Thursday, January 30, 2014

Garden survives freeze and keeps on producing

I have been watering and covering plants for weeks now as each cold snap comes through but I think it has been worth it in preserving the plants that we eat. I did not count on all this cold when I bought the cheddar and purple cauliflower. They are nice but don't do the cold as well as the snowball. I am surprised to see how much moisture the soil is holding (see my cute moisture meter) as I was ready to pour more water on an already adequately moist bed. The brussels sprouts though needed water and got a good gallon.
Inside the greenhouse I have a mix right now--peppers and tomatoes in large containers that continue to give up a few fruit every week or so and new seedling that are in their growing pots. I have over 15 tomatoes out there and many celery and broccoli and chard too. The broccoli and chard will move out in a week or so but the tomatoes will live in there until March.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Surviving the freezing weather one blanket at a time

 This has been a really hard cold winter here in central Texas. For the second time in a month our temperatures will fall into the low 20s. I have been out covering up the plants that are supposed to tolerate a little bit of frost. Cauliflower unfortunately does not like to be frozen and apparently neither does arugula. As you can see from one of the pictures the plants did live through the phrase but they sure look battered. It also slowed down the production of the broccoli that was just starting to make nice heads. The cauliflower has been really stunted and I lost two of the cheddar hollow flower