I removed the season extenders from my tomato plants. I planted the tomatoes 2 weeks early and didn’t need the season extenders at all this year.
Since I had to get out for essential materials at Home Depot, I walked through their garden section and picked up 4 of their outrageously priced plants: 3 peppers and basil. Aiden and I got them transplanted, watered, and piled a thick layer of old leaves around everything.
Aiden and I built a birdhouse specially designed for native bluebirds. It sat outside all year unused. I saw a bird go in it last week, so I went out and opened it up, and sure enough, we have a new resident now!
It’s was warm most of last week and has rained all this week. Lots of new green growth in the garden. Most of the fruit trees are flowering.
We are 2 weeks from the average last frost date, but the weather forecast looks like we will be safe so I planted 6 tomatoes. I didn’t have enough of the season starters (aka walls of water) to cover all of the plants, and one did break in the high winds that we had on Saturday.
See the GalliStead interactive map for locations. The big apple tree is a 4-in-1 from Bob Wells and has Dorsett Golden, Gorden, Fuji, and Anna varieties. The other apple tree is a Stark Double Delicious and has Stark® Golden Delicious and Starkrimson® Red Delicious. The tree is so small it is hard to tell where it is grafted though. The two Pawpaw trees also came from Stark Bros and are Potomac and Susquehanna.
I had some good information on a website that broke back in 2012. The content below is a partial recovery of that old website from the waybackmachine at archive.org.
The goal of this website is to share my knowledge of growing food in my backyard garden. I believe the skill of growing your own food is important and in danger as we move to a more convenience-based lifestyle and centralized food distribution model. I also believe in sharing knowledge, so I’m making an effort to document and publish my gardening activity so that others can learn from my mistakes and successes. I try to experiment with different techniques, use what works, and understand why things fail or succeed. One of the great things about gardening is that there is no single ‘right way’ to do something and you can pick and choose the techniques that work for you.
Continue readingI ordered a ‘starter pack’ of fig cuttings from Chris in the North Texas Vegetable Gardeners facebook group. She sent me some bonus cuttings and I was scrounging around for things to plant them in. To get them to grow roots, I wrapped the tops in parafilm, made a fresh cut 1/4″ from the lowest bud, cut a strip of bark away from the area near the bottom bud, added some rooting hormone, and stuck it in a tree pot filled with moist high-end potting soil.
Varieties: 4 Celeste, 1 Chicago Hardy, 2 Black Mission, 1 Lemon, 1 Sal’s El, 2 Kadota, 1 Panache, 2 Petite Negra, 2 Nero 600m, and 2 Violette de Bordeaux
