The soil in the creek bed behind the house is probably the best soil in Collin County. It is soft and easy to dig. I appreciate the free donation from my neighbors at higher elevation. I’m going to dig a little out and move it to the area where I want my new garden beds. As a bonus, the depression I’m leaving should serve to slow the water down next time a big rain comes, so more ‘good top soil’ will settle in the area and provide me more.
Start with a little less than 1 gallon of water in a 1 gallon container with a screw cap
video: Nathan Riggs demonstrates fire ant killer mix
follow this link for more info at Antman’s Hill Facebook page
I provided my new trees some extra support by stringing fence wire between t-posts, then attaching a piece of PVC conduit between the two wires.
The local Ace hardware store was selling plants for $2 each. They are a little smaller than what I’ve seen at the big box stores, but half the price. I picked up 3 tomatoes and 4 peppers and planted them.
The snap peas, carrots, turnips, radish, beets, and lettuce have all sprouted now too. Continue reading
I planted from seed: beet, carrot, lettuce, radish, and turnip. Scraped away all the leaf mulch first so the soil temperature will heat up with the sun. That metal trash can us full of partially composted leaves that have been decomposing for about an year. Good stuff!
The snap peas I planted a few weeks ago are up, but aren’t growing very fast. I don’t think any of the turnip seeds sprouted. (or if they did sprout, they were eaten by critters)
Even though I’ve had terrible luck in the past with bugs in the spring attacking Brassica plants, I went ahead and planted 6 cauliflower transplants. The thought of fresh vegetables is too irresistible. I also put in 24 sugar snap pea seeds and 12 turnip seeds. It was good to see all the rich loose soil when I moved my leaf mulch back!
My order of bare root fruit trees came in today, and I immediately put them in the ground. I planted them in a pattern I learned about in a the film “The Permaculture Orchard“: 2 fruit trees, followed by a nitrogen fixing tree and prevent two fruit trees of the same type from being close to each other. The idea is the nitrogen fixing tree will provide for the fruit trees on each side of it, and if one tree gets attacked by pests or diseased, the problem doesn’t easily just jump next door and take out another tree. I planted at 12 foot intervals, and about half of the trees will be shaded for the first half of the day. The fruit trees and redbuds came from Womack Nursery in De Leon Texas and the 3 nitrogen fixer trees are on order from Cold Stream Farms in Freesoil, Michigan.
Key to above picture: Continue reading
A few weeks ago, I planted 16 blackberry plants along the west side of the shop building. I got these from a group buy from some members of the North Texas Vegetable Gardeners facebook group. I had to drive to Denton to pick them up, but they only cost me $3 each. I have 4 each of the following varieties:
I’ll plant fruit trees right next to them later this winter.
I put some onion transplants in the ground today, 1/6/2018.
We had almost 0.75″ of rain today.
We haven’t had much rain in the past 30 days.
