Potato's going in, Seedling Update

First, the potato's.  The buds have come in well, I'll only plant the strongest buds in the bags.  The red's seem to have budded a lot more than the Russet's have but both are good enough to plant.

I might be going a little much with how many I'm planting in the bags but we'll see when everything is mature.  Bag one 4 Russet, Bag two 5 Russet, Bag three 6 Russet, Bag four 6 Red.  I'll weigh the yield to see if the amount of plants made a difference or not.

Bag one, 4 Russet

Bag two, 5 Russet

Bag three, 6 Russet

Bag four, 6 Red

Now the seedlings.  True leaves have emerged throughout the seedlings.  Everything except the Cayenne peppers seem to be doing well.  Might have had a bad batch of seeds with those, none have germinated and I replanted.

Celery is coming up, very young, just took longer than I expected.  I added the second flat which has onions, eggplant, spinach, sage, and oregano.  A lot of it is coming up now.



I started watering with a mixture of fish emulsion to give the seedlings a little boost.  Looking at the warmer February and March, I may be putting plants into the garden a little earlier than March 10th.

January Harvest of Carrots

Who says you can't have fresh carrots in January?  If you are in south Texas you can, even with some temps dropping into the low 30's.  I planted a 5 foot single row in October.  I covered it with plastic as it got cold, and added a second layer of plastic in a make shift green house.  Still have about 45 onions slowly growing but will have to pull them by late February.

After cleaning and trimming the stems we had 12.3 oz.

If I was looking at having fresh carrots year round (or most of the year), I would figure having to plant 20 5 foot rows two weeks apart starting 10 March for 10 of the plantings.  The other 10 planting starting in late August.

Alternatively, plant them all at once and pressure can the harvest.

Prepping Potato's for a late January Planting

Had to start getting the potato's ready to plant at the end of this month.  Don't use potato's from the store, they've been treated with chemicals and are not intended to be grown.  I ordered organic red and russet potato seedlings.  Pretty inexpensive, I think it was about $6.

The apples in the paper bag give off a gas that promote the budding of the potato's.  When I put them in there were no buds present whatsoever (about 5 days ago).  Now you can see the budding quite well on the reds.

I plan to plant 6 seeds per bag.  The bags are 15 gallons.  I might be pushing it but it's a learning experience.  Have never done potato's before.

I'm only planting one bag of red potato's.  The three other bags for the russet potato's.  We eat more of the russet's but wanted to see how the red potato's would grow. 

Hopefully I'll be able to hold over my own seed potato's for next year so I won't have to invest in seed again.  I bought some burlap sacks for storage.




Based on where I live, I should have planted these in the fall like the asparagus but didn't know I was going to do it till December.  So we'll see if that affects the growth as well.

TIP OF THE GARDEN:  Succession Planting:  Just one other note from the lesson's I've learned especially over the last few years.  When it comes to greens or other plants you wish to eat fresh, succession planting is essential.  Basically, it's starting plants with an amount of time between starting them so you don't have 12 heads of lettuce mature at one time.  So say if you wait 7 days between starting seedlings for arugula, you'll have a head mature once a week for however many successions you plant.

Garden Update, Seedling Progress and Grow Bag Setup

17 Jan 2013

First, the seedlings. The peppers are now starting to come up, minus the Cayenne.  The okra is growing very well as are the tomato's.  Waiting on the celery also.  As you can see, I hooked up another light, I had some scrap wood, and light from our departed Chinese water dragon's cage.  So I pieced it together to give me more room the evening of the 14th.  This should allow a good transition to the quart containers and ensure enough light. 

I decided to reseed the cayenne and the celery the evening of the 16th and on the 17th I added another tray that has eggplant, onion, sage, oregano, and spinich that I can interplant or put in other areas of the garden.  I also replanted some Jalapeno's that hadden come up yet.

So I have the plan for this first grow season and I'll be doing a lot of growing in grow bags.  I just couldn't see building any more permanent beds taking over our back yard completely.  It will be interesting with the weather in south Texas as the grow bags are black and I wonder how much heat will be conducted to the roots as May and June approach.  Anybody have any experience, please share.

14 Jan 2013

I purchased these on Amazon as a way to drastically increase my growing potential while making it temporary. We have a very large flagstone patio that we had built so this seemed to be the most reasonable way to increase our growing potential without overtaking the yard.

This is what I'm going to plant:

1. 6 Manalucie Tomato's (interested to see how this hot weather tomato works)
2. 2 Roma Tomato's
3. 2 Rutger Tomato's
4. 2 Beefsteak Tomato's
5. 4 Okra
6. 8 Green Pepper
7. 14 hot pepper (Jalapeno and Cayenne) (Most in a topsy turvy bag)
8. 6 Celery
9. 24 Potato's

The potato's on the bottom of the pic, Okra and Cucumers on the left, then Tomato's, and lastly the Pepper's.  The Celery is going in the ground.  I have 8 other bags I haven't put out yet.

29 Oct 2012

This is the garden bed I'll be planting the three sisters in.  I have some onions, carrots, and lettuce that I'll have to pull by late Feb so I can prep the bed for a 10 March corn planting.  I've kept it growing by using plastic sheeting since I planted these late for the 2012 2nd growing season.  In will consist of 42 corn, 27 pole bean, and 16 squash.  Check the link out for more information but basically Native Americans would inter-plant these three as they were beneficial to each other.  The corn provides a pole for the beans, the beans return nitrogen to the soil for the next year, and the squash shields the ground from evaporation and to deter weeds.


This second garden was prepared in the fall and what you see are asparagus holes.  I already planted the two year old roots so hopefully we'll have a nice asparagus bed with some shoots this year, but much more in the years to come as it will take some time for the plants to mature to full production, probably 2-3 years.

13 Jan 2013

We'll be planting some carrots, parsnips, and herbs on the windowsill garden.  We got some Cilantro growing in it now.  I've got to finish some minor work on it.





20 Jan 2013

Gearing up to prep the grape vine

I had always heard that Texas is great for growing vines.........just not so great at producing quality grapes.  When we moved-in in 2010, we decided to try and grow a vine.  Bought it at Lowe's and put it in.  I knew it wouldn't be until the 3rd growing season until we would see any grapes.

Summer 2012 was the third.  The vine began to shoot leaves in early March and buds appeared.

By April the canopy had come in nicely.

June 4th the grapes began to change color.

The best part about growing them was my son eating them like he was Cesar!  It produced about 12 lbs......after the birds got their initial share and I netted it in!

I never pruned the vine since inception.  I am going to drastically prune it this February.  I learned that grapes won't develop above about 5 feet so all the extra vine was a waste.  I buried a section of vine last year in hopes that it will root and I'll have a second vine.

When I do cut this one back I'm going to replant 30-40 shoots in quart containers and expand the grapes.  I'm going to work three levels on the trellis and see how it goes.

Garden Prepping for 2013, Starting Seedlings

I have kept paper journals of my gardening exploits over the years.  I was discussing everything I was doing with a friend while he was over and he mentioned that I ought to start a blog and share some of the information that I've learned gardening in South Texas and may also get some advice as I go.

The climate here is so different that you can actually get two growing seasons.  March to June, and August to December.

So here it is, I did it.  Now we'll see how this year goes.

Seedlings started on the 9th of January.  Already had shoots in 2 1/2 days.

Here's what I've started in seedlings (I started more than I need - worse case scenario:

Plant                                              Sprouted
12 Cayenne Pepper                             0
12 Jalapeno Pepper                             0
4 Beefsteak Tomato's                         All
4 Rutger Tomato's                              All
4 Roma Tomato's                                3
4 Manalucie Tomato's                         2
12 Green Peppers                               0
12 Celery                                            0
6 Okra                                               All

As these mature I'll transfer them to quart containers until about 10 March when I'll transplant into grow bags on the patio.  Any extra I'll pot and give away.

This first growing season for 2013 will have the following:

1. 4x4 bed with 7 Asparagus roots that were planted last fall.  They were two year roots.
2. 10 tomato's
3. 8 cucumber's
4. 14 cayenne pepper
5. 6 green pepper
6. 4 okra
7. 5x5 bed with 'three sisters.'  40 corn, 20 squash, 28 pole beans
8. 6 celery
9. 16x3.5 various greens
10. 24 potato

I'll have some other stuff too with a window sill planter and some companion planting but I'll update that as I go.