Saturday, September 29, 2012

Homemade cleaning

Today I decided to make my own homemade dish soap. It was quite the experience.


It appeared to go well, but about four hours later the liquid soap congealed back to its original state, the solid form soap.  So my search for homemade, non-toxic soap continues....

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Beans are coming up

These are The bean sprouts my garden greeted me with today. Can't wait to have a green (or purple) bean harvest soon!

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

What is it?

I spotted this on my tomatoes recently. I think it's a Japanese beetle, but since I've never spotted one before I'm not 100% positive. Can anyone confirm this for me?

Sunday, September 9, 2012

First pumpkin

This is a garden blog. So it's a tad disappointing that I'm posting a picture of a pumpkin I bought instead of grew. However, I can appreciate the hard work of someone else and I'm happy to know that I'm supporting a Texas Farmer. Here is to my first pumpkin of 2012!

and one month later it is

or at least it feels that way. I believe the official first day of Fall is September 22nd, so almost there.


 August was a relatively cool month, for about two weeks. We had lots of rain, 2.82 inches according to NWS which is the highest since March and just odd for August. I welcomed it though!
We also had a severe storm that did tornado-like damage, but turned out to just be fast, straight line winds. A lot of fences were down in our area, a billboard was bent over and twisted and my neighbor had a metal pole go straight through the body of his truck.

Yes, August was an interesting month. I began fertilizing with a variety of liquid fertilizers around mid-August in preparation for Fall Tomatoes. I did this last year around late September and had a large (for me) harvest of green tomatoes right after Thanksgiving. I ended up pulling them right after the first frost (laziness) and allowed them to ripen indoors. I plan to do the same this year, only I want them to be red before the frost.

My cucumbers did not survive August despite the rain. To be honest, I got really lazy with the rain. Even when it stopped it took me another two weeks to start actively watering the garden. I kept waiting on another storm to do it for me.

Now, I'm good though. I just finished weeding the old cucumber bed and will begin planting Beets, Radishes and Beans in preparation for next week.These veggies will produce throughout the fall and early Texas winter (think 60s) while giving plenty of nitrogen to the soil. I plan to plant my Tomatoes in that bed next spring and growing nitrogen rich plants now will prepare the way.

The weather should stay nice the rest of the week with a cold front coming late in the week. The rain might hamper any weeding and planting needed, but I would like to have that finished today in our high of 89 weather.