Garden time now

I decided this weekend that if I wanted to plant green beans, this was probably the last change. (I'm still getting used to how our growing seasons work. There's a spring season and sometimes a fall season, but most stuff sort of frizzles up or goes non-productive midsummer, because of the heat and drought). But in order to plant beans, I needed to clear a space.

So, Sunday after church, I started clearing. Because I taught an "unpaid overload" both in the summer and the fall, the garden wound up being sorely neglected.

One of the problems with living in a warm climate is that there are many, many things just waiting to take over a plot of cleared garden. And they will do it, unless you practice near-constant vigilance. Or plunk down stone mulch everywhere. Which a lot of people do, but I'm kind of loath to do, because I like being able to randomly decide, "oh hey, there's a gap there in the garden, I want to put a plant there" without having to move and replace mulch.


But it does mean ripping all the "tillers" of St. Augustine grass out of the garden a few times in the summer. And getting rid of tree seedlings. Oy, tree seedlings. Mulberries and elms and Heaven knows what else.

I spent a solid hour ripping and cutting. Decided it was time to take a break, I decided I wasn't TOO filthy, so I ran to the Lowe's and picked up some topsoil (I needed to top-dress in my raised beds) and a packet of bean seeds. I also bought three tomato plants, figuring it probably wasn't too early to put them in. (Variety: "Marion." Supposedly developed for Mississippi and they claim "crack resistance" (hee) is one of the traits. And yeah, I had trouble last summer with the tomatoes cracking).

And I bought a couple of "boxwood basil" plants because they were just so cute. And a couple of red salvias, to start attracting pollinators (As soon as I can get the front gardens cleared, I think I'm going to put salvias in there - the hummingbirds will go to them and the bees seem to like them). And maybe some kind of white flower as well. (Petunias don't work; that garden faces southwest and it gets HOT in the afternoons and the petunias tend to fry).

I planted the plants, put the sprinkler on them (it's been VERY dry here. And although Dallas was having an "urban flood warning," we got barely a drop of rain today). I spent a little more time cutting stuff in the side garden to the north of the house - it's kind of shaded there and I haven't used it much, but I'm thinking if I can get it cleared, I'm going to plant scarlet runner beans to climb up the chain-link fence - both because they're pretty and good for bees, but also because you can collect and eat the beans when they mature. (I don't think I'd eat them in the pods...the pods are a little hairy. But the beans themselves, you can fix them kind of like you would lima beans).

Not sure what else. But the promise of being able to plant stuff gives me the motivation to clip out allllllllllllllll the elm seedlings that moved in there. And rip out alllllllllll the blackberries (I might leave them if they were a species that actually made tasty berries, but no dice).

Seeing as fennel does well in that "shaded" area (it seeded itself in), maybe some of the other herbs might do OK. Maybe even more basil, and I could plant enough for once to actually make my own pesto.