5 April 2010 by Barbara.

Spring in southeast Texas is definitely earlier than most part of the country. Trees are starting to bud, plants are slowly recovering from the harsh winter. Many of our plants that we thought were gone are beginning to show signs of life.  Like many other gardeners we began the process of cutting back the dead stems and branches of the plants, the bigger the garden the longer it takes.  It always amazes me how many plants we have growing in a normal size yard, it seems that the cutting back will never end, then suddenly you are down to just one more plant.

The moral of this tale is: Be Careful Before You Whack That Plant!!!

The plant in question is our Mexican Flame Vine, it grows up a homemade trellis in the back yard next to the house. Just before we began to cut it, a male Cardinal flew out of the tangled mess. My husband looked under the dried, brown, stems and there was a perfectly formed nest with the female sitting on it. The nest is in a perfect location, the outdoor light is behind the vine and therefore produces heat that has kept the nest warmer.

As the weeks have moved on  we have watched the unfolding of a family. We now know that there were at least 3 eggs being kept warm in the nest. We’ve been able to watch the activity from inside the house, the nest is just outside a small window, giving us a perfect view of nature at her best.

We’ve seen the tiny birds emerge from their shells, watched as the female feed them, watched both parents gather food from our yard and return to feed the brood. They grew so quickly,  today we heard loud chirping from the parents and thought something was wrong, instead it was a day of teaching the babies to fly!

We watched as they slowly found that their wings worked. It is fun to see how the parents kept up with the newly fledged trio. I was reminded of teaching our children to drive, lots of chaos!  It was so wonderful to see the tiny birds learning to fly, they stayed near the house and flitted short distances from chair to table to stairs, each leg of the journey getting longer and their wings getting stronger.

As stated above during this time of year, Be Careful As You Work In The Garden, you never know what surprise awaits you , look around and see what may be hidden.

What have you seen this spring? How is your garden recovering? What has survived? Do you have any plants that haven’t shown signs of regrowth?

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26 January 2010 by Barbara.

Check back for weekly updates!

January 23:
Stopped by the greenhouse to check on the seedlings. A few of the peppers seems a bit dry so we moved a few trays around to be sure they get enough moisture. The eggplants have not sprouted yet, hopefully we’ll see a little green soon. The pepper still in the mist tent are looking great.

January 20:
It’s time to plant the eggplant seeds. Opps, no room in the mist tent. We removed several of the TAM pepper trays, they were showing two tiny leaves and growing rapidly. They were place on the table with the Sweet Aussi Basil, this table has a great misting system, and a raised heat pad system. They should be fine.

January 15:
Stopped by for a quick visit to the greenhouse. Checked on the seedlings, the ones in the mist tent and on the table look good.

January 13:
The pepper seed trays in the mist tent were checked, everything looked fine – the soil was moist and the heat pads were working. Now we are waiting for the seedlings to show a little green.

On to the next plants — 53 cuttings of Sweet Aussi Basil were started with lots of help from our wonderful dedicated MGs. The cuttings were made, given a soak in a mixture of Hasta-Gro fertilizer and Consan Triple Action 20 fungicide/ algaecide before being dipped in rooting hormone, they were then planted in 1 quart pots (4 cuttings to a pot). These were set on heat pads on a table in the greenhouse not in the mist tent.

January 11:
Stopped by to check on the mist tent, moisture in the seed trays appeared even and the heat pads are warm.

January 9-11:
Due to the really cold weather the water in the greenhouse had to be turned off at night. Thanks to our great Greenhouse Chairman the seedlings did not go un-misted. This dedicated MG went to the greenhouse everyday during the freezing weather to turn the water on during the day and back at night to turn it off. That’s a REAL gardener!!!

Jan. 9, 2010:
We began with a Kick-off meeting, had great attendance from our FBMG veggie team, then started planting seeds.

We had over 20 Master Gardeners and Associates join us as we discussed the plans for growing and selling the vegetables, then we planted a total of 728 pepper seeds. These included 2 varieties of bell peppers, 1 banana pepper, 2 varieties of jalapenos and 1 variety of chili pepper. All seed trays were labeled with the variety and date planted, and then placed into the mist tent with heat pads set at 82 degrees Fahrenheit. The mist tent is totally full!!

Notes: As with all projects you always learn from the experience, some of the things we learned from the project last year:

1. Double check all labeling
2. Include more varieties of peppers
3. This is a Vegetable Sale not an herb sale
4. Improve timing so that plants aren’t too leggy

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15 January 2010 by Barbara.

Dec. 20, 2009: It’s time again to plan and gear up for the ‘Annual’ Vegetable Sale which will be held on March 13 ^th in conjunction with our Fort Bend County Master Gardener’s Perennial Sale.

Time to order the seeds for the Vegetable Sale. After reading seed catalogs, checking online seed vendors and researching information to find the best varieties for our area it was decided to keep several of the varietes from last year’s sale and add different varieties rather than use the exact list from the previous sale. Input from Master Gardeners and customers who bought plants at the sale last year or requested specific varieties was a factor in deciding which seeds to purchase.

The seeds were finally ordered from 5 vendors. Two of the vendors were used last year and three new ones were added, all of these were recommended by other MG groups or Urban Harvest. We ordered seeds for 10 varieties of tomatoes, 4 of eggplant, 5 varieties of peppers, 2 of tomatillos, 3 varieties of basil, and 1 of fennel.

It was decided to order fewer varieties of tomatoes (last year we grew 13, which included 2 free varieties from the vendors.)

Check back weekly for more updates.

Dec.21, 2009:Before the seeds arrive it time to get the paper work in order. Last year we developed several docs that would help us keep track of the planting schedule. Since we have limited space in the mist tent we must be sure that we don’t plant too many seeds at once or we’ll run out of space for the trays.

After much revising and counting dates and referring to Vegetable charts for germination, transplant, and maturity time we finally think the schedule is set. Of course this is probably going to be revised when reality kicks in. The spreadsheet has been developed and saved, we’ll print a copy to give to the volunteers who are part of the team.

Last year we had documentation sheets for each table in the greenhouse to record observations and actions taken each visit to the greenhouse. The results gave us invaluable data to apply to this year’s project. The new sheets are ready for printing.

We are now ready for the Kick-off meeting!

Dec 29, 2009: All of the seeds have arrived. So much for reducing the number of varieites. (LOL) We have ended up with 12 varieites (2 of which again are free packets from the vendors.) So we’ll still have a lot of tomato plants to sell.

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