Gardening in Texas

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that our new house has gardening space. So far, my gardening has been rather unproductive. If we had to survive on what I’ve produced, well, let’s just say we’d have been dead long ago!

Last spring was unusually wet, cool, and cloudy (15 inches in May is wet!), so the strawberries planted the last week of April died a moldy, wet death. The summer was conversely hot and dry – we had 1.3 inches of rain from July 4th to the end of September. My tomato plants grew spindly and slowly and were covered with spider mites. In the raised bed that had held the strawberry plants, I planted zucchini, crookneck and patty pan squash, which produced about 5 squash total before the squash vine bore decimated it. At that point, I gave up until fall.

In September I planted spinach, Swiss chard, beets, and lettuce from seed, along with Swiss chard plants and tomato plants. The plants look great, but for various reasons (hot sun, insufficient moisture on the top of the soil, etc.), only a few of the seeds came up. The lettuce looks good, some Swiss chard is trying, and I’m going to replant the spinach and beets this weekend after it gets a bit cooler.

I may actually get a tomato!

And in the raised bed, I have a beautiful crop of marigolds (along with the Swiss chard and the few straggling spinach seedlings).

And the butterflies love them!

Gardening in a new location is always a challenge and I have a lot to learn about gardening in Texas. I’m looking forward to the challenge.