It's Good to See You Again

 Written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog

The ground is already covered in leaves and twigs and pecan husks so that August looks like Autumn, but the days are still hot. An inch-and-a-half of rain last weekend brought a few surprises this week, including flowers that were not seen last summer.

One clump of Schoolhouse/Oxblood lilies in the front woodland/seep garden is in bloom - and the flowers are Rose-red instead of dark red. This is the earliest date yet for these bulbs, which usually come in September. 


A few flowers opened the expected Oxblood color in back

The long cold spells in January & February 2011 killed my small shrubby Bauhinia forficata not just to ground level but below. I really thought this passalong from my friend Ellen was gone forever but by midsummer a few shoots came up from some live piece of root deep underground. The shoots were too small to bloom last summer and I had doubts they could do it this year. But I was wrong - the large white flowers of the Brazilian Orchid Tree are blooming again.

A few tomato plants were cut back, most died, but there are 3 seedling tomato plants almost mature enough to bloom. I've lived here too long to call a tomato "ours" until it is safe inside and on the plate, but we can hope!
We do get most of the peppers - just a few lost to birds, insects or other animals. 'Jalora' is growing under one of the cages we made last summer.

 

 A mix of 'Jaloro' and 'Mariachi' smelled wonderful when roasting and Philo liked them just fine.

A patch of  Malvaviscus - Red Turkscaps was planted in the front years ago. It's stayed alive and managed to bloom last summer but sparingly on a few straggling stems. The plant is almost unrecognizable this year - partly because the weather has not been as hot and dry, partly because an overhanging Arizona Ash trees had to come down last spring. This bed still gets partial shade from a live oak but a little more sun as well as a little more water has made this plant thrive.

 

One more nice surprise - the white form of this Malvaviscus or White Turkscap has grown in the Secret Garden since 2006, never thriving but surviving. Last year it didn't make one single flower.
And this year? As my friend Vi would say, it's still "not setting the world on fire", but it is alive, and it has flowers and buds, and it looks reasonably contented to be here. I guess that goes for the garden as a whole, as well as the gardener. 

 Written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

Tomato Garden Follies

At the end of year 6 of the Transplantable Rose blog, what better way to start year 7 than with tomatoes? We like peppers and tomatoes. We like growing them and we like eating them. I even wrote lyrics about the end of Tomato season for a music video called Farewell, Tomato.

After Philo made our small vegetable plot in 2004 we tried different ways to support & protect the plants.  

For a few years we just staked them

Our next phase lasted a few years - a large, strong, painted wooden framework that could support plants, bird netting & shade cloth. We hoped the net could slow down attacks by squirrels & birds.

It’s been fun trying new varieties every year, cramming in 9 or 10 tomato plants and 7 or 8 peppers, watering them by hand while knocking leaf-footed stink bugs into soapy water every day, with the reward of some salad tomatoes and frying peppers.

A post on GardenWeb suggested tying net gift bags over the tomatoes to protect them from the stinkbugs. I was too cheap to buy more than 2 – a good thing since the squirrels chewed off the whole tomato stem & ran away with the bags.

On Tom Spencer’s radio program we heard him mention one gardener who painted wooden balls red & hung them in the garden while the tomatoes were green. The idea was that any critter attacking the fake tomatoes would be convinced that hard, bad tomatoes grew in that garden. We tried it and saw no effect, but at least they’re decorative! 

Recent years broke the weather rules and what worked before no longer held up.  Last summer after every pepper plant in the vegetable garden died, I found a few new plants at a local nursery, put them into containers and those survived. The bird netting kept the birds from taking the tomatoes, but it allowed them to poke their beaks through the spaces to puncture the tomatoes.

 

The tomato frame filled the entire center of our little plot, making it difficult to get in to weed, prune & tie the plants and even harder to reach the stinkbugs. The stakes & frames gave the birds a good place to perch while they attacked the fruit. But we gardeners had no place to perch - the seat made from a slice of tree trunk had rotted.  

So we tweaked the vegetable plot, moving the compost enclosure and changing the layout. A central path looks better and gives us better access. There are fewer plants this year. Five pepper plants grow in containers and we’re getting a small, steady supply. We bought only 5 tomato plants and we’re getting a few of those each day, too.

The tomato vines are sort of draped over wire cages to hold the fruit off the ground but they’re not staked. In place of the garden netting I bought a few yards of inexpensive nylon net to sort of pouf over the top, using recycled bricks to keep it from blowing away. With a tighter weave and no convenient sticks for birdie feet to grasp, they have to work harder to punch holes in the tomatoes. 

They can still do it… our Blue Jays boldly cling to the kitchen windows and tap on the panes! The squirrels will chew through anything and possums and raccoons lurk at night. We know we can’t beat any of them but we're trying to stay in the game. 

If a stinkbug lands on the outside of the net it can’t fit through the small mesh. If the little monster is already inside clinging to the net I use the net to enfold & squish it.

A central path now leads to the concrete bench, relocated from the Secret Garden to the Vegetable Patch. Last June we turned two old compost bins upside down, painted them, added handles and called them tomato guards. This June they cover two tubs bought at some long ago garage sale, painted white. The tub on one side of the path has a pepper plant and a ‘San Marzano’ tomato grows on the opposite side. There’s something going on here but it doesn’t fit the usual categories… it’s not Potager and it’s not Austintatious and it’s not Garden Junk. Maybe it’s Transplanted Frugal Midwesterner?  

Two of the tomatoes were supposed to be our favorite ‘Black Krim’. At planting time I noticed a ‘Better Boy’ tag down the side of the pot. And that one ‘Black Krim’ has now turned to None. Look at these tomatoes! They all came from the same mislabled plant – not ‘Black Krim’ but it might take a tomato-genealogist to figure out what they are.

On the other hand, when that heirloom-lumpy tomato at far right finally ripened, it weighed in at over 13 ounces. Folly it may be, but what a delicious folly it was. 

At-Ten-Ten-Ten-tion Must Be Paid

Attention has been paid to the design of the garden. Once that Mystery Tree in the last post was identified as a probable Mulberry, it was no longer allowed to overwhelm the new border and it was not transplanted into a pot and nurtured. According to MSS of Zanthan Gardens her almost identical Mulberry sapling has survived several winters and bounced back after being cut down over and over. This kind of weedy tree might be fine on a few acres or a farm - I've read that the berries are great favorites of pigs - but there is no room for it on our small suburban lot!


I dug deep, and think all the roots came out.
MSS gave me Bluebonnet seeds last month and I planted some of them in the now-empty space. In Austin we sow these seeds in fall and then hope the little sprouts make it through cold weather, attacks by pillbugs and constant uprooting by squirrels as they dig holes for pecans.

You can't help but pay attention to the squirrels - they're rampaging everywhere in their fall frenzy - breaking branches while tearing pecan husks from the pecan trees and dropping fragments of husk on every surface. The constant leaping and running and chasing is hard on other trees, too - young Loquat #2 lost several of its lower branches. I guess the squirrels aren't burying all the nuts but are eating a lot of them. This leads to poor judgment by the Tree Rat as to how large a bough is needed to support their weight
The squirrels didn't kill the Culinary Sage - it died not long after the prolonged drenching from Tropical Storm Hermine. It was interesting to see which plants gave up after 12-inches of rain. Although the Silver Pony foot doubled in size, many of the grey-leaved plants including MoonshineYarrow/Achillea, Lavender plants and most of the Lambs Ears died quickly after the storms. Some salvias, most of the Shasta Daisies, some coneflowers and most portulaca are gone, too. For now those blank spots have been planted with more of the bluebonnet seeds from MSS.

Blooming blue already is that Scutellaria 'Dorota Blue' from last year. It barely survived winter freezes and I kept in into a large pot under the overhang all summer, hoping the part shade could keep the sun from killing it. That overhang also kept the skullcap from being pounded by rain. Now the fall show has begun. The leaves show stress from the past year but the flowers are abundant and beautiful.

That last post about the mystery tree made me neglect some autumn beauties. One plant responded to the rain with an astonishing display - the first blooms ever from red spider lily/Lycoris bulbs, another gift from MSS. What can I say? She is a gardening angel!

The first bud was a surprise - so lovely on its ownThen 6 flower heads rose up and began to open in the center of verbena, Gregg's Mistflower, Black & Blue Salvia, Blackfoot Daisies, Rosa Mutabilis and Bengal Tiger canna leaves They opened over a period of several days, and it was really a smashing combination.
I can't help but pay attention to flowers that smell wonderful when I walk out on the patio. A few days ago one of the heads of White Ginger/Hedychium coronarium was perfect.
The fragrance of Sweet Olive is a sure sign of fall in my garden. My three shrubs didn't seem to mind the rain and are covered in tiny fragrant flowers. If other plants in my garden die, I might take a while to decide whether to replant them. But if I lost Osmanthus/Sweet Olive, I'd be scouring the nurseries for a replacement without a moment's hesitation. I don't want to be without it.

Yesterday was the last project of the year for we members of the Divas of the Dirt, our cooperative gardening group. I've known them since the first project of the 2001 garden season - so yesterday marked 10 years of Digging With The Divas. Most of the story will be on the blog eventually, but for the amusement of my fellow gardenbloggers in Austin, here's a photo of what we spent hours digging up yesterday:It's the alternately loved and despised Horseherb - a plant that came in near the top of the Austin gardenbloggers' Most Hated Weed List via Twitter last week, while at the same time it's sold in nurseries and recommended as a native ground cover by other Austin garden people.

There's something to pay attention to in the vegetable patch, too. Most of the tomato plants died soon after Hermine, but just a little liquid fertilizer on the pepper plants brought new fruit. We've enjoyed the sweet frying-type peppers for breakfast Peppers-and-Eggs, but these are a small, rather hot pepper called 'Garden Salsa'.
Philo roasted them, added garlic and turned them into a chunky hot sauce. Science fiction fans are having much fun with the fact that the all important decimal number 42 is rendered 10-10-10 in binary numbers. Philo considered naming his relish the Secret Sauce of the Universe, but instead called it "Thanks For All the Peppers ". There are a few more hours left of this day -think I'll keep my massively useful towel handy.

With the sapling mulberry gone, you can now see the amazing size of the Salvia vanhouttei in the new border. I raved last GBBD about the $2, 4" starter plant from Barton Springs Nursery that turned into a temporary shrub, but this plant needs more than photos - it needs attention for just a few seconds on video.

Peppers & Eggs

Left to right: Ancho, Cubanelle, Spanish Spice, Vidi