one thing that went about as expected.

She has two sons (mid-40s), two daughters, 6+ grandkids, son in laws and daughter in laws .... all living on the 10 acres that she owns.

Half of them are FSA.  I do the garden to rub mud in their eyes as much as to help her.

She's 70+, spry and appreciates the work I do.  She works two jobs and always brings me pecan pie, babnana bread or bottles of wine for my effort.  I keep asking her to stop bringing us food and wine.  She won't.

We generally chat quite a bit while I am there.  I get all the local gossip.

I asked her the other day why none of her kids or grandkids did the small amount of work it requires to help her put in a vegetable patch.

"Because they are all just damn lazy and ignorant!"

TRG

I need another spoonful of pecan pie like I need another hole in my head, but I will pay her $25 for another one of her pecan pies.  I've never had one even close to being that good!

My garden ended up being four 25 ' rows.  I put in a drip water line down each row.  wife said it would be make watering easy.  watering was never hard its the weeding that is hard.

Question.  This was my father's house and I have just gotten to going through and cleaning out his work shop.  he has been gone 6 years.

Found all kinds of neat stuff but he had the attic of the garage and work shop loaded down.  I found a old bag of 13-13-13  do you think it would still be good and what would or how would you use it.  I threw away the 3 bags of white lime and 1000 gatorade and mayo jars.

Should have kept the lime for SSS  Thye fertilizer is still good as would have been the lime.  After your plants get started, topdress around them at a safe distance from the plant to keep from fertilizer burning them. A little is good and more very bad.

I would have kept the lime but he had the deterioating bags inside 30 year old trash bags and it was all i could do to get them down through the open rafters into a trash can.

I have always said there is a missing step in the SSS plan SSWLS  would be the real solution also white lime is good when you get stuck and slipping in super damp soil.

If you are stuck in a place and cannot get big enough help in to get out put the lime around the tires and in the ruts , work it in and wait.  it can give you an edge to get out.

My guestion is why did he put it up there in the first place.

Well that sucks.
At least you can have a little fun while helping her. She sounds pretty cool.

I'll set one back for you.

TRG

I came home yesterday to find a rosemary plant (3" pot) tied to my front gate.  It's the little things like that plant that keeps me doing favors for her.  Babnana nut bread was in my mailbox day before that.

TRG

Nice.

I'm the kind of rube that will work all day for a six pack of cold beer if I know it was appreciated.  

Oddly enough, it is her daughter that stiffed me out of an apple cobbler two years ago that helped precipitate the chasm between me and my neighbor (her daughter and SIL).

In the meant time, the widow has baked me half a dozen pecan pies, a dozen babnana breads, given me several bottles of wine, kale seeds, etc etc.

The widow has a new vegetable garden, her daughter has nothing but grass where there was once a garden.  

TRG

Minor updates.  We had a little rain on the garden.  We are still waaay under our annual rainfall, but the lower garden has been watered, by me, several times.   I don't plan to water the upper garden this year.  We'll just see how it goes up there.

For now, it is doing pretty well.



That is the row of turnips.  I can see now that I planted too many, and on the day I planted it was windy, so it blew most of the seed to the right.   I walked down it with a long toothed garden rake to thin it last week, but, that was not enough.  I need a way to thin it without ripping out every plant.  And, I also need to do it without losing too much of the moisture.  Open to suggestions here.

Here are some more pics of the area and you can see the difference in the growth between the properly spaced seedlings and the over crowded ones.

Left side ... properly spaced, right side ... over crowded.



Some more of that area and the pinto beans in the background.  They are doing well.



A loner, without competition and Mikhail's leg for scale.



These turnips are not critical crops.  I don't want to kill them, and I am also not depending upon them.  I have other turnips planted in the lower garden.  But, I would like to see if I can give them a chance to grow with less over crowding ... somehow.

TRG

It's been two weeks since I fertilized the onions and tilled the weeds.Two years ago I did the weeding with a hoe.  It was a losing battle.

Based upon the advice of the Joy of Gardening book I am now using a tiller for planting and weed control.   I space the rows out one tiller width apart.  About 24"

This allows me to do the weeding between the rows in just about 1 minute per row.  

From this:



To this, in under 2 minutes:



The tiller does kick up a border of dirt,  This will get on to crops, like lettuce, so it is best to have already cut what you need for the lower plants before tilling.

This was several pounds of lettuce.  You can barely tell I removed any from the garden.



Now.



This border of dirt tends to create the effect of a raised bed.  Because I am trying to plant as close to ground level as possible, because of the Texas droughts this ca be counter-productive.  But, it also provides some benefits as well.  These are peppers on the right, and tomatoes on the left.  A few egg plants as well on the left.



Last year, a poster in this thread and I discussed the way water is preserved in India using berms to stop the water from flowing away and forcing it back to the ground.  Since the tilling creates raised beds, I use the loose dirt to build mini-berms.  I offset them along each row.  It does seem to help.  But, if we get a torrential rain, I suspect that they will wash out.  For now, it has helped.



The raised bed has a lip on it from the tiller.  Instead of removing it, I allow it to build up.  The lips help form a cup that I can use to retain water directly over the plants that I want to water.  The walkways remain under near-drought conditions.  This prevents the weeds and grasses from benefitting from my irrigation. You can't go nuts with the water hose, but, it means I am feeding and watering only those plants that I want to grow.



Same process holds true for the peppers and tomatoes.  I have left the plastic cups on them so that the calcium (oyster shell) and granular fertilizer will be directed to each plant and not washed away when I spray water.  The small basin in between the plants are not empty.  They serve tw purposes.  One, they help retain additional water on that 'bed'.  Two, there are marigolds, carrots, and radishes planted in the area between these peppers and tomatoes.  They will help aerate the soil, break up the sunlight and take advantage of any splashed fertilizer.



Looking East over the garden, for perspective.



The area that is closest to the camera is not bare.  It is growing beans right now and there is additional fertilizer added, along with all the remaining potting soil that the college gave me.  This is going to be where I plant the sweet potatoes in a few weeks.  This area is among the driest of the whole lower garden.  I have been trying to add enough bio mass to it to help retain moisture.  I have 200 plants ordered.  I thought I only ordered 100.  I will probably use the area where the Alaska peas are growing to plant more potatoes.  Not sure yet where I am going to put the extra 100 plants.  



TRG

The Super Major is giving me those 'come hither and take me out for a mow' looks...

The tiller idea is working pretty good, I might have to try that myself.

It also looks like the mule has come in handy.

I mowed with it the other day.  Weeds are pretty light, so it was just a reason to run a trail around the perimeter of the property.  It's a 6' mower, I had to look behind me to make sure it was still mowing.  It never seemed to notice the mower was there.

Also, my 'disabled' neighbor bought/received a used Massey over the winter.  He's been trying to get it to run for about two months.  It was a chance to let him see the Super Major in action.  I offered to sell it to him once.  It wasn't good enough for him.

TRG

The tiller works pretty well, but since your garden is raised beds, I doubt it would work as well for you.

Mule is much more convenient than the Super M with a trailer.  I still can't quite get the shift cable to engage properly and after getting it stuck a couple times, I have figured out that the differential lock is not engaging either.

I am in it cheap enough that I may invest in getting it properly repaired at the local Kawasaki dealership.  

TRG

Couple of updates.  Had a little spare time and materials laying around and decided it was time to make something new and obnoxious to go up 'to keep deer' out of my garden.  In reality, I just like the fact that my neighbor finds these things annoying.  I took some galvanized pipes and decided to make a new windchime.



I started with the muffler as the clanger, but, although it did strike a nice note, it was too large and allowed the pipes to rest upon it, thus dampening the resonance.





This was an early effort.  It is close to 8' OAL, so the perspective makes it look smaller.  The limb I chose is springy and helps keep it clanging.



I think I have some more pics from different clangers that I will upload.

Had a visitor yesterday.



Dogs did not kill it.  During the day I let the chickens out to get worms from the wet soil.  A pair of foxes hit them.  I lost a rooster and two hens.  



Eugene also grabbed a hen.  I think his prey instinct was too much to bear, and as I was calling the hens back to the coop he grabbed one.  It is, at best, wounded, possibly crippled.  I put it in a nest overnight and have not checked it this morning to see if it lived.  My remaining rooster was also wounded, but lived.  Another hen has some scratches.  

I had closed the windows on the house because of the rain and did not hear the commotion until the foxes had already made off with two.

Good news on the rain, the little India-style lakes worked as designed.  Under 1" of rainfall, but, each of these held water and directed it down instead of across the ground.







I think there is a soil issue in the upper garden.  Some oats are going to seed, others (background) are stunted and yellowed.



I think this soil issue, not over crowding, is why the turnips in the area are not doing well.  The dividing line between 'good' and 'poor' soil is indicating a problem.  I did thin them and fertilized prior to the rain.



Peanuts are just coming up.  They were planted a month ago.



Weeds will be an issue with the peanut row.  I may till them back under and re-do them to give the peanuts a head start against the weeds.



Final (for now) version of the chimes.  The iron plates work ... ok... not great.  The mass is too much and it weighs down the naturally springy limb.   I am still looking for a dense, but light, clanger.



TRG

Pic I missed.  Just a general overview of the garden as-is.




Freeze is possible tonight. Temps will be at/near record lows.  The previous record for a freeze (last recorded) is April 13th.  

It is already 24 degrees below normal.  

Some of the plants are still not above their bucket lips, I can cover them easily.  Others are too tall already.  I might lose a few plants afterall.

Most things are frost hardy.  Onions, turnips, peas, lettuce.  Some tomatoes and peppers, are going to be the issue.  A few buck's worth of plants at most.

TRG

You need to learn how to make a fox stole out of that stealing fox...