Winter Woes

I am not a lover of Winter. Outside the Charamon Garden, it is forty shades of brown. It is not a pretty time of year in West Texas. We had a good color display in Abilene this autumn but those beautiful leaves were soon on the ground.

Usually my garden is a green oasis in the midst of the brown. But the current freeze has been so hard I covered everything I could with floating row covers attempting to minimize damage (not working too well as my last inspection confirmed). So the beds with Carrots, Lettuce, Swiss Chard, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Kale and Collards are out of sight. The garlic and cover crops offer the only green with their wild winter grass, Austrian Winter Peas and Hairy Vetch. It has been so dry (well over 50 days now) that the places that don’t get water from the well are parched and dead.

I had hoped to supply greens for the folks brave enough to come to the market on Saturdays but the cold has brought everything to a halt. I usually go out for my morning coffee and break the ice in the birdbath for the thirsty avians but this morning it was frozen solid. This global warming is killing me!

It is even too cold to pull weeds. Some hardy souls may venture out to tidy things up but I figure it can wait until my fingers won’t turn blue. So, I stay in the study and write blogs like this.

Gardening in West Texas is a challenge. Eight years ago I began improving our sandy/clay/alkaline soil and it is really looking good and growing most vegetables well. Our water is not ideal as it is full of gypsum and sodium but it sustains things until the next good rain. The weather is unpredictable with a sunny warm day on Monday and bitter cold on Tuesday. We have gentle warm breezes one day and fierce and unrelenting winds the next. Now, now, stop crying…I knew what I was getting into! I don’t think I would know how to garden where it rains regularly upon fertile loam and the seasons are predictable.

In the meantime, eat your veggies. Nonnie and Pop said so!

Slowly but Surely

I finally got all our potatoes in the ground yesterday. With so much going on in my work, I have had to steal time to do it. We have four varieties planted not only for the fun of it, but to see which ones we like best and grow the best.

We also got the tomato seedlings planted and caged. You could hardly call them seedlings…they were long and lanky and nearing two feet tall! We have nine set out and another back up group of eight in pots in case we get a late freeze.

Wow! There is so much more to be done! Bermuda grass infestation (you’ve heard of the Bermuda Triangle, have you not?) is slowing everything down. We are dealing with that monstrous weed as we go. Since we are not even trying for organic certification, we use one chemical, glysophate, to control the Bermuda. All the rest of our practices are strictly organic. I have nothing but sympathy for those who must control this introduced monster by hand in order to remain strictly and purely organic.

We still have many beds to prepare which involves cutting down the winter grass, amending the soil (cottonseed meal and Texas Greensand) and getting the seeds and sets in the ground. Vegetables and herbs yet to be planted are, squash (soft and hard), southern peas, okra, onions, leeks, corn, green beans, eggplant, basil, thyme, cilantro (coriander in Australia) and cucumbers. The broccoli, collards, kale and mustard greens are finished. The garlic is nearing harvest. The swiss chard (silverbeet in Australia) is going crazy. We are cutting increasing amounts of asparagus shoots as Spring progresses.

Fortunately, my son and daughter-in-law are able to help occasionally. Can we “git ‘er done?” Stay tuned.

In the meantime, eat your veggies…Nonnie and Pop said so!

We are thinking about selling our overflow veggies…especially winter ones. If you are in the Abilene, Texas area and would like to get on our mailing list so we can notify you about availability, send your name and email address to: dwight.whitsett@gmail.com

The Big Chill

     Texas weather is, if anything, interesting.  On this 20th day of November it has been 80 degrees Fahrenheit, 26 degrees Celsius.   That’s about 20 degrees F above normal for this time of year.  The first freeze has been late in coming.  Leaves have been reluctant to fall and stuff that should be dead is alive and well.

That is all due to end in the next 24 hours.  All the tropical and subtropical pot plants (eucalyptus, ginger, philodendron, ficus, bougainvillea) have been brought in.  In a few hours we’ll be covering the garden beds planted with broccoli, collards, kale, chard, lettuce, carrots and mustard greens with floating row covers to minimize the freeze damage.  It looks to be a rather light freeze but it will come suddenly and linger a few days.  So, we’ll see what happens.

We’ll cut some of the greens to add to our Thanksgiving feast on Thursday.  Should be yummy!

I have some good news and….

I’ve been away for a week and my son has been in charge of keeping the seedbeds moist. We had just about given up on the hairy vetch but lo and behold…it has germinated! That’s the good news.

As I predicted, two of the mail-order collard plants have gone to their reward. The others look sickly but seem to be on their way to recovery. So…between the survivors, the swiss chard (silverbeet) and mustard greens…we shall have greens. We’ll have a little lettuce as well…very little. I hope to get more going soon.

Never Again

The collard plants finally arrived yesterday and I put them in their bed this morning. They had been back ordered. I had initially ordered them along with 6 Broccoli plants and three Kale plants. All but one of the broccoli plants survived and now seem to be thriving. The Kale looks great.

I would not be surprised, however if two or more of the collards bite the dust. They didn’t look well when they arrived and I’m afraid they’ll die of transplant shock. None of them had well-developed root systems and when I took them out of their little plastic pots, the soil just fell away. Well, they are now in my garden and their fate, for good or ill, awaits them.

My other concern is frost. Will these little delicate, worse-for-the-wear and poorly rooted transplants survive our first frost which cannot be too far away? I have the floating row cover ready to pull over them when the frost comes but it may not be enough. If I had grown my own transplants, they would have been in the soil for a month by now.

If they die, it serves me right. I just didn’t take the time to produce my own transplants and so I had to depend upon a commercial grower way up north. So, as I put the poor little things in the ground, I kept muttering, “Never again…never again.”