By Jannie Vaught So suddenly that it caught many of us off guard. When the intense sun and heat bears down on tender leaves you get what looks like a blow torch has scorched them. I went out the next morning and was suddenly snapped into the reality that yes it’s Hot! I trimmed the burnt leaves, watered and started a batch of compost tea … Continue reading For Many Of Us, The Heat Is On
By Jannie Vaught So many gardens were severely frost bitten, or should I say froze to death, that my message box became full in one day! What do I do and will it survive? If any tender vegetables were out it probably will not be a good producer if it survives. Even my hardy winter worn mustard greens were bent over double. Most of my … Continue reading Trimming Back What The Frost Got
Jannie Vaught Most of the stone fruit trees are budding and many in flower. The Blue Bonnets are showing with their bright blue sparkles. I didn’t realize how color hungry I had become, then the first flowers and the Bonnets show and I think I’ve been living in black and white. I have 2 subjects to cover this time. Perennial, Annual and Biennial vegetables and … Continue reading This Is The Time Of Year We Look Forward To
By Jannie Vaught Let’s have a look at a few simple ways to rotate our garden plants to keep soil fertility up and loss of nutrients for maximum growth low, by simply moving the plants around every year. Get your garden journal out, and start doing some drawings of last years garden. Write the date and location and growing zone. In this drawing write what … Continue reading Garden And Crop Rotation For Soil Health And Restoration
By Jannie Vaught Let’s dive a little deeper on this subject. Habitat, his can be a wooded country site or an urban car park. This is determined by the food plant of the caterpillar and the nectar source of the butterfly. Some butterflies are happy with several food sources habitat and breeding areas while some are fussier and require very specific places and plants. … Continue reading Butterflies Need More Than Flowers And Nectar
By Jannie Vaught As this gardener walks the outside it sure feels like the arrival has been early. Yes, it is cold and as many of you already know the seed catalogs are arriving. So it begins. The planning and selection. First, we get that excited exhilaration of the new items and the great pictures. Then I let it all settle down and go back … Continue reading The First Day Of Winter Is Here
By Jannie Vaught Being born and raised in the 50’s we spent every minute outside. We rode our bikes or walked to school and spent long summer days and every after-school time out with our neighborhood friends doing things that sound out of style now. Like looking at bugs, picking fruit from lost trees, telling stories and in general playing. Till supper rolled around and … Continue reading Everything About Nature And the Outdoors Has Always Been My “Thing”
By Jannie Vaught My question is how is this going to affect the trees which took such a complete assault. So I went to” Texas A&M Forest Service, flood and trees what to do”. You can see this on the internet. Flooding is a catastrophic event and can take years for trees to return to normal. How does flooding kill trees? Roots need oxygen to … Continue reading From Severe Drought To Record Making Flooding
By Jannie Vaught Cowpen Daisy and These are two of the many items on my list of learning more about. Went to Texas A&M Uvalde extension online. Cowpen Daisy, aka, Golden crown-beard, Family: Asteraceae. Annual, Origin: Native. Season: Warm. Cowpen Daisy can be found in various disturbed soils of the Edwards Plateau And the South Texas Plains. Upright to sprawling annual that reaches a height … Continue reading Two Very Different Plants
By Jannie Vaught, If anyone is paying attention and you noticed a difference in the cold temperatures that have arrived, then you are like me scrambling for the door to bring in houseplants, dig and re-pot herbs and tender plants that you want to keep and in general covering your outside faucets and pipes. Also, a very early harvest started on Saturday as I … Continue reading Leaving the Leaves
By Jannie Vaught Yams, beets, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga, carrot, yucca, kohlrabi, onion. garlic, celery root (celeriac), horseradish, daikon, turmeric, jicama, Jerusalem artichoke, radish, ginger are all considered roots. Because root vegetables grow underground they absorb a great number of nutrients. Botany distinguishes true roots such as (tap root and tuberous roots) from non- food roots (such as corms, bulbs rhizomes, and tubers). The term” … Continue reading Roots, My Favorite Vegetable To Grow
By Jannie Vaught This season of fall is turning out to a blessed relief from the drought-ridden summer, and the fall garden is possible the best time to grow in growing zone 8a. As we now have had substantial rain and humidity to revive our native grasses and flower bulbs my fall garden is now ready for some delightful garden salads and greens. Just had … Continue reading A Blessed Fall From The Drought Ridden Summer
By Jannie Vaught, Keep the perennials somewhat alive and prune, prune, prune!! Today was somewhere shy of 109 with no rain and water restrictions. What’s a gardener that is deeply invested in the growing of all things green to do? Take a breath and make hard decisions. Cut back or remove the spring items that were so happy and productive a few weeks back. Tomatoes … Continue reading What To Do In The Garden In The Deep Of Summer Heat And Drought?
By Jannie Vaught As we are struggling with No Rain, drought conditions and the serious state of our water sources it is time to look at this important issue. Trees are resilient and long-lived, but like all living plants, they need moisture, either rain or water coming from us. Trees that are under areas that get water are less likely to get in serious condition. … Continue reading Care For Trees In Times Of Drought
By Jannie Vaught This time of the gardening season always presents some very special and unusual problems and things that make me go huum? Here is a few. Tassel-ear corn, vine borers, no cucumbers and fire ants in the tomatoes. Let’s tackle these with a fine clear mind of interest. The weirdest on this list is tassel-ear corn. This seems to be very popular this … Continue reading The Weird List Of Summer Special And Unusual Problems
By: Jannie Vaught For this Gardner, it is a big Thank You! The heat did cause some heat issues and with consistent and deep watering most of the garden is still in production, although slowed down or gone off the rails with ripening. I got plums galore and my later ripening peaches have slowed a bit. The blackberries for me are recovering from a full-on … Continue reading Rain! A Respite From The Searing Heat
By: Jannie Vaught When the temperatures soar to 101 and above the possibility of garden plant loss is high! It takes a dedicated garden nerd to be up with the sunrise and start watering and putting up shade cloth. With the intense sunshine the plants wilt in a hurry and if they what I call “wilt down hard”, which is the outer tips of … Continue reading The Heat Is On!
By: Jannie Vaught As the spring season lengthens and we press on into Summer, this is my intention. Learn more about Texas Native Plants and the big one for this gardener is grasses. The What are they, where are they and are they a help or a problem. As with all big topics, let’s shorten the list and study just a few. On the … Continue reading Its All About The Natives
By: Jannie Vaught It is an annual plant in the Daisy family Asteraceae. Grown for its leaves and sometimes seeds and stems. According to the USDA, Americans eat about 33 pounds each per year. For many years iceberg was the favorite at the dinner table, but has declined in favor of Romain and Green leaf and now Mixed greens. And what are mixed greens … Continue reading Lettuce Talk About The Multitasking Plant, Lettuce
By Jannie Vaught The flowers turning into fruit and vegetables, we will also notice the potential for improvement to next years garden! First, we need to know and understand what we have under our feet. Here is a super easy way to do a home soil texture test for clay, sand, and silt. In a quart jar place a core sample of your soil. … Continue reading As We See Our Garden Growing
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