End of February

It looks like everything came through the cold days fine and is mostly right on track.

I'm still waiting for one of the kales to sprout, so far I have 25% germination on those. Also waiting on a few spinach, carrots, and chard. The radishes are pretty much all up and thinned to 16 per square. Some of them already have their real leaves coming in. I hope I get a lot of growth this next week, since I'm supposed to mound up soil for the potatoes next weekend, but I only have a single tiny sprout so far.

Here's how things are looking so far. From left to right, top row - radishes, onions, potato, chard. Second row - carrots, broccoli, garlic, lettuce.



And here are some plants I got at the Harris County Agrilife Extension spring plant sale. I got tomatoes (viva italia and Texas wild cherry), bell peppers (big bertha and golden summer), habanero, jalapeno (mucho nacho), and mariachi peppers. These will be going in the ground next weekend along with all the rest of the seeds, finally filling all the squares.

I have sprouts!

The garlic is starting to come up and my radishes are sprouting!

It's going to be really hard for me to kill the weaker sprout of each pair.



Also, one of the broccolis looks a little bent from being covered up during the cold snap. I hope it's ok.



For more pictures from today, see this page of my gallery.

Planting time!

Yep, planting time already. While most of the country is still knee-deep in snow.

The planting schedule this far south is almost opposite of everyone else. January is the only month without planting, and summer is treated more like winter since the heat is so brutal. I used the planting calendar from Texas Gardener to figure out the right times.

Before the garden beds were even made, my GF Rahenna helped me set up my plots in OneNote.


So, during the trip to Wabash Feed and Antiques, I bought tons of heirloom seeds and some herbs along with the compost and I was just starting to plant when the handyman came by to finish up. The beds were still missing little decorate parts on the corners and I had finally decided where I wanted the trellises.

Here they are finally finished and planted with the stuff scheduled for February.

My new square foot garden!

My GF and I just moved into our new house in Katy, TX a few months ago and I'm about to finally have my dream garden! Well, half my dream garden so far. A vegetable garden is just part of what I want for the backyard. Eventually I want half as a vegetable garden and orchard, and the other half as a cottage-garden style hummingbird and bee garden. Plus a pergola over the porch with wisteria.

As the title says, this will be a square foot garden. It's a method of intensive garden so you can get a lot of produce out of small spaces. If you're interested, you can read more here.

I had a handyman make six 4x4 beds for vegetables in one half of the backyard. Here they are nearly complete.

At this point, I wasn't sure where I wanted the trellises, so they're not in the ground all the way. Also, I was warned away from using the Mel's mix and went with a recommendation of vegetable garden soil (with manure and some other type of compost) and leaf mold compost.

It's pretty ambitious to have six beds from the beginning, but I figured with the cost of the cedar and the handyman's time, it was cheaper than waiting until later.

Anyway, here's some pictures. Click to see them larger.