Texas Vegetable Garden

Today I planted my Apache and Arapaho Erect blackberry cells from Stark Bros (3 of each).

There are both thornless varieties, and with any luck I will get an extended harvest from having two different breeds. I have planted them in a row of 6, with about 2 feet between each seedling, in the front garden by the approach to my door. This is not the sunniest place I have available, but I am hoping it gets enough sunlight to keep these guys healthy.

The Apache, in the foreground in this image, are looking very healthy, lots of nice green looking leaves, at the time of planting.

In this image, with the Arapaho in the foreground, you can see they are a lot smaller.  All three of them had some yellow leaves that were nearly dead which I removed (hopefully that was a good idea!)

When I was digging the holes for this I was pleased to come across Earthworms in most of them.  I haven’t done anything to this soil myself , but the landscape firm my subdivision uses does mulch it every year.  While it was some rather heavy clay under the mulch, at least it is fertile enough supporting the basic soil critters.

My long term hope is here is that blackberries will fill in to make somewhat of a hedge, roughly 10 feet long.  I’m not entirely sure that the landscapers won’t interfere with this (assuming I can keep them alive!), but I have my fingers crossed.

You will notice the mysterious grass the landscapers have planted, scattered around my planting area. I am going to leave them there for now, but if the look to be taking over I will remove them.

Last night I finally got around to planting the two Blueberry bushes I have had parked in a box in the house for a few days.

Both plants are ‘Rabbiteye’ varieties…one is of type Tifblue and one of type Climax.  The theory is that having more than one variety of Blueberry improves the yield, I shall see how that pans out.

As you can see, there is not much to them right now, they arrived as sticks with a root.  Hopefully I will see some signs of vegetation soon.

Say a prayer for the Japanese Boxwood lying on the grass in the background…he gave his life so that the Blueberry could have a home:)

Today I planted most of Raised Bed #4.

I have dedicated half of this bed to Sweet corn. Whilst I had hoped I would have room for 4 rows, I only managed to squeeze in 3 rows of 10. I spaced the individual seeds roughty four to six inches apart, with ten inches between each row. My reading suggests that 3 rows is a rather marginal number for successful pollination of the corn kernels. I will therefore have to keep a close eye of that when the time comes, I may need to provide some kind of manual assistance with the fertilization.

The other half of Bed #4 now contains my Shallots (a set of 10 ’sets’, to make a poor pun). There are lined up in one row against the edge of the bed, so I still have a large empty space behind them I can utilize in future (spinach perhaps?)

I am starting to run out of planting space, but thankfully I’m seeing signs some of my earlier plantings are finally germinating.

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