The garden is doing really well this year.  I've been a little tied up with quail tractors and other projects but my Mom filled in the garden quite nicely. The onions and oregano have really taken off (foreground) as well the comfrey (right). Squash, peppers, and tomatoes are in middle and a variety of melons are in the back.   With the mild winter we had this year the peach tree we planted a year ago leafed out in January. I thought for sure we would have a late freeze but a few month later we have a couple of dozen peaches. A monstrous comfrey plant. I'll harvest the leaves soon to make a compost tea. Speaking of monsters. I found this giant larva in rotten log several weeks ago. In other monster sightings, the white chicken is a Cornish cross breed typically raised for meat. It weighs about as much as the three other chickens combined and is a week younger.   

"I want to buy a house so I can tear up all the grass."                                                                                                                        - Jean A couple of weeks ago we helped some friends start a garden at their relatively new house. Most of the work involved ripping up their Bermuda grass. I'm with Jean. It felt great.  

In exploring irrigation options I came across the olla. An olla is a non-glazed clay pot. Traditional ollas have a wide base and a narrow neck. The olla is buried with just the top of neck left above ground. It is then filled with water and the opening covered with a rock or a lid. The water will then slowly wick out into the surrounding soil through capillary action. The dry soil draws out moisture from the olla wall until the soil is evenly saturated. Ollas have several positive points: They minimize water lost to evaporation. They make it impossible to over water a plant because water is only released as the plant uses it. A reasonably sized olla should only have to be refilled every few days. Negative points include: Water spread diameter is not very large. A 6" diameter olla has about a 10" diameter water spread according to this article . You can go with bigger ollas but with the downside of eating up more garden real estate. I can see plants with aggres...

Garden bed preparation continues this week with mulching. A very, very serious mulching. Watching this video  recently about a guy growing a food forest in his suburban lot in Arizona made me realize that perhaps I haven't been taking mulch quite seriously enough. Jake, the guy in the video, has built up close to a foot thick layer of mulch spanning across his front and back yard where he's successfully growing a plethora of plants, shrubs and trees in a climate classified as desert. It made me hopeful considering we get 4-5 times as much rain in central Texas. Distributing hardwood mulch in the garden beds. I spread it out 4" thick. After unloading all the hardwood mulch, we picked up two yards of cedar mulch. The cedar mulch will break down slower than the hardwood mulch. I'll use it mostly for the pathways. I used what cardboard I had before mulching to help with weed suppression. Giving the new mulch a good soaking to help keep it in place.

Spring is coming on fast which means there's no time like the present to get those beds ready for planting. First order of business however is installing some deer protection. On this lovely Sunday afternoon I managed to rope in a few participants for the endeavor. The participants. Some were more willing than others. I'll let you guess who. We used a mason's string and some stakes to create a preliminary design. Then we ran the wheel barrow around the circuit a few times to ensure there were no choke points. The fence post height debate. Dad wanted to use the 10' posts. I thought that would be too prisonesque and opted to use the 5' one. I'm hedging a bet that the enclosure will be too tight for a deer to be comfortable jumping in.  Post driving. Fortunately, it's deep clay in this section of the yard and not limestone. Installing the fence More fence installation and some mugging for the camera Clearing out the beds G...