I threw together this unusually delicious salad last night. I am certainly no gourmet chef, but I thought it worth sharing:) 1/2 head of red leaf lettuce, chopped 1 tomato, wedged 1/2 mango, diced 1 appled, chopped 1/4 stick of celery, chopped fine 1 clementine, pulled into wedges It tastes great without any dressing. The [...] Read more »
Texas Pure Soil Blend – Get the Dirt!
I plan to talk about the construction of my raised beds in a future post, but today I will address the soil mix I utilized. The City of Plano, under a contract for the North Texas Municipal Water District, puts out a line of garden mixes under the brand name ‘Texas Pure’. These products are largely created from recyclable [...] Read more »
Texas A&M – Home Gardening Resource
In the process of planning my plantings for the year I have done a lot of research on the Internet - I tend to suffer from Analysis Paralysis! I would have to say that one of the most useful resources I have come across in my reading is the information provide by Texas A&M. There [...] Read more »
Growth Update
Today I am performing some record keeping, logging some information on the growth in some of my beds so far. It will be interesting to look back at this over the year and monitor my progress. First of all the tomatoes. Today I finally put some twine up to help guide the growth of these [...] Read more »
Corn and Shallots are in the ground
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 [...] Read more »
Jersey Supreme and Purple Passion Asparagus
Now that I have completed extending Bed #3, I have space for my remaining asparagus crowns. My planting today consisted of two rows of 5 of Jersey Supreme Hybrid Asparagus – Giant Grade, and behind them one row of 5 of my remaining Purple Passion Asparagus crowns. Once I had them planted I gave the [...] Read more »
Mary Washington and Purple Passion Asparagus
I have spent a lot of time the last few days working on a new raised bed (Bed #3) for my Asparagus. I originally planned to plant these along the fence line, but given the long life span of Asparagus (10 years or even more) I decided against it. With any luck the Asparagus will last [...] Read more »
Peas and Carrots planted
Today I planted half of bed #2. I sowed 2 rows of Sweet Peas, 5 in each row, into the back left quarter of the bed. The plan eventually is to provide them some kind of trellis work for support, but I have a little while before I need to worry about that. In front [...] Read more »
Tomatoes, herbs, and lettuce, planting aplenty
Today was my first planting! A whole lot of seeds (as well as a selection of Tomato Seedlings) are ready to go in the ground I had been unsure which Tomato Variety to go with, so I took advantage of Burpee’s Tomato Hall of Fame. This package consists of a selection of different tomato cultivars as listed below (excluding [...] Read more »
Fertilized with Vigoro
Now that raised beds #1 and #2 are ready to be planted, I have decided to apply a little fertilizer in the meantime. A quick trip to Home Depot and I have 2 pounds of ‘Vigoro Timed-Release All Purpose Plant Food 19-6-12′. Honestly, I didn’t do much research on this. I have applied it as per [...] Read more »