Garden Mavens' Blogs

Texas Betony

There is a little native plant called Texas Betony. It is usually planted as a groundcover, but I want to tell other Austin gardeners not to treat it like a groundcover. It is in the salvia family, and should be treated more like a salvia than and groundcover. It will not get very large, and it will not cover much ground. It can grow in shady spots so I recommend it for narrow spaces between pavement or buildings, mixed in with other plants like sedges and columbines. It can't handle extreme shade but planted under a tree or on the north side of a building is appropriate. After the plant bears its salmony-red blooms, the flower stalks need to be cut back to the base of the pant so new growth can come out from the bottom, similar to other salvias like Black and Blue sage and Mexican Bush Sage. I am trimming some that have just bloomed in November. They all have healthy growth emerging from the base. It's also important to keep leaves and other debris from piling up on top of these plants. They can get smothered and wil decline quilckly. This type of leaf build up is often the culprit when betony dies mysteriously.

Fall garden

I got some bad news last week about a friend who has cancer, so I decided to go to the garden center and get my winter veggie plants. It was rejuvenating to see all of the violas and pansies . I feel like they are old friends that I only get to see for a few months each year. I got lots of greens and brussles sprouts, and it made me feel good to look forward to eating healthier all winter. I also bought a variey of calendula called 'neon' that is new to me. Their flower buds were just about to bust open with bright colors. Then, it rained last night and the weather turned much cooler. Suddenly the whole garden is resurrected! I also hear that my friend is going to be ok.

Beware Hot Dirt!

I have a customer that I am doing a planting for. They had soil delivered to their house to put into raised beds. Another company put the soil into the beds, becaue their labor was less expensive than mine. When I arrived on the scene a few days later, the soil smelled bad like ammonia, had flies (biting ones, at that!)hovering over it and felt warm to the touch. I was dissapointed to see that this soil wasn't "finished", meaning the manuer that was mixed in with it was not decomposed enough, especially since I highly recommended the soil yard where they purchased the soil. I thought the soil would be finished enough in a few days to plant, so we waited a few days. Much to my horror, some of the plants died the day after we planted them. We planted sedums which just turned into goo. We planted a yaupon holly and it's leaves turned black the next day. Now the homeowners are struggling to get a partial refund for the soil. The soil has been in the beds for a few weeks and now it is ok to plant in it, so we haven't lost any additional plants. So, beware any soil mix that you buy that smells really bad or has flies. For the most part soil should be cooler than the air. Keep in mind that compost will always be a little hot, but soil should be cooler. I won't say the business where they bought the soil because I may have to do business with them later, and they carry certain products that I can't get anywhere else. I do know I won't by soil from them again. Plus, I have done business with them in the past with no problems.

Little Rain

Many of you may be wondering how I fared through Hurricane Gustav which ripped through Galveston and Houston on Friday. Well, nothing happened here in Austin. Lot of of people evacuating the coast came here and we are all glad to welcome them, and hopefully they will be able to return home sooner than later. We were expecting a great deal of rain all day yesturday but it never showed. But it did finally rain last night with no damage or much wind or anything. So that is good. We needed the rain very badly. The weather cooled off too, so now I can plant my fall garden with confidence. Here comes the kale!

Super Cool Bird Of Prey

Eric and I walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner tonight and saw this awesome bird in the shopping center/office complex where the restaurant is. It was at Penn Field where Opal Divine's South location is. We saw the bird on the eastern end of the complex, for any bird watchers who live in Austin who may want to try to see it. I thought it might be a falcon but I am not sure because I read that they don't arrive in Texas until October. It was remarkably close to us! Lucky for all of us I had my camera on me! If you know what kind of bird this is please email the garden mavens via the "ask the garden mavens" page. It was the highlight of my day.

The Rain Event

It finally rained this week. I think we probably had about three inches total at my house, but I am not sure. I need to get a rain gauge. I took a picture of some beautiful rain lilies. These little bulbs sprout and bloom a few days after it rains. When it's not raining they have grassy leaves and don't look like much. Rain lilies are cultivated but are also kind of wild and will reproduce and grow in big swaths. Some homes in central austin have huge groups of rain lilies growing in their front lawns that burst into bloom after a rain event. I know some women who own a landscaping company called Rain Lily to pay homage to an old Texas gardening favorite.

Olive Mystery

We ended up cutting off the top dead part of the olive tree to see how it will re-grow from the sprouts/suckers coming from the trunk. I put this picture on there to show you how there are tiny holes in the trunk which makes me think that borers are the culprit. I think the trunk got some cold damage last winter in a very late cold snap and this made it more susceptible to borers. It seems like the tree will be ok and maybe with some stategic pruning we can make it look beautiful. I read online about preventing borers on fruit trees and most solutions are chemical. I try to do everything organically, so I think I am going to try spraying these olive trees with oil or Bt once a month or so to try to cut them off since this is the second tree we've had with this type of damage. If anybody out there knows about this sort of thing please write to us!

Olive Trees

One of my customers has several large olive trees. The largest of the trees is suddenly loosing leaves at the top and is showing a weird swollen area on the trunk. I have started calling around to see what the trouble is, and no one seems to know for sure, but everyone agrees that the tree is a goner. I think it may be borers, tiny larvae of a certain kind of moth, but I don't know what kind. I think that the culprit is borers because there are tiny holes in the trunk where the swelling is. But I am not sure. It also has some black sooty mold growing around the swollen part. I think it may also be a fungal infection because of this but I think that might also be mold growing in the leaking sap. Anyway, it was suggested to me that we cut off the top of the tree and let it re-grow. This is a fairly common practice in Italy and Spain where olives are from. I will have to check with the homeowner about this because it will look really strange for awhile. Plus, the tree is not in the best place in that yard, there isn't really enough space for it where it is. By the way, this is the second olive tree that this household has lost this way... Mysteries!

Rain! Weevils!

We are finally getting a few good downpours here in austin, but not enough to get us out of drought status. But, all of my plants look clean and perky. I watched Central Texas Gardener this week on PBS. They talked about the agave snout weevil that is invading central texas. I have already lost several agaves and softleaf yuccas at two different customers' homes to these disgusting little creeps. The weevils carry a bacteria that kills and digests the plants so the weevil larve can eat the plants. The plants start to turn into putrid goo from the inside out. They did not recommend any organic fixes for these creatures on the show but I'll let you know if I hear of something organic.

Pepper Time!

It's about a million degerees here in Austin. Perfect weather for growing all kinds of peppers. This year I am growing a few different types, including hungarian sweet wax, hungarian hot wax and anaheim. I made the mistake of not labeling each plant. The fruits are kind of similar on all of the plants, and I am not sure which ones are hot or sweet. I think I may be in for some surprizes with my dinners this summer! Take a tip frome me- take the time to lable your veggie plants.

Big News

I got rear ended a little over a week ago. My back, neck and head are sore and tight, so there hasn't been much gardening for me. I'm sure some of you can relate. I am just trying to keep things watered in the record setting heat we're having. I'm getting lots of massage and acupuncture so I should be back in action soon.

Late Wildflowers

It's starting to get hot and it's very humid. Pretty miserable- except that a new batch of wildflowers just started blooming including the white yarrow in my front yard. Just as the bluebonnets start to fade, yarrow, mexican hats and coreopsis step in to take over the show.

Gut Feeling Confirmed!

So, my "biointensive" garden experiment went really well. I planted greens, radishes and other smaller, fast growing early spring crops in my garden in the early spring. In mid spring I planted my tomatoes, peppers, basil and eggplants in the middle of all of the greens in areas where I harvested them. They are all happily coexisting and I really saved alot of space and got a good late-ish season harvest of greens. By the time I finish harvesting all of the greens the other plants will be big and will start shading them out. By the way, the cat in the picture is one of mine, his name is Remmy. I just sprayed the garden with fish emulsion so he was enjoying a tasty beverage of watery fish emulsion on the leaves of the plants. He's kind of gross, but I love him. However, today I found out that someone has been eating the ends of my strawberries and I suspect it is a rodent. Sounds like Remmy has been falling asleep on the job- which isn't unusual for a cat.

A Garden Surprise

There was a mystery plant in my new bed in the front of my house that appeared a week or two ago. I wasn't sure what it was but it looked desirable so I left it. Today from accross the yard this incredible bloom caught my eye. The picture does not do it justice. It is astonishingly shiny- it looks metalic. I did a crazy garden victory dance when I saw it up close. It's just a petunia, and I have no clue where it came from because I never grow petunias. Must have rode in on a plant from the nursery or something. Anyway, if any of you now what type of petunia this is please click on "contact" at the top of the page and email the garden mavens to let me know. It has unusally round leaves that are very fuzzy too. It is also much more erect than most petunias. There are more buds on it so it's getting ready to bloom more. It fits in great in my new garden bed that is full of white and purple.

Invasive Plants

Spring is well underway here in Austin. The wildflowers are putting on a good show and we had a little rain so the trees all have little bright green leaves on them. But the weeds are really going crazy. Running bamboo is taking over my backyard compost area, and most homeowners are battling stickyweed. Stickyweed is a little shade loving plant that is covered with little hairs that make it stick to your clothes. It grows a lot in spring and is dead before the summer heat sets in. We usually use a hoe and a rake to remove stickyweed, and corn gluten works well to prevent it from sprouting in the early spring. I will wait until the bamboo ends its growth spurt in May and cut it all down at one time.

'Tween Times

This March, I tried something different with my vegetable garden on the side of the house. I planted some cool weather crops early in March like carrots, beets, turnips and salag greens. It was late in the season to do that, sine mid March- early April is the time to plant summer crops like peppers, eggplants and tomatoes. But the pepper and tomato plants are so small when I first put them in, I thought I could just plant them in amongst the cool season crops and when the cool season plants are ready to harvest, the summer plants will grow into their spots. I'll let you know how it works out.

Radishes

This year in my particularly untidt winter garden I grew a few different varieties of radishes. I love butter and radish sandwiches so I always have a supply of the red roots during the winter. I grew 'cherry belle', 'white icicle' and 'french breakfast'. My garden was very weedy and infertile. The weather grew unseasonably warm recently, so some of the radishes began to bolt/flower. When radishes flower the roots can tunr woody or extremely spicy. For me, the 'french breakfast' variety was the best for competition with weeds and was slowest to bolt. It has a great flavor and looks pretty too. The other varieties did ok but this one stands out!

Intensive Planting Worked for Me

You may have read awhile ago in my blog that this fall I hurriedly planted my fall vegetable garden in the dark one evening. I planted pole beans, broccili, cabbage, kale, radishes, turnips and collards. I did not prepare the soil at all! Well, a few lucky things happened. The beans produced really well and then I just left them and they died with the first freeze. All of the other plants did ok, depsite being planted really close together and never thinned and hardly ever watered. The leaves from an ash tree nearby fell into the veggie bed acting as a much needed mulch. What a nice surprize! And the weeds that grew are things that make a nice cover crop like clovers and ryegrass. Plus, the plants are so close together in an intensive style planting that not many weeds have room to grow anyway. I had a bad slug infestation, and they ate huge holes in the collard leaves but they left everything else alone. After awhile of seeing the collards devoured, I decided to treat the collards as a "trap crop", which means that the slugs and snails will eat them, but since the slugs and snails are so fat on collards they won't eat the other stuff. This garden is a testament to the true nature of a garden- SOMETHING will grow even if you don't look after it constantly. Today I harvested a bowl full of kale and radishes, and soon I will be harvesting broccili! MOral of the story- don't worry about the garden!

Strawberry Pot Idea

You may have read an article from me recently about planting a strawberry pot. My strawberry pot did ok, but I need to follow up with one thing: make sure all side of your pot get sun exposure. Some of my plants died because they were totally shaded on one side. But for the most part it still looks good. TOday I took some old spider plants aka airplane or mother plants, and planted them and their offspring in a smaller strawberry pot that I really love. They look great and their roots should be able to easily take hold in the pot sides. Plus they can all handle shade so I don't think I need to worry about some of them suffering from lack of sun. I recommend it!

Potted Garden Update

Over a year ago I blogged about my potted garden in front of my house. It was great because I put in in an area directly infront of our huge front windeow that gets hot western sun in the summer. It is also under the eaves of the house so it doesn't get any rain. Since we were renting the house I kept my favorite plants in pots. Also, a friend of mine moved overseas and left me a bunch of her houseplants. I loved the potted garden and its beauty and shade but I loathe the constant water the pots need in the summer and lately they all seem to need more fertilizer. Many of the plants are very cold sensitive and need to be moved or covered during a freeze. It is all very high maintenance. Since we bought the house I decided to dramatically dowsize the potted garden, keeping only my favorite pots and plants and either giving away or planting the others. Two citrus trees and some cacti are in the front uard with a 'free plants please take' sign on them. Truthfully, they all look horrible, but I hope someone else might like them. While moving some of the pots around today I broke one f my favorite pots into a million pieces. I was sad, but maybe I can find an even nicer one to replace it and all of the ugly plastic pots that I an getting rid of.

Front Yard Progress

Many avid GP readers will know that since September I have been in the process of overhauling my front yard. Noting too dramatic- just removing some old overgrown ugly shrubs and replacing them with perennials and other fun stuff. Well, it is starting to come together. I would post a picture but my camera has a dead battery. Maybe later. All of the plants I put in the new bed are leftovers and orphaned plants from my landscaping jobs. It is a big hodgepodge but I am pleased to say it looks good. Some of these plants have been in pots for a long time while my hubby and I were renting. Now that we bought the house it feels really good to sink them into the earth. I am also building a 'landing pad' along the street where I can stage debris for trash pick up day and so guests at our house will have a place to step onto when they get out of a car. I had plants in this area previously and it was confusing for folks getting out of cars. More info and pictures soon!

Garden experiment success

I love the fall veggie garden in Austin. I always plant beans, cukes, and some flowers on Labor Day. This year things were really hot in september so the beans did great. I also planted cool season greens in September Now that the weather has cooled my greens are perking up. They looked horrible for the first month they were in. They got eaten by snails and wilted in the heat. I should have waited to plant them until October, but I got the plants for free early in September and I was tired of watering them twice a day in their tiny pots! This year I had little time or energy to turn the garden over or even to mulch it. I planted my seeds and transplants at night! I let the weeds grow. I watered during the hot times and watched them get munched on. I still haven't mulched the garden. It still looks ok, I am glad I did it. I hope that other gardeners out there will think about taking the same route with their gardens, and not worry too much about getting it all perfect. It has been fun for me, and now that I have more free time I will put come compost and mulch around the greens, then they will really take off! THe best part- I have cosmos blooming out there that I can see from my bathroom window when I brush my teeth in the morning. They are gorgeous and bloomed with nothing but neglect from me.

Surprizes

It has been a strange fall. My landscaping buisness has been very busy even though this is usually a slow time for us. The weather has been erratic- getting cold, then warm, then hot, then cold again. It is really hard on plants when the weather changes abruptly, just as hard as it is on people. Did you ever notice how people get sick more often when the weather changes abruptly? Plants are the same way. My crew and I have been spraying plants with liquid seaweed to help them overcome stress. We also have been careful not to overwater or underwater when the temperatures change. Try liquid seaweed and see if your plants like it. But be careful because it can stain porous surfaces so rinse it off if you get it on anything like a window, the side of a house or a patio. Happy gardening!

Big Yard Changes

Now that the weather has cooled off, my husband and I started working out in the yard more. We cut down some huge boxwood shrubs that were growing as a hedge in front of our house. They were ok, but they were way too big for our house. We have a small one story ranch house, and the boxwoods were almost 6 feet tall. We plan on building a stone patio/porch in their place and planting around it, as well as within the spaces inbetween the stones. I will keep you up to date on our progress and take pictutres.

It seems like most people in Austin save their garden planning and planting for the spring. I think the fall is a great time to plant too! THe plants have enough time to get established before cold comes on and they have a head start on drought tolerance next summer. I pulled some gulf coast muhly grasses out of a customer's yard yesturday because he does not like them. I love them so I plopped them in a weedy, overgrown bed in my yard. Planting in there motivated me to clean it out somewhat and the plants look great. I encourage southern gardeners to try fall planting.

Fall Garden Progress

Well, my fall garden is going ok. After I planted my seeds on labor day, we got some rain and my beans and cukes came up right away. I decided to do some cactus zinnias, but they did not come up. The seeds were old and I think I did not keep the seed bed moist enough. Also, I had trouble getting my kale to come up but a few plants sprouted. Then my cat rolled around on top of them and squished them. Anyway, I tried planting some cosmos in place of zinnias. I am not sure if the flowers will grow and bloom before cold weather comes, but I like to have some extra plants in the garden like that to attract beneficial insects like bees and ladybugs. I went to a fun seed and plant giveaway sponsored by a non-profit called Sustainable Food Center: www.sustainablefoodcenter.org. I got some free collard, cabbage and broccili plants there. That was a few weeks ago, and the plants were very tiny. It is a little early to plant them yet. I put them out in the garden in their pots to get used to the light there. They got eaten up a bit by snails but they are ok. I am gradually putting them in the ground in place of the kale that didn't come up. I also planted some radish and parsnip seeds. As you can tell, my small garden will be crammed with plants if all goes well. I plant everything really close together to prevent weeds. I just plant a few of each vegetable type. It's more fun for me that way.

Fall Garden Time!

I do not grow vegetables for myself in the summer. It is just way too hot for me to spend the extra time outdoors. Plus, I am a yankee, and I tend to dislike the veggies that grow in Austin in the summer- okra and blackeye peas for instance. But now the time has come for things I do like- Beans, cukes, and greens. Every labor day weekend I put in my fall veggie garden and become somewhat obsessed with it, because I know that the fall garden is the best in Austin. All of the veggies get better and better as the weather cools off. You may have read in a previous blog that my fig tree grew over my veggie bed, engufing it in deep shade. Well, I had planned on moving it, but I opted to plant my fall garden in another bed that I used to use for veggies and as a holding area for perennials that I bought or got from friends but didn't have a good spot for yet. The spot is a bit shady but I hope it will suffice when the leaves fall.

Garden time Again!

Well, I cleaned up the veggie garden yesturday with the help of my hubby, Eric. The whole thing usually gets totally overgrown in August, and this year was no different. Old tomato plants and half-dead basil, all because I totally lose my will to brave the heat and water the darn things. This year, things are a bit different, though. There is a fig tree growing next to the veggie patch, and it grew about three times its size this year because we had so much rain. It completely shades about half of the veggie patch, so it looks like I am going to have to move the garden elsewhere. I am not completely sure of my plan of action yet, but I do not want to trim the fig tree because it provides a great deal of shade on the western side of the house and shades the AC unit. I will keep you posted. The vines in the backyard that I talked about in my last blog at the beginning of August grew back almost entirely since we cut them down. Eric ran them over with the lawn mower yesturday, so they are pretty easy to control at this point. We might try to dig them out but I am hoping we can just wear them out by repeated mowings. I am off to buy a new string trimmer, mower and blower for the business! This time I am going to get professional-grade implements, since in the past I just always got stuff from the Sears or Lowes. I am going to get an Echo trimmer and Blower as well as a toro mower, all heavy duty models. We'll see how it goes.

Your title for this blog entry

So, here is the after picture. Note the firewood pile and the trellis. Both were completely covered with out of control morning glory vine. We left a section of the vine that is covering a brush pile in the middle of the yard, where an above-ground pool used to be. Hopefully we can eradicate this vine eventually and replace it with a native passionvine, which will also be perennial and attaract butterflies. We might remove the trellis if we decide not to get a pool. We can't afford a pool now and might not be able to afford one any time in the near future. If that is the case we may have to re-grade a large portion of the yard. I am not looking forward to that, but I am getting tired of having a giant empty ditch in the backyard...