Lil's Garden

  The Wendell Berry poem, "The Man Born to Farming," says  "He has seen the light lie down in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn."  I'm not sure I was actually born to farming or gardening, but every year about this time I forget about the unbearable heat and the worry about rain and the Bermuda grass and the sore knees and I am reborn to gardening.  This year we were especially blessed when a new friend of ours who is a Brahma cattle farmer mucked out her barn. She had 30 years of wonderful compost to share. We got three loads of the black gold and spread it on our newly prepared beds. We are ready to start seedlings, plant seeds, onion sets, and seed potatoes, and see them rise up again. Judy Collins has a great line in her song, "Fallow Way": "The black earth dreams of violets." I hope on this cold and drizzly day that our manure enriched garden soil is dreaming of tomatoes and peppers and potatoes and onions and beans and sunflower...

 It's been a while since I've written anything on Lil's Garden. Both gardens were not very successful in 2022. Between the late frost and the early 100 degree weather, gardening did not get off to a good start. The drought and the heat of the summer made it almost impossible to grow anything, even with the irrigation system. I have a lot to learn. I did learn that zinnias, basil, peppers, and eggplants are the most tolerant of extreme heat. We even harvested a watermelon for Thanksgiving this year. The recent freeze has taken everything except a lavender bush and some oregano.    I'm attempting to refresh the herb garden. We got an attachment for our BCS Walk-Behind Tractor that chips wood. So we made some lovely mulch for the paths. All the landscape timbers are rotting. So the next step was to replace them. We are also finding it difficult to recycle glass in our area. So... since glass doesn't decompose anyway, we decided to recycle our glass bottles as edging. T...

It's time to begin thinking about the spring garden. We downsized our garden from last year. Hopefully it will be a little more manageable. I am hoping to plant some native fruit trees at the back of the garden — wild plum, agarita, wild persimmon, and some citrus trees. This week I planted onions—Red "Karmen," Sweet "Pentium," and Yellow "Stuttgarter."  I cleaned up the romaine lettuce bed that survived all the freezes. I'm surprised that lettuce is so hearty. I cultivated the strawberries and borage bed. I read that borage is supposed to benefit the strawberries. It also has pretty blue flowers, I'm told. There's still a bed of Crawford lettuce (It survives everything.) and some kale and Swiss chard.  We'll see if they make a comeback or if I just need to replant. I've started some seeds—tomatoes, peppers, chamomile, basil, and catnip (for Coco),    The potatoes are in a warm sunny spot making sprouts.  The herbs in the herb garde...

  After the summer harvest, gardening was crazy. It was sooooo hot, and then the rains began. I'm not complaining. We need all the rain we can get. But just when we were ready to tackle the weeds, it would rain, and it was too wet to get out in the garden. Then the weeds proliferated. Because of the extreme heat, our work hours were from 8 to 10 in the morning. After that it was just too hot. Finally, we just took out the irrigation system and let it go. We still have jalapeno peppers  and basil "trees" with no irrigation.    We did have a good crop of pecans this year, and we got to them before the squirrels and skunks. This week we began again with a fall/winter garden. The BCS walk behind tractor and Robert made some lovely rows.  We decreased the size of the garden by about half. Our plan it to plant fruit trees behind the garden plot. We bought red cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli plants.  I got a few bare root strawberry plants. ...

  With the abundance of recent rain, our garden is overrun with weeds. However, we are still harvesting cucumbers, peppers, cherry tomatoes, cantaloupes, and watermelons. Does anyone have any dill? We also have basil and zinnias and a little okra. I just harvested a basket of mustang grapes this morning. They're in the pot making juice. There are a lot more, if anyone else wants to make jelly. They're on the front fence, and Robert mowed down the weeds so they're easy to get to. I'm happy to share!

 I returned from visiting the new grand baby in Alaska to find the garden water soaked and full of weeds. We have our work cut out for us cleaning things up, but we are finding some produce among the weeds. The tomatoes are just coming in. We have plenty of green beans and squash to share. Just let me know if you want some. Here's a great recipe for instant pot green beans. They are delicious. Ingredients 4 slices bacon, chopped 1/2 cup chopped onion 1 cup chicken broth 1 1/2 pounds green beans, trimmed and cut in half 3/4 teaspoon seasoned salt 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder 1/2 teaspoon pepper pinch of crushed red pepper flakes 1 tablespoon butter Instructions Turn Instant Pot on SAUTE mode. When hot, coat inner pot with cooking spray and add bacon. Cook until bacon is crisp. Add onion and cook 1 more minute. Hit "Cancel" and add chicken broth. Scrape up any browned bits on the bottom. Add remaining ingredients. Place lid on Instant Pot and set to Pressu...

  Right now we have peppers, shallots,   peas,    onions,   zinnia, Swiss chard, sunflowers, (The zinnias planted themselves. I stuck a few Swiss chard and sunflowers among them, and I think a feral watermelon and some basil are in the mix. We'll see what happens in this unruly row. kale,    tomatoes (We made some nice supports for the tomatoes with rebar, t-posts, PVC joints, and string. Hopefully that makes the harvest easier.), beans (We also built a trellis for the beans with t-posts, chicken wire, and bamboo.),   radishes,  lettuce,   spinach, broccoli, cauliflower,  collards,   watermelons (They haven't made it up yet.),  potatoes,   corn (We just planted it this morning.),   and blackberries   growing in the garden. We also see a number of amazing creatures enjoying the blooms and blossoms in the garden.   In the little garden we have Swiss chard, coll...