Vegetable garden 2012

James decided to try planting some 'Patio' tomatoes in a container this year (purchased from Blanco Gardens).

In the garden, we planted two 'Supersweet 100' tomato plants.

One 'Early Girl' plant.

And one 'Indigo Rose' (four purchased from Arnoskys).

So far, one zucchini seed has come up.

Wah!

I know deer have to eat, too, but the VERY FIRST BLOOM EVER ON OUR NATIVE TWISTLEAF YUCCA??!! I was so looking forward to the huge flower! Then yesterday, when we were in the Meadow, doing our weekly cleaning-out-the-sparrows'-nest chore in the purple martin house (they laid four eggs this week!), I glanced over and saw....HORRORS!!.....the top of my yucca bloom GONE! 

James had told me about the casualties in our front vegetable garden, but I couldn't bear to look until I went outside just now and took a photo. See that green stalk? That's all that's left of four bell pepper plants. Sniff. The deer have also chewed off the top of one of the two tomato plants, too.

Such are the costs of a drought. Deer gotta eat, too. Just wish they'd eat somewhere else!

Vegetable garden spring 2011

 This post is for us. I like to photograph what we plant every spring. Sure beats keeping notes!

 

Garden in our side yard.

'Supersweet 100' cherry tomato

Yellow plum tomato

'Celebrity' tomato

Zuchinni (also two yellow squash started from seed)

Green bell pepper

We decided to stick in some vegetables rows in our back yard.

Yellow plum tomato

'Supersweet 100' tomato

'Red Beauty' pepper

Yellow squash (started from seed)

'Maroon' Aggie carrots (started from seed)

Beans along fence (started from seed)

Squirrelly corn

(Photo by James)

What do you get when you mix fox squirrels and a Wildscape?

Wild corn!

As you can see, the corn crop planted here and there throughout our Wildscape by our resident squirrels is coming along GREAT! If we'd planted the corn ourselves, I'm sure it wouldn't be doing as well as THESE are. We're getting a big kick out of the crop, which has begun to put on tassels and ears!

Official first harvest

Our very pick–one yellow squash!

Vegetable garden 2010

I actually planted our garden several weeks ago. But I like to blog about it a little so we can refer back to it next year. We planted three tomatoes along with squash and zucchini by seed. Only the yellow squash came up. I'm no fennel lover; I planted it for butterfly caterpillars. And the pumpkins plants I transplanted from our compost pile, where they volunteered.

I can hear the rain pouring down as I write this....

Fennel

Volunteer, transplanted pumpkin

Yellow squash

Our first harvest!

We picked five yellow squash today! VERY exciting. A grab-the-camera kind of event!

James picked his first "baby" and gave it several "welcome to the world"
whacks on its bottom. Very funny, James. :-)

Squash garden update

May 9

What a difference a few weeks makes in a garden! I took the photo above of my squash garden, then never got around to posting it. In April, I planted a bunch of squash and zuchinni seeds, then promptly forgot which row was which. We decided not to plant a full-fledged garden this year because of our drought. But I thought, what the heck, I'll plant some seeds and if they come up, great. If they don't, no big loss. Well, as you can see, a row DID come up, and it's yellow squash! More specifically, 'Early Prolific Straightneck' (Ferry-Morse). I've got at least four squash ready to pick ASAP. James says it's our best garden EVER, and all the plants came from seed!

May 22

Lemon Queen sunflowers

Meanwhile, the eight or 10 sunflower seeds I planted in a little row are also coming up. They're from the packet of Lemon Queen (Helianthus annuus) mailed out by the Great Sunflower Project. As soon as they start blooming, I can get going on counting bees that visit the flowers.

Arugula Rocket Salad

AND I picked up some free out-of-date vegetable seeds in Hamilton, Texas, several weeks ago. Again I thought, what the heck? I planted some out of both packets of lettuce. Some are coming up now but I don't know what they are: either Arugula Rocket Salad (Eruca sativa) or Arugula Wild Rocket Salad (Eruca vesicaria sativa). If I get any lettuce at all, I'll be thrilled!

Scaled-down vegetable garden

After last year's struggle with heat and few rains, we decided not to plant a vegetable garden this spring.

Well, at least not to buy bedding plants....

I went ahead and planted some squash seeds that I already had. One row of zucchini and a second row of yellow crookneck. One row's come up, and I have 10 little plants! Trouble is, I can't remember which is which so we'll be surprised if and when we get any to produce!