Veggie Harvest

There's nothing like home grown veggies to make you popular at work.

About every third day, we pick a basketful of cucumbers, tomatoes, banana peppers and jalapenos.


Travis is dwarfed by our tomato jungle. We have about twelve plants that are being supported by six Texas Tomato Cages. I highly recommend the cages. They are worth every penny. They're incredibly sturdy and fold flat for storage. Can you imagine if we tried to used the little pepper cages on the left for our tomatoes?


We trained our cucumbers on a four foot circular section of pig fence but they quickly outgrew it so we increased the structure's height by zip tying our overflow compost bin on top. The cucumbers love it. And by luck, we've found their ideal growing location in our garden. The plants are in full sun, but the fence shelters them from the baking late afternoon heat.


Tsatsiki is a Greek yogurt dip that is usually served with pita bread and gyro. It's one of the many cucumber recipes we've been experimenting with. Our version tasted good, very refreshing, but it was a lot thinner than the spread they serve at the Greek restaurant.

Tsatsiki - Greek Cucumber Spread
1 peeled, shredded cucumber - set in a colander to let the extra moisture drip out
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup sour cream
1-2+ teaspoons chopped garlic
Fresh mint
Fresh Dill
Mix all the ingredients together with an electric mixer.

Winged Guests

Since the summer flowers have come into bloom, butterflies and bees are everywhere.

Any time I go out front, I see at least three or four of these Border Patch Butterflies enjoying my lantana.

Here's the same species with its wings closed. This is by far the most common butterfly in my yard. I photographed this one on my climbing rose bush in the backyard.

I've only see the Hummingbird Moth visit my garden once so far. But they're so willing to let you watch and photograph them up close that the time you get to spend observing them leaves you feeling very satisfied.

By contrast, I never get to watch the huge Swallowtail Butterflies for more than a few seconds, and, as soon as I turn toward the house to grab my camera, they're gone.

However, I did get a good look at the Black Swallowtail Caterpillars enjoying my parsley. I let the parsely flower because I was hoping to attract these guests. Today was the first day I noticed them.

It seems like you can see his litte face in this picture. These caterpillars were so photogenic. I have a few more shots in my flickr Bugs set.

Finally, near dusk I saw this fuzzy caterpillar chomping on my nandia. I saw another one on my front porch a few nights ago. I know they will turn into moths, but I am not sure which kind. Giant Leopard Moths maybe?

Bloom Day - Shades of Purple

Apparently, in garden blogging culture, the 15th of every month is Bloom Day, when bloggers share photos of flowers in bloom. For my first Bloom Day, I chose the theme "shades of purple."
 

This Purple Shamrock or Oxalis Regnelli is a pass along plant from MomMom. I love the texture that you can see on the leaves. If you have flickr, it's worth the extra click to view the enlarged photo.
 

Black and Blue Salvia (the most striking bloomer in my garden right now) and Catmint. It's hard to see the individual Catmint flowers, but their shape echos the salvia's (a good principle of garden design). Both of these plants are in my backyard border.

I planted this Larkspur from seed. It's well past its peak, but it still has a few blooms. I haven't pulled it up yet because I am waiting for all of the seed pods to spill their contents. The seedlings that sprout in the winter will be the reward for my patience now.

And finally, Dwarf Plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides).
Happy Bloom Day!

Weekend Happenings

A caller to KTSA's Garden Show was having the same problem with her Giant Liriope that has plagued mine for about six months. One strap at a time, it's turning yellow and the plant is thinning. I am about 10 straps away from losing an entire plant.

Bob says liriope has no diseases or pests, but it can be planted too deeply and mulched too heavily. Armed with this piece of information, I pulled back the mulch and dirt on each plant until I exposed the root flare. Now, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I couldn't resist this Plantain Lily that was reduced to only $1 at Lowe's. This spring, I made a shade pot arrangement with Creeping Jenny, ferns and a Plantain Lily. The lily looks ragged under the more intense summer sun so I moved the pot, and I'm hopeful the new addition can withstand the weather.

For the backyard border garden that I'm working on, I needed Moonbeam Coreopsis. From what I've read, Moonbeam is a shorter coreopsis with lighter yellow flowers – perfect. However, none of my local nurseries stocked Moonbeam so I ordered some online and was surprised when they arrived as knots of roots in plastic bags.

I don't usually mark plants with their ID tags, but I was worried that I wouldn't remember where I planted them. Today, I was relieved to see a few shoots poking through the dirt.

 

In the veggie garden, squash vine borers devastated our zucchini and yellow squash. You can see the areas where the larvae burrowed into the stems. There's not much I can do to fight the borers, plus it's the end of the season so pulled up the plants and buried them as deep as I could in a compost salad.

Parting Shot: Travis spotted this tiny praying mantis in our cucumber jungle.

Water Gardening

I used my Rainbow Gardens Groupon to buy this water lily and reed plant. Neither was labeled so I'll be learning about them by trial and error. To complete my tiny water garden, I bought two 2-inch goldfish for 54 cents. I should have taken their picture before I released them because, with all of the turbidity, I don't know if I'll ever see them.

Blogger Learning Curve

My best laid plans for being a consistent blogger have been thwarted by the Blogger learning curve. Working with pictures in Blogger is a PITA. But I think I've figured it out. I'm still disoriented in Flickr, but I'm determined to master it. So, here's to more frequent blog posts. Enjoy!

New Fountain

For our 5-year wedding anniversary, Travis suggested I pick out a garden fountain. It took several months, but I finally found this one for $100 on Craigslist. Today, Trav and I leveled the ground, created a brick riser and installed the plumbing.

Running water attracts a wider variety of birds than seed alone. To document our feathered visitors, I've borrowed Dad's Wingscape bird camera.