2013 Summer Garden

The following is an exhaustive account of my 2013 summer garden. You have been warned.

One of the things I was SO excited about in moving to a house (vs. an apartment) was being able to have a garden! We're renting, so I am limited on what I can alter in the yard, but I cooked up a plan for a garden that can be reversed when we move out. There's a little wedge of space in our backyard that gets full sunlight all day, right outside the back door and close to the house so I don't have to haul the hose across the yard every time I need to water. Unfortunately the spot was "landscaped" with some dying plants, a couple boulders, and a bunch of gravel. I am probably responsible for the dying plants because, as you can see below (bottom right), they were once thriving.

Source: Zillow.com | circa 2011

A little better view of our backyard and where the garden is.

Anywho, they were dying, ok dead, now ... onward! I hired a couple of boys from down the street to move the rock into a big pile (to be replaced at a later date) because I don't do that kind of manual labor, y'all, I am a delicate flower. All that youthful energy - they had it done in 30 minutes! And then they put out my soil, too! Unfortunately, it being Texas and all, it completely dried out and then we had crazy wind for 3 days so most of it blew out. But I put some more out, a little of which Bernoulli ate. 

Lookin' good ... now for some plants

B after a satisfying meal of compost

My neighbor, Mrs. Sally, knew of a good nursery up the road that she had been wanting to take me to when she found out I "gardened." So we loaded up the little boy and headed to Schertz Nursery. She said it used to be owned by someone else and was much more impressive. I thought it was fine - maybe not the selection I was hoping for but, hey, it wasn't a big box store. I got 2 squash plants (yellow crookneck, per my Granny, and zucchini), 2 organic strawberry plants, a purple beauty bell pepper plant, an okra plant and 2 organic tomato plants (celebrity, also per Granny). I also got seeds for beans and watermelon. I also got a bag of peanuts at the grocery store because I wanted to try to grow them, but folks, it turned out those peanuts were roasted and salted and they did nothing in the soil! 

The okra struggled a little to get started. Here is the first pod it produced. I learned that okra likes it pretty hot and sunny because it has really started to produce later in the summer.

Squash plants just starting out. Yellow crookneck in the foreground, zucchini in the back.

Things were clickin' along pretty good, with the exception of my tomatoes. The first two plants died immediately upon being planted. I went to another nursery where I was advised that my soil may have been too rich (read: fertilized) because I bought the yucky pre-fertilized stuff at Lowe's -- that's all I could find! So I got 4 more plants, another breed, which also promptly died. So 2013 was not the summer for me to grow tomatoes, better luck next time, self. But there was another, more tragic death. Let's start with how WELL the squash were doing. They got big fast and were producing like rock stars, if rock stars produced, which is to say, very well. See here.

And then I went a did something stupid. I was trimming dead and diseased leaves from the zucchini plant, and I'll be darned if I didn't chop that vine right off at the roots. I was almost in tears. It had been nothing but good to me! Russ was sure we could just stick the butt of the vine back in the ground and it would re-root and grow. It did not. The zucchini's good friend, yellow crookneck, was heartbroken and in 2 weeks' time also died, spontaneously.

Going ... going ...

Gone.

Boo hiss. At least I had this guy to keep my spirits up. Very effective, indeed.

Garrett boy

I should also mention that the beans never really took off. Probably didn't like the rich soil either, as they grew fine in their little pots filled with non-fertilized soil, but withered once they got in the big garden. 

The other plants did ok. The strawberry never produced much, although they showed good signs at first, with several offshoots and such. 

And the pepper plant has probably produced six-ish peppers, which turned out to be purple just on the skin - I was hoping they'd be purple all the way through and sweeter like red/orange/yellow ones.

A little later in the season I put the watermelon in the ground. I wasn't sure at first that they'd do much, but after they took off they took OVER. Now my entire garden is a watermelon patch, which I am fine with, because its only roommates are a healthy but no-longer-producing pepper plant and the okra, which doesn't need the sprawl space.

Watermelon, just starting out

The first watermelon rotted on the ground; lesson learned. So Russ wanted to pick the next one early. Too early. We are trying to get this one juuuust right. And the ones on the ground we put plastic plates under to prevent rot.

Thanks for tuning in for the highs and lows of the summer 2013 garden!