Right now, other gardens are more fun

Now that it is finally cool enough to do some major garden work, there is no sunlight for it in the evenings. Contrast this with the summertime, when there is no shortage of light, but it is so hot that you can die gardening at 7pm.

Lately I have been landscaping at night, installing the hardscape in the back garden. While I would like to put up a blog post or two about it, it is coming along so slowly that no one should be squirming with anticipation. In the meantime, enjoy some scenes around town that I found diverting...

A garden of culvert tubes:

Infestation of ceramic fungi at The Arbor Gate:

Sign seen on leaving the soil supplier Mulch King:

Summer concedes

Once in a while we get vibrant autumn colors here, if an early cold snap drops in. But usually the fall season is indicated by subtler things: the color of the light and shade, the declension of the sun, and the reluctant tapering off of summer produce. There is something so poignant about the sweet vestiges of summer hanging on well into fall. Seen in the garden today:

Celeste figs in November

A small second crop of Hunt muscadines (or maybe they are Fry muscadines).

Sweet basil beginning to lose its vigor. Pesto time!

The need for integrating my pest management system

So my next door neighbor told me about a new garden pest. One recent night while she was writing, she heard violent rustling in the shrubs behind her fence. She said she wondered what kind of animal was back there, and decided to go see.

A man came out of the shrubs through a gap in the fence. He had some lame explanation about searching for his lost dog but he looked like he had either been sleeping back there or taking a dump. He bummed a cigarette off my neighbor and asked her about her marital status. She’s married, but he asked to see her ‘coochi’. [Oh, you mean my ‘chichi’ ruellia? There’s a good patch blooming in a garden down the street and around the corner. Bye.]

My neighbor is very brave and played it cool till he left. By the way, she didn’t describe about her garden dweller much but I don’t think he fit this appearance:

A guy I saw at the Texas Renaissance Festival

I have a management system for garden pests like my neighbor’s. It is 75 pounds of mutt named Plue. We did not bring him in for homestead security but he takes it upon himself. From time to time he makes himself a key pest. For example, I feel like nannies pushing strollers do not need to be evicted from our street but he does. A mail carrier told me Plue has the loudest bark he has ever heard from any dog, and I would guess that he is an authority on barking dogs.

(Photo taken by the Kid)

I don’t know how other people do it, but gardening with a dog this size and varietie(s) can be such a drag. He is not a puppy anymore so maybe I shouldn’t tell tails but I have not forgotten that he tore up 7 bags of fine compost directly over the new French drain. I haven’t forgotten that he excavated the drip irrigation system and added many, many more perforations. Part of the reason the back garden is nearly a wasteland is the recent garage construction, but part of the reason is Plue.

As I get the garden going again, I will be considering ways to integrate it with Plue. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I can learn from the dog vs garden experience of the many garden blogs writers out there. And I will post my successes, if any.

Meanwhile, I have yet to find garden-lurking, cigarette-mooching pervs in my landscaping, and for this I say: Good Boy, Plue!

Taste test: Turk's cap hibiscus

Today I tried the berry of Turk’s cap hibiscus (Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii) from a shrub I passed while walking the dog. They are a common native hibiscus here, but I heard only lately that the fruit, which about the size of a big blueberry and the color of a ripe persimmon, is edible.

It tasted exactly like a red delicious apple from a school lunch: mealy and vaguely apple-flavored. Also, it’s packed with seeds. I’m glad to have the experience, but the rating I give Turk’s cap berries is: bird food.

Tasting a new strange fruit is a great pleasure of mine, and I will pay stupid amounts of money to try something that may not even be ripe. Ah, but I am even happier if I found it and picked it myself.

At Last Organic Outpost

Having meant to go for years, I made a visit to the urban community farm Last Organic Outpost yesterday. I stayed a little while to see Dan Phillips demonstrate how to prepare a cork floor, using wine corks. In a slight error of judgment I followed friends away to an early dinner when I really just wanted to hang out amid the greens and community farm folk. Here are a few images right off the cell phone (I am comfortable in the knowledge that no one comes to this blog for the fine photography).

Summer and autumn merge gracefully here and heat-loving crops like okra keep producing alongside the fall plantings of greens. Unexpected combinations of volunteer plants and crops made exploring interesting.

For example, spearmint and broccoli raab...

Squash, lettuce, and mustard greens...

Kabocha squash, I think.

One of several eggplant varieties I saw, here cosying up to okra:

Mint corrals...

Edible and ornamental coexist:

Children tried their hand at the cork floor and bottle cap wall model. Dan Phillips designs and builds houses together with the house’s future residents. The building materials are reclaimed to keep costs low, and so inventively recycled I urge you to see some examples at the website.

A few parting shots...

The temporary Mt Muddy

This is my former concrete driveway. It was just about this broken up before it was pulled out and put into a stack. Did the demolition crew skive off and forget it? No, I have plans for it. Can you guess what this stack is going to be? (If you answer 'a nuisance', you are partially correct.)

Planting a planter box

In previous posts I’ve alluded to some construction going on around here. We have a garage and patio that will be finished soon. After almost a year of building, I am so ready to do some landscaping in the construction site formerly known as the back garden.

First project up: the planter box. The box is formed by the patio’s banco seating and the steps to the garage apartment. It is 36” deep and 5 feet long. The interior masonry is covered with a sheet of rubber tucked under the coping, pond liner-style. There is a scupper at the bottom for drainage.
(I tried to eliminate the construction-related mess from the photos, reminiscent of Cultivating Paradise’s comments on photographing her garden amidst a building site.)

What is that wooden contraption? Why, it’s the railing that was to keep the hapless from tripping ass over elbow into the open planter box. The building couldn’t pass the final inspection without some railing around the planter, but I didn’t want to start moving dirt and plants until the permit was closed. So up went this temporary bit of carpentry. Anyway, it was accepted and the 2x4s can come down any day now. Any day.

So we passed the final, and then the planter box has been planted. The first step was to put a bit of mesh over the drain slot. (It makes an unimpressive view, so no photo.)
Step 2: Rocks were tipped in to provide a drainage layer deep enough to cover the drain slot. I chose this red volcanic rock because it is the lightest rock I found. I don’t anticipate needing to scoop it back out but I never want to be sorry if I do.

Step 3: Spun poly filter fabric goes over the drainage layer of rocks. It’s there to keep the rocks and soil from merging.

Step 4: Potting soil gets added. There are some very light soil-less planting media out there, developed for greenroofs and gardens over parking garages, etc. Nevermind. I just looked for the lightest bagged mix that I could find at Lowe’s hardware, which seemed to be Miracle Gro vegetable mix. Normally I want humus-y, wormy homemade loam, but in the planter box it might be too heavy, pack down, and sour.

Step 5: The plants go in. On the ends we have wooly stemodia / Stemodia tormentosa, a Texas native which likes the well-drained condition it should find in this planter. Beside those, purple heart / Setcreasea pallida which were started from potted plants in the front garden. The puny lemon grass in the center came from a community plant sale. I would like to stick in Manfreda variagata next to the purple heart, which made an appealing combo in Digging’s container gardens. I see Manfreda from time to time in the nurseries here, but now that I am shopping for them, I haven't been able to find them. I guess the lemon grass will go into the (currently non-existant) vegetable beds when the Manfreda is good enough to turn up. That makes it a place-holder plant.

Coming soon: a follow up showing the whole completed patio and planter box...minus the 2x4s.