We're all confused

I mean really confused.  A few times in the past week, water droplets started falling out of the sky and landing all around us.  Last Saturday, in fact, the water fell out of the sky so fast that it was creating puddles and lakes around us.

What is this plague that is happening?  Why is the sky spitting upon us so?

In all seriousness, the rain has been good.  The backyard is greening up.

Now I'm looking at what we need to do to plant some fall garden veggies out there.

Spring Onions

Our Texas sweet onions aren't ready to harvest yet, but we did need to thin them out. So here's a few Spring onions to throw on the grill with tonight's flank steak.

Turnips!

One of the best "crops" that we've planted in the garden in recent years are purple-top turnips.  Ordinarily, we plant them in the fall and they supply us with a steady stream of turnip greens throughout the winter.  Sometimes, though, I not only forget to thin them out, but I also neglect pulling them up.  So, as we've now hit Spring, it's time to clear out the planting beds and as part of this, the turnips had to go.  I threw my fist in there for reference as I had them sitting outside on top of the smoker, but it still doesn't give full weight to the almost-bowling-ball size of a couple of these giants.  Probably way too much turnip there.

Anyway, after clearing the turnips and chunking the largest ones into the trash, we picked and cleaned up several of the more moderately sized turnips.  Peeled them, then Meredith diced and boiled them to mix with some potatoes in mashers (we froze about half of them as this was still a LOT of turnips).

Onward to Spring plants and planting!  It's the best time for gardens!

Sunflowers

So I had this great idea to plant sunflower seeds every two weeks from March until July, so I would have staggered growth and sunflowers blooming for a long cycle, but nature beat me to the punch and these remnants from last year's seeds came up first. We'll see if the rest make it.
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Tomatoes

First this year - a couple of Cherokee Purples and a couple Rutger's Select (ripening). I always try to pick before they "vine ripen" so the pests don't get them. They'll ripen on my counter just fine.
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Irises

Despite some damage from the freeze last month, the irises are still blooming.
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More Eggplants

So I have decided that eggplants and bell peppers are a great garden-type vegetable investment.  Here we are, middle of November, and all of those plants are still cranking out vegetables.  On top of that, they are big, healthy plants that take up a good space in the garden.  I pulled 5 peppers for a King Ranch Chicken Casserole and also grabbed a BIG eggplant off the vine this morning, and still left about 5 eggplants and a ton of peppers still out there.  With a freeze looming soon, I have no doubts that these will soon disappear.  Still, it's been a nice long run this year.  Those (and my prolific jalapeno plant) are definitely on the list for next year.

Eggplant

This weekend we got two moderately sized eggplants from the garden, and made grilled baba ghanouj with them. Basically you grill the eggplants on a 400 degree grill, turning frequently, for 30-45 minutes, until they are black. Then after letting it cool some, add the flesh to a food processor with the following ingredients and blend until smooth:

4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup tahini paste
2-2 1/2 Tbsp. Lemon juice
1 handful flat parsley, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
Cumin, salt, pepper to taste

Serve with pita and enjoy.

Easy Plant: Jalapeno Peppers

Last for the month in the series of relatively easy plants to grow in Texas is this lovely guy, the Jalapeno.

I have grown these from seeds, and they are pretty easy to do, but generally I don't need more than one plant, and a six inch tall Bonnie plant is about the same price as a pack of seeds.

The jalapeno can easily be grown in containers (as shown here), it produces a ton of peppers if it grows tall enough, and can survive dry heat (even if the begonias I had planted around it at the base did not all survive.

Jalapenos will flower small white flowers with triangular or almost diamond shaped petals, and then will fruit.  The fruit turns red when it ripens, but you can pick them whenever they are large enough and green all the way until they turn red.

If you do decide to grow from seed, you can always remove the seeds from one of the jalapenos you harvest and dry them out in a small bag to save for the following year.  Often, we end up removing the seeds anyway to cut down on the heat from the pepper (remove the seeds and membranes and the pepper tames down quite a bit).  If you do start from seed, it's a good idea to start indoors (and I might try next year starting some inside with a sub-irrigation pot made from 2-liter soda bottles.

What you can DO with 15 or 20 jalapenos is up to you.  As for me, I always save 2 to make my annual batch of Jalapeno Pale Ale.

Enjoy!

Easy Plant: Elephant Ears

One more in our "easy plant" series here, for hot summers, it is difficult to beat Colocasia, more commonly referred to as Elephant Ears.

We have had several varieties of Elephant Ears year after year, and I love the lush tropical image they give.

Pictured here is an interesting variety, called "Upright" because the leaves point up instead of down.

Also in our garden we have "regular" elephant ears, though at 3 years old, they need to be replaced since they did not do well after this year's winter, as well as "Black Magic" with purple foliage and another one this year called "Kona Coffee" which has brownish stems and green leaves.

Super easy - grab some bulbs in April and get them in the ground in May or so.

Enjoy!

Easy Plant: Butterfly Bush

The butterfly bush is another easy plant for Texas, if you have the space for it.  As you can see ours in the center of the photo, they can get quite large (that fence is six feet tall, and you can see the butterfly bush blooms from the other side).

Since this photo was taken in late summer, the garden is looking a little ragged, but the butterfly bush still thrives through the heat.

The other nice thing about the butterfly bush is that in addition to the long, cone-shaped flowers, it actually works and works well to attract all manner of butterflies to your garden, as its name implies.  We have seen at least ten or twenty types of butterflies swarming the bush to get the sweet nectar.

Also pretty amazing is that we bought this butterfly bush from Michigan Bulb, who shipped it in a very small pot, and by the next summer, it was already this size!  The success and size of this plant has led me to think we may be adding a second one on the other side of the planting area to balance it out.

Ours is a "Black Knight" which ended up quite a bit lighter purple than I thought it would, but it is still really attractive.  Next on the list will be either a "Rainbow" or an "Empire Blue" which we may order in time to get this fall.  We shall see!

Maintenance note - you WILL have to chop this bush down in the winter.  It gets HUGE!  I take big pruning shears and cut it back by about half in mid-winter before new growth starts in the spring.

Easy Plant: Cannas

As part of my "ridiculous amounts of things to put out on the web in the month of August" ongoing project, I thought I would write on the Garden Blog here about some of my favorite easy plants to grow in your garden.

Living in Texas, I have found lots of plants just die and drown in the heat, and some work very well but not at the times they might thrive in other parts of the country.  Still, there are some plants that are very easy to plant and work with, and can greatly help your landscape.

One of these are the common canna flowers.  Every year I forget that these wait to bloom until July and August, and carry through with beautiful reds into the late summer.  The large foliage also gives a nice tropical flair to your yard.  I have a small spot on the side of the house that we call "the grotto" where I keep my tropical plants, and cannas are a large part of that.  I have found that year over year, it is helpful to keep augmenting the canna bulbs with more and more.  Last year's bulbs will come back, but perhaps later and not as vigorously as new bulbs.

The ones pictured here are "The President" - large red flowers that last a week or two and then slowly die off (like these are doing).

Cannas are easy to plant, just get some bulbs (either at your local home improvement store or from a grower such as Horn Canna Farms) in the spring, then dig a hole about 4 inches deep or so, drop the bulb in facing upward, and cover with dirt.  Then water it in and leave it alone.  Horn's has a ton of varieties selling for about 3 for $4.20 or so, which makes it very affordable to pick up several varieties.

So next Spring, grab some canna bulbs and by next summer, you'll be looking at flowers just like these.

After some rain

We got some much needed rain the past two days, but it did beat up the garden a bit. It did encourage the coneflower to bloom, though.
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Sunflower blooms!

Garden in bloom

Here's what the backyard garden looks like this morning!!!

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Tomatoes

Pulled three Cherokee Purples and one of the others off today - too late on the purples, though - heat already split them. The regular one (that looks green) should be fine in a couple of days.
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First daylily

First daylilies started blooming today! About 40 more to go.
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Butterfly bush

First blooms opening today...

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Bell Peppers

These are the orange variety... Not yet orange.

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Adirondacks

Finished staining the adirondack chairs and table this weekend. Despite some back-slat spacing issues and some squaring problems on one, I think they ended up OK.

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