Some Garden Pics.

This is the West Fence garden. It started out early in the year as a strawberry patch (which wasn't terribly productive) and then became a green bean patch interspersed with strawberries and then went on to be a green bean interspersed with strawberries, herbs, and heirloom peppers and tomatoes patch with some zinnias mixed in with some watermelon. It's thriving (for the most), so I'll not complain. Close-up planting has provided shade and comfort in the Texas heat.



That's the same West fence garden area behind the 2009 compost garden. I don't have a compost PILE. I just toss food scraps, hair, lint, vacuum-cleaner-bag contents wherever I can find a little ground that doesn't have something growing on it at the moment using this garden patch. Last year I deposited the compost in the 2008 compost garden. The Texas heat is so strong that it pretty much sucks the life out of anything/everything set on the ground. I don't need to cut large things. A canteloupe or watermelon rind will shrink down to an inch or 2 in less than a day. This composting method results in LOTS of volunteers. LOTS! I also don't try and control the gardens much, either vertically (with supports) or horizontally (with wooden sides on raised beds). The beds started out raised this year because I had Ken and the loads of mushroom soil amendments, but Em's not into weed-whacking, so I sprayed grass & weed killer around all the garden beds on a really still day. It's not permanent, but it gave some boundaries for a while. This time of year, the watermelons are crawling up the tomatoes and the tomatoes are laying all over the place, but they stay cooler laying close to the ground and the fruits get less insect damage laying on grass.





The 2008 compost garden is too full of overgrown grasses to show right now, along with the asparagus patch. It's simply been too hot (even early in the day or later in the evening) to get out there for any kind of work. I get out there to pick stuff, though.



Insects are prolific, as you might imagine, and I try and pick things before insects damage them completely (meaning sometimes before they're totally ripe). You might also notice that some of the hybrid tomatoes suffer from "yellow shoulder". I haven't seen that on the heirloom tomatoes, but only the cherry tomatoes are ripening just recently, and the heirlooms (started from seed) weren't out there for the torrential rains of Spring. I'm sure the heat will affect them all eventually. No getting around that.

Be back later or tomorrow for today's garden pickings and pics of what we've been eating from the garden lately (including tonight's homemade pizza) for the Arduous Challenge.