We are planning a new set of beds in the veggie demo garden. We will use four new beds to perform tests of Earthkind vegetables for the Agrilife organization. This week we did a rough layout of the beds. Soon we will begin to prepare the ground and build the beds. We hope to be able to begin testing vegetables this fall.

Much of our time this week was spent in maintenance and in getting beds ready for the fall garden. In the raised bed area we pulled out more spent plants from the summer garden and amended some beds with compost. We had turned the irrigation off to a couple of beds that have been lying fallow. This week we turned the water back on and tested the irrigation system for those beds. The herbs are still doing well so we pruned them back a bit again this week. We weeded some of the beds that still have veggies in them and harvested okra and eggplant. The eggplant was put in for the summer garden. It produced well for awhile and then slowed down for a month or so. Now that the nights are longer and cooler, it has begun to blossom profusely and is producing well again.

The row garden harvest consisted of eggplant, sweet and hot peppers, summer squash, cucumbers and okra. We also harvested one humungous sunflower that had passed its prime. We donated 18 pounds of produce to The Caring Place and 15 pounds to the Annunciation Maternity Home this week. We amended one row and used a broadfork to till it. Then we planted a row of Contender bush beans.

We hear a lot of folks say that there is a lack of bees to pollinate vegetables these days and, while we have no doubt that the number of bees seems smaller than it usually is, we have been able to attract as many as we need to the demo garden. Many of our garden crops are pollinated by honeybees, which are non-native bees from Europe that were brought to North America at the same time as the vegetables which they evolved to pollinate were brought here. However, some of the food crops that originated in the Americas, such as squash, pumpkins and many beans, are efficiently pollinated by one or more of the over 4000 species of native North American bees ( http://bugguide.net/node/view/475348). To get the best pollination it is desirable to attract both honeybees and native bees to your garden. At the demonstration garden we plant a variety of plants just to attract the bees. To draw honeybees we use African Blue basil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_blue_basil), shown in the two pictures above. Unlike most other varieties of basil, African Blue does not die back after producing flowers. In fact it produces blooms all summer long and is usually covered with honeybees. This variety is perennial, however we use it as an annual and plant it from four-inch pots every year because in one season it grows from a four-inch pot size to a shrub three or four feet in diameter and sometimes nearly as tall.

Native bees seem to be attracted to the native Texas flowers (http://www.texashighways.com/index.php/component/content/article/38-outdoors/5771-30-wildflowers) such as the annual sunflower pictured here. These plants are large, so they should be planted somewhere where there is room for them to sprawl and to grow six to eight feet high. In truth, we don’t have to plant them because the birds seem to be able to do that for us.

Garden Calendar

Cucumbers can be planted from seed or transplanted throughout August, as can summer squash. Snap and lima beans can be planted through the end of the first week in September. All of these vegetables will be killed by the first frost. The transplants and seedlings may also have a problem with mid-summer heat. So you may want to shade them, at least from the late afternoon sun. Mulch them well to keep the ground moist and cool.

Fall and winter vegetable planting is mostly done in September and October. These vegetables can handle a frost but do not like hot weather. Most of them are transplanted but some, notably the root crops, are usually planted from seed. With the exception of fava beans, none of these plants need pollinators because they are harvested for the vegetative, rather than fruit, parts of the plant. The vegetables that can be planted in this time period include brassicas (cabbagey things such as cabbage, kale, collards, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi), winter root crops (beets, carrots, radishes and turnips), winter greens (spinach, chard, Asian greens, lettuce, mustard, mizuna and mesclun), and alliums (onion, chives and garlic). In addition, leeks can be transplanted from seed, but not transplants, during this time period. Artichokes can be transplanted, but crowns should not be started until spring. English peas can be planted in September and fava beans in October.

The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday and, sometimes, Friday mornings from 8:00 to 10:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.

We had more rain this week. It is so unusual to encounter rain in midsummer that, while we are really glad to get it, it has kind of thrown off our gardening. When the ground gets really wet it is hard to work. So we have just been working the soil whenever it is dry enough and doing other maintenance activities when it is “too wet to plow”. This week we took all of the tools and amendments out of the storage boxes and inventoried them. We have to do this several times a year because, as people come and go and as we run into situations where we have to put things away in a hurry, the tools get misplaced and we lose track of which amendments we have on hand and which we need to order. So, even though doing inventory is not nearly as much fun as digging in the dirt, we decided that it was time to do it and to straighten out the contents of the storage boxes in the process.

We did get to do some gardening this week, though; mostly in the early part of the week before the rain. We were able to harvest about twenty-five pounds of squash, eggplant and peppers from the row garden. We gave half of it to The Caring Place and half to the Annunciation Home. Before the rain we used a broadfork to till one of the rows that had had tomatoes in it and amended it to make it ready for planting. After the rain we took advantage of the damp soil to plant some Nash snap beans. We also planted two kinds of summer squash and, although it is kind of on the cusp for them, we planted two kinds of winter squash as well. Of course we spent a good bit of time weeding the row garden as we must do nearly every week.

We harvested okra, squash, eggplant and pineapple tomatillos from the raised beds and containers. As with the row garden, the raised bed harvest always drops off a good bit this time of year, so the amount was small. Some sort of web-spinning caterpillars have been eating the mint family herbs and the chard the last week or two. We hit them with a BT spray to try to alleviate the problem. The perennial area has been a bit neglected so we spent some time weeding it this week. The work on the 4×4 beds is still underway. All of the grass has been removed from inside and around the beds and the frames are back in place. Now we are amending the soil and getting it ready for fall planting. The rain has made this a hit or miss operation, but we are just about there now.

The amendment inventory was a little more exciting this week than it usually is. We had pulled nearly everything out of the large storage box and were busily estimating the amount left in bags of amendments and writing that down on a clipboard. We got down to just a couple of things left at the back of the box. When we pulled out a roll of landscaping cloth we saw about two feet of a snake with a diamond pattern on its back. Since we have had rattlesnakes here before, we were sure that they were back. After some consultation among the team members we decided that we had to pull the rest of the items out of the box, using shovels and rakes, so that we could see the tail. In addition, we threw some snake chaser into the box to try to get the snake to uncoil and move out to where its tail would be visible. It finally decided to climb up the side of the box to rest on a shelf. When it did that we could see that it was a rat snake rather than a rattler. So we heaved a collective sigh of relief, coaxed the snake into a box and released it at the back of the property where we hope it will be out of our way and we will be out of its way as well.

Garden Calendar

Fall transplants of summer vegetables such as the nightshade family (tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers and eggplant) should be in the ground by mid-August. Cucumbers can be planted from seed or transplanted throughout August, as can summer squash. Snap and lima beans can be planted through the end of the first week in September. In addition, it is possible to do a fall planting of Irish potatoes in mid-August. All of these vegetables will be killed by the first frost. The transplants and seedlings may also have a problem with mid-summer heat. So you may want to shade them, at least from the late afternoon sun. Mulch them well to keep the ground moist and cool.

Fall and winter vegetable planting is mostly done in September and October. These vegetables can handle a frost but do not like hot weather. Most of them are transplanted but some, notably the root crops, are usually planted from seed. With the exception of fava beans, none of these plants need pollinators because they are harvested for the vegetative, rather than fruit, parts of the plant. The vegetables that can be planted in this time period include brassicas (cabbagey things such as cabbage, kale, collards, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi), winter root crops (beets, carrots, radishes and turnips), winter greens (spinach, chard, Asian greens, lettuce, mustard, mizuna and mesclun), and alliums (onion, chives and garlic). In addition, leeks can be transplanted from seed, but not transplants, during this time period. Artichokes can be transplanted, but crowns should not be started until spring. English peas can be planted in September and fava beans in October.

The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday and, sometimes, Friday mornings from 8:00 to 10:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.

This week the veggie demo garden crew was delighted to have some of the 2013 intern class working in the garden. We hope that more of them will choose to do that and that they will decide to become part of the “Veggie Garden Irregulars” who show up for as many work days as they can to help make the demo garden a place we can all be proud of.

We are mostly in a transition mode right now between the spring and summer garden and the fall and winter garden. We have pulled out many of the spring plants and are in the process of preparing the beds for the next season. All of the tomatoes are gone from the raised bed area except for the volunteer Juliet, which seems to be doing well. We have completely removed the four 4×4 raised beds so that we could turn the ground in them thoroughly and remove all of the grass which has encroached on the beds. Then we removed all of the grass for a foot or so all around those beds and then replaced the frames. Now we need to amend the soil before fall planting. We are doing similar, but not such severe, things to the other raised beds, the planting table and the containers. So, if you come out to the garden these days you will see that several of the raised beds and containers are fallow. We’ll amend them over the next week or two and do most of our fall planting in September and October.

The raised beds are not the only part of the demo garden undergoing maintenance right now. We are working on the perennials too. Last week we pruned the blackberries. This week we removed the deteriorated edging around the artichokes in preparation for some expansion in that area. Grass had grown right up to the trunks of the fig trees, so we removed much of it this week. This is a delicate task because fig tree feeder roots are very close to the surface and they can be damaged if the soil is disturbed too deeply. Some of the perennials, e.g., the asparagus, do not need any maintenance at this time of year. We will wait until after the first frost has killed the asparagus stalks back before removing them and adding more compost and mulch to that bed.

We pruned back many of the herbs again because they have been growing like weeds after all the rain we’ve had this month. Unfortunately, the rain didn’t help the tarragon, which we had to move last week because it was being crowded out by more aggressive herbs. The tarragon bit the dust this week, so we had to pull it out. We had some damage in the herb bed and on the remaining chard this week from some kind of web-spinning caterpillars. We would ordinarily spray them with liquid BT (bacillus thuringiensis) but it was too windy to do that, so we sprinkled some powdered BT on them instead. Hopefully that will take care of the problem.

We pulled spring tomatoes out of the row garden and put the cages away until they are needed for the fall tomatoes. Then we cleaned up the row to get it ready to amend for fall planting. We gave the fall tomatoes, eggplant and peppers a foliar feeding with an organic fertilizer containing molasses, seaweed extract and fish emulsion, among other things. It is still not too late to make a fall planting of nightshade veggies, so we planted three varieties of cucumber this week: Akito, Sweet Success and Armenian. Strictly speaking, the Armenian cucumbers are really melons, but they are shaped like cucumbers and are used the same way. We hand-watered all of the newly-planted seeds and the okra that we had transplanted last week to get them off to a good start.

The harvest has dropped off a good bit lately but we were still able to harvest squash, eggplant, peppers, okra, and a few tomatoes and pineapple tomatillos from the raised beds and containers. In the row garden we harvested peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, squash and purple hull peas. We delivered 27 pounds of produce to The Caring Place and 20 pounds to the Annunciation Maternity Home.

Garden Calendar

Fall transplants of summer vegetables such as the nightshade family (tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers and eggplant) should be in the ground by mid-August. Cucumbers can be planted from seed or transplanted throughout August, as can summer squash. Winter squash should be planted by the end of the first week in August. Snap and lima beans can be planted through the end of the first week in September. Corn can be planted through mid-August. In addition, it is possible to do a fall planting of Irish potatoes in mid-August. All of these vegetables will be killed by the first frost. The transplants and seedlings may also have a problem with mid-summer heat. So you may want to shade them, at least from the late afternoon sun. Mulch them well to keep the ground moist and cool.

Fall and winter vegetable planting is mostly done in September and October. These vegetables can handle a frost but do not like hot weather. Most of them are transplanted but some, notably the root crops, are usually planted from seed. With the exception of fava beans, none of these plants need pollinators because they are harvested for the vegetative, rather than fruit, parts of the plant. The vegetables that can be planted in this time period include brassicas (cabbagey things such as cabbage, kale, collards, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi), winter root crops (beets, carrots, radishes and turnips), winter greens (spinach, chard, Asian greens, lettuce, mustard, mizuna and mesclun), and alliums (onion, chives and garlic). In addition, leeks can be transplanted from seed, but not transplants, during this time period. Artichokes can be transplanted, but crowns should not be started until spring. English peas can be planted in September and fava beans in October.

The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday and, sometimes, Friday mornings from 8:00 to 10:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.

We got some unexpected rain this week. That was kind of a good news – bad news thing for us. We can always use rain in central Texas gardens so we were glad to get it from that perspective. On the other hand, we have been reworking our 4×4 beds to get them ready for an Earthkind vegetable trial and the rain made the ground so wet that we were unable to do anything with those beds this week.

We spent some time in the raised bed and container area harvesting some late summer veggies and pulling out those that were spent. We picked some okra, which has been really productive during the hot weather the last couple of weeks. We also harvested a few tomatoes, most of which came from a volunteer Juliet that grew from some tomatoes we had planted last fall. The majority of the spring tomatoes looked pretty bad, though, so we bit the bullet and pulled them out this week. Many of the tomatoes were supported by a bamboo pole matrix. Taking that out was more work than was removing the tomato vines. We had installed the bamboo as a support for the tomatoes in that bed because we had run out of the remesh cages that we usually use for them. It did the job, but we will probably invest in more remesh next year because it is easier to use and easier to pick the tomatoes than it was with the bamboo pole supports.

We had planted some Southern peas in a couple of the beds a week or two back. We got them in a couple of weeks late and were worried that they might not be able to sprout because the soil surface tends to dry out from the heat and wind this time of year. The unseasonable rain, coupled with some extra water from a microsprinkler, seems to have taken care of that problem because they are all up and doing well now. If the first frost this year is late enough we should get a good yield from the peas.

The herbs are growing at an unprecedented rate. We had to prune back the pineapple sage, lemon verbena and scented geraniums again this week to keep them from overrunning the bed. Even after pruning them we still had to move the tarragon, which was getting crowded out by the more aggressive plants.

We reworked some of the irrigation in the beds this week because of removing old plants, planting new ones and general wear and tear. In the container area there were half a dozen pomegranates in large pots. Only one of them had leaves on it, so we moved it into the area where we are growing veggies in pots. The rest of the bushes looked dead so we decided to throw them out. However, in cutting them up to make them fit in the trash can better, we noticed that several of them had some green material in them. So we decided to try to root them anew and repot them if we are successful. We’ll let you know how that turns out.

In the row garden we harvested nearly fifty pounds of produce including squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and blackeyed peas. We delivered over half of that to the Annunciation Maternity Home in Georgetown. We will deliver the rest to The Caring Place early this week.

Our previous attempts to plant okra in the row garden this summer have been mostly unsuccessful. We finally decided that the ground was drying out too quickly and keeping the seeds from sprouting. So we started some in pots and this week we transplanted them into the garden and then watered them by hand for a couple of days to try to get them started. So far all looks well so we’ll see how this approach works out. This is one of the things that makes gardening fun. If you follow the general wisdom and things don’t work as you need them to, you are free to experiment and find the approach that works for your individual situation. All of us in the vegetable garden crew do this and then share our results with the rest of the team. This is only one of the reasons why we are always excited to have new master gardeners and interns join the vegetable garden team. We learn as much or more from each other as we do from formal classes.

We did some maintenance in the row garden this week, as we usually do. We whacked down the weeds at the edges of the rows and spent more time getting rid of nut sedge. We pulled a lot of it by hand again and, because the molasses didn’t seem to be producing the desired results, we sprayed the nut sedge with 20% horticultural vinegar. This is just the same as table vinegar but much stronger as table vinegar is usually 5% or so. It acts as a desiccant. That is, it dries out the part of the plant above ground so that the plant can no longer perform photosynthesis. It usually works better on annual weeds than on perennials like nutsedge, but we are getting desperate.

Garden Calendar

Beginning this week we are going to include a brief garden calendar with each diary post. It is not our intention to compete with other, more extensive, garden calendars. Rather, we are so often asked what should be done in the garden at any particular time that we decided to include this as sort of a heads up for the next month or two. So here is our first attempt to do that.

Fall transplants of summer vegetables such as the nightshade family (tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers and eggplant) should be in the ground by mid-August. Cucumbers can be planted from seed or transplanted throughout August, as can summer squash. Winter squash should be planted by the end of the first week in August. Snap and lima beans can be planted through the end of the first week in September. Corn can be planted through mid-August. In addition, it is possible to do a fall planting of Irish potatoes in mid-August. All of these vegetables will be killed by the first frost. The transplants and seedlings may also have a problem with mid-summer heat. So you may want to shade them, at least from the late afternoon sun. Mulch them well to keep the ground moist and cool.

Fall and winter vegetable planting is mostly done in September and October. These vegetables can handle a frost but do not like hot weather. Most of them are transplanted but some, notably the root crops, are usually planted from seed. With the exception of fava beans, none of these plants need pollinators because they are harvested for the vegetative, rather than fruit, parts of the plant. The vegetables that can be planted in this time period include brassicas (cabbagey things such as cabbage, kale, collards, broccoli, broccoli raab, Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi), winter root crops (beets, carrots, radishes and turnips), winter greens (spinach, chard, Asian greens, lettuce, mustard, mizuna and mesclun), and alliums (onion, chives and garlic). In addition, leeks can be planted from seed, but not transplants, during this time period. Artichokes can be transplanted, but crowns should not be started until spring. English peas can be planted in September and fava beans in October.

The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday and, sometimes, Friday mornings from 8:00 to 10:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.

This has been a productive week in the veggie demo garden.

We picked a variety of veggies in the raised beds this week. Our haul consisted of okra, chard, white and purple eggplant, red and green peppers, including both sweet and paprika varieties, tomatoes and one Sugar Baby watermelon that we successfully grew on a trellis.

We did a good bit of maintenance in the raised beds and perennial areas this week and some planting as well. We pulled out some spent plants and prepared a couple beds for planting by turning the soil with a garden fork and spading in some compost, agricultural molasses and cottonseed meal. Then we planted Black-eyed peas and gave them a good layer of mulch to keep the seeds cool and moist so they would germinate. In other beds we pulled out some summer squash that were no longer viable and fertilized some cucumbers and peppers with a liquid fertilizer concentrate containing seaweed extract and fish emulsion among other things. We fertilized the tomatoes with a granular organic 6-2-4 fertilizer and watered that in.

The herbs continue to grow at a rapid rate. We had to seriously prune back the pineapple sage, scented geraniums, lemon verbena, oregano and basil. Some of the perennials needed cut back as well. Something has caused a good many of the blackberry canes to die back, so we cut them off this week. In addition, the leaf-footed bugs have killed back the old growth on the globe artichokes. There is new growth springing up from the crowns, however, so after spraying the bugs one more time with neem oil, we cut the old growth off the chokes.

We are planning to use our four 4×4 raised beds for an Earth Kind vegetable gardening trial, so we spent some time this week upgrading them in preparation for the trial. There is still more work to go on them before they are ready to plant.

We put a lot of work in on the row garden this week as well. We harvested between 50 and 75 pounds of produce including squash, tomatoes, eggplant and peppers. Our yield was high enough that we were able to donate to both The Caring Place and Annunciation Home this week.

We are still fighting nutsedge in the row garden. Lately we have been trying to combat it by feeding heavily with agricultural molasses. The theory here is that the molasses feeds microorganisms in the soil that attack the nutsedge. We’ll let you know how that works out. In addition to using the molasses, we’ve also done a lot of hand-weeding in the row garden. It is a never-ending chore.

As with the raised beds, we pulled some spent plants out in the row garden this week and spread some compost to be tilled in later this summer so that we can plant our fall crops. We are still having problems with rabbits in the raised beds and especially in the row garden, where it is easier for them to get at the plants. So we sprayed all the plants that seem to be on their menu with a hot pepper extract to try to dissuade them from munching on our garden.

After all this work we took a break and shared our first watermelon among the members of the crew. It was small, but tasty, and we all got to try it out.

The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday and, sometimes, Friday mornings from 8:00 to 10:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.

We got three-and-a-half inches of rain in the veggie demo garden this week! That’s almost unheard of in central Texas in July. We were very happy to get it.

In between rain showers we managed to do some gardening. In the row garden we harvested tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers and squash and donated nearly fifty pounds of produce to The Caring Place. Many of the tomatoes were cracked. This is usually caused by inconsistent watering, which is what happens when you get a heavy rain at a time when you don’t expect it. The fruit swells so quickly that the skin cracks open. When this occurs, the fruit should be picked and used as soon as possible.

The rain makes everything grow well and the nut sedge and other weeds are no exception. So we spent a good bit of time weeding the row garden this week. Another downside of a rainy week is that the damp ground can rot some vegetables. Although we are growing our cantaloupes on trellises this year, the heavier fruit tends to pull itself down to the ground. So we tied it up with old hose to keep it from touching the soil.

This overcast, and cooler weather is an ideal time to put in some early fall crops. Most of the fall plants, such as the cole crops and English peas, like cool weather, so we don’t usually plant them until September or October. However, the tender plants, such as tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers and summer squash, cannot handle a frost and will die when the first one hits. So, if you want fall tomatoes, the time to plant them is late July through early August. If you happen to hit a cloudy spell, such as we had this week, that’s a perfect time to set those transplants out in the garden. We planted one row of fall tomatoes this week. We used several varieties. All of them have a short time to harvest so that they will be ready for harvest well before the first fall frost. We filled each hole with potting soil and compost mixed with some rooting hormone. After planting we top-dressed the plants with dolomite (calcium magnesium carbonate) to provide calcium and magnesium to the plants. Calcium helps to avoid blossom-end rot, which is not much of a problem in the caliche soils of west Williamson County, but can be a problem in raised beds or gardens planted directly in the ground in eastern Williamson County. Tomatoes need magnesium to set fruit. The dolomite helps with both of these things. If you don’t want to buy a big bag of dolomite, you can add magnesium by putting a tablespoon of epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) in each planting hole. After planting we gave the row a heavy layer of mulch and covered the tomatoes with row cover to provide a little shade, help to conserve moisture and protect the transplants from varmints. We also planted some cucumbers in the row garden this week.

In the raised beds we harvested tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra and carrots. We also pulled out some spent plants, especially those that had been heavily damaged by spider mites, and trimmed dead material off of some of the mature plants as well. We plan to raise the height of the four 4×4 beds on one side of the raised bed area before we put the fall plants in. We have had a lot of trouble with grass and weeds coming up through the soil in those beds because there is so little soil in them. So the team spent a lot of time this week removing the grass and weeds in preparation for modifying the beds. In the process we ran into some striped cucumber beetles and squash bugs and dispatched them. Although herbs generally don’t need much water, our herb beds have responded positively to this rainy weather. Some of the herbs are doing better than we have ever seen before. The plant with the red flowers in this picture is pineapple sage, which is a prolific summer bloomer and has been very happy with the unseasonably wet summer. The only downside to this situation is that we have had to spend more time than usual trimming and dead-heading the herbs.

The artichokes haven’t fared as well this year as the herbs have. They were producing pretty well a month ago and the flowers were beautiful. Then the leaf-footed bugs decided to use them as a rookery. So we decided to treat them like a trap crop and spray the bugs on those plants in order to keep them from the other veggies. As you can see in this picture we haven’t eliminated the bugs yet. If you look closely you will see a nymph in the middle of the photo, which means that eggs are still hatching. The leaf-footed bugs have damaged the chokes severely. One of them has a lot of new sprouts but the other looks as though it might be dead. September and October is a good time to transplant artichokes, so if the badly damaged one doesn’t show signs of life by then, we will probably replace it.

The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday and, sometimes, Friday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.

We got an inch of rain in the demo garden this week. We hope that all of our gardening friends got some as well.

This week we harvested tomatoes from the raised beds. Some of the plants are so tall that we almost need a ladder to harvest them. We also picked okra, chard, white and purple eggplant and sweet green, banana and jalapeno peppers. We managed to harvest a handful of figs from our Brown Turkey fig tree this week too.

In addition to harvesting, we built a bamboo pole trellis for some Malabar spinach that threatened to take over one of the beds. We also deadheaded the herbs and weeded the perennial area and several other beds.

In the row garden we picked leeks, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, peppers and cucumbers. We donated over 100 pounds of produce this week to The caring Place and the Annunciation Maternity Home in Georgetown and the Round Rock Serving Center in Round Rock.

We are still plagued by varmints of all kinds. Rabbits hop out of the raised beds whenever we approach them and they have been eating the sweet potatoes in the row garden. This week we sprayed a deterrent containing hot pepper extract on the sweet potatoes to make them less palatable to the bunnies.

The problems in the raised bed and perennial area have mostly been caused by insects. Some sort of fuzzy white caterpillars have chewed up much of the chard, so we sprayed it with BT to try to get rid of them. Leaf-footed bugs, (which are a variety of stink bug) have completely destroyed the artichoke flowers. We didn’t mind that too much when they just stayed on the artichokes and we could use the chokes as a trap crop. Now, however, the bugs are moving on to other crops. The picture shows leaf-footed bug eggs and recently hatched nymphs on the underside of a fig tree leaf. We usually use insecticidal soap or oil or a combination of the two to treat for leaf-footed bugs. It kills the adults and nymphs and we hope it kills the eggs as well.

The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday and, sometimes, Friday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.

This week some of the veggie garden crew came in early and on an extra work day to help the Landscape Committee. We cleaned up and leveled a circle that had previously been cleared and put down weed block to keep the grass and weeds from coming through. The next day we spread two cubic yards of decomposed granite, generously donated by Gardenville, to make a focal point that will eventually contain a fountain and act as an intersection for paths from the entryway to the rose and vegetable demo gardens as well as other demo gardens planned for the future. It was hot, hard work but we were all happy with the result.

We worked in the raised beds and row garden this week too, This is harvest time for the mid-summer veggies. In the row garden we harvested tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, leeks, peppers and cantaloupe. We made three donations to the Annunciation Maternity Home in Georgetown and one to the Round Rock Serving Center for a total of nearly a hundred pounds of produce. We also spread compost on some of the rows and hand-watered the new seedlings.

In the raised bed area we harvested tomatoes, okra, eggplant, squash, pineapple tomatillos and blackberries. The spider mites continue to be a problem. They have killed nearly all the bush beans so we pulled the remaining bush beans out this week except for one bed that has been untouched so far. Then we sprayed the plants that have only been slightly affected by mites with neem oil. Another insect that has become a problem this week is the leaf-footed bug. This is really a type of stink bug that is shaped more like an assassin bug. The critters have decided to use our globe artichokes for a breeding ground. So we are using the chokes as a trap crop. When the leaf-footed bugs cluster on the artichokes, we spray them with neem oil or a mixture of water, canola oil and liquid dish soap. It is killing them back, but more are hatching every day so it will be awhile before we are rid of them.

The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday and, sometimes, Friday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.

This week we harvested snap beans, pineapple tomatillos and tomatoes from the raised beds. We also picked blackberries, although we are experiencing a problem with them that we do not, as yet, understand. The ends of the new canes are dying and the berries on those portions of the canes are atrophying. We can’t see any insects or signs of disease on the plants and they appear to have adequate water. So we are stumped at the moment.

In the row garden we harvested tomatoes, beans, squash, peppers, eggplant and cucumbers. We donated forty pounds of produce to The Caring Place and sixty pounds to the Annunciation Maternity Home. We mulched some of the existing rows and prepared and planted a row with Southern peas.

During these hot, dry months of summer gardeners in Central Texas are plagued with spider mites. The demonstration vegetable garden is no exception to this. We have had to pull out a lot of our bean plants because they were ruined by spider mites. https://insects.tamu.edu/fieldguide/cimg371.html

Spider mites are not insects. They are most closely related to ticks and spiders. They get the name “spider” mite because they weave webs. The critters are very small and difficult to see with the naked eye, although they can be seen with a magnifying glass. So the best way to verify that you have spider mites is to look for the webs, which are woven on the underside of the leaves. Spider mites feed on the leaf cells so the first sign of their presence is usually a slight stippling of the leaf surface. Often this is not really noticeable until the the entire leaf turns brown and falls off. This happens not only to vegetable plants like beans or eggplant, but also to landscape plants such as guara and buddleia.

Spider mites like a hot, dry, dusty environment. They have their greatest effect during times of drought or when plants do not receive enough water. Dealing with spider mites is somewhat counter-intuitive. Since they are not insects, insecticides are not effective in controlling them. In fact, the use of broad spectrum insecticides can make the problem worse because it can result in killing the predatory insects that would normally prey on spider mites. If the infestation is not too great, a strong spray of water directed to the underside of the leaves every other day for a week or so may get rid of them. If that fails to work you can try applying insecticidal soap or horticultural oils,such as neem oil, sprayed on the underside of the leaves. You can find additional information about spider mites and their control here: http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7405.html

The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday and, sometimes, Friday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.

It was a hot and rainy week in the demo garden. We got an inch of rain, which was good. However it came on one of our scheduled work days, so we only got one day of work in this week. Also, the heat is keeping some folks away, so those that have been coming in to work have been getting there early and leaving as early as possible too. All of that means that if you stopped by the garden during our normal Tuesday and Friday, 9-10 work days this week, you might have found that there wasn’t a master gardener in sight. We will probably be working more from 8:00 or thereabouts until around 10:00 until the weather breaks in the fall.

We harvested a variety of produce from the row garden this week including tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, squash, cucumbers and beans. We were able to donate nearly 60 pounds to a couple of area food banks. We planted okra and more sweet potatoes because varmints (rabbits, we think) had eaten some of the sweet potatoes that we had previously planted.We’re going to have to find a solution to the rabbit problem soon. Some of the team members are leaning toward stew, but we will probably opt for something more humane. Bunnies aren’t the only varmints plaguing the row garden this week. We had to spray spinosad again to try to deal with the stink bugs and other insect pests.

In the raised bed and container area we harvested chard, beans, beets, turnips, radishes, pattypan squash, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, pineapple tomatillos, blackberries, and cucumbers. We cut back the marjoram in the culinary herb bed and dead-headed some of the other herbs. We are having a lot of insect problems in the raised beds. This week alone we spotted squash bugs, squash borer damage, spider mites, some kind of caterpillar, stink bugs and striped cucumber beetles. We sprayed the beds with spinosad, but next week we are probably going to have to pull out most of the bush beans and squash. We are also getting a lot of varmint damage to the tomatoes. Some of it was clearly done by birds (mockingbirds love tomatoes) and some of it looks as though it was done by mice. Netting might keep the birds out, but field mice are harder to deal with.

On the plus side, the Malabar spinach is doing so well that we had to move a trellis to hold it and the Sugar Baby watermelons that we are growing on a trellis are getting so big that we will have to rig up some kind of support to keep them from pulling loose from the vines. In addition, the artichokes which we failed to harvest because of Tuesday’s rain, have bloomed and they look beautiful.

The demonstration garden is located north of the Williamson County Extension Office driveway at 3151 SE Innerloop Road, Georgetown, Texas. Master gardeners are usually at work in the vegetable garden on Tuesday and, sometimes, Friday mornings from 9:00 to 11:00. Anyone is welcome to stop by to see the garden or to ask questions of the master gardeners.