My First Winter Garden

Though I don't want to rub it in too much to my Northern friends, I am thrilled to have so much planted and growing in December. I arrived in Houston in October and everything I have planted is something that will grow through the winter months that I traditionally had to spend pining away over seed catalogs while watching snow pile up outside my window. For me, being able to garden year-round is absolutely the best thing about living in the south. Hooray for my first winter garden!

Here's what's planted, either from seed or as starts from Buchanan's:

• Snap and snow peas
• Admiral peas (for dry/soup peas)
• Fava beans
• Garlic
• Leeks
• Broccoli (two varieties)
• Cabbage (three varieties)
• Kale (two varieties)
• Radishes (two varieties)
• Carrots (three varieties)
• Beets (two varieties)
• Rainbow Chard
• Spinach
• Lettuce
• Artichokes (two varieties)

And here are some of the longer term investments that are in the ground but won't be producing over the winter:

• Strawberries
• Pineapples

Here are some photos of the plots over the past month.

I am Now a Southern Gardener

I took a very big step this fall: I moved from Helena, Montana to Houston, Texas. I have been a Northern gardener for my entire life but I am very much looking forward to gardening year-round and experimenting with plants I could never grow in Montana. I have been here for two very eventful weeks!

Week 1:

• Picked up a copy of Neil Sperry's Complete Guide to Texas Gardening at an estate sale for $5 ($40 new/$25 on Amazon). Bargain!
• Assessed the garden spaces around the house: clay soil, lots of black mulch. It does not drain well at all... we'll have to fix that.
• Picked a couple of pounds of pecans off the ground after a big storm with a bunch of other random people on the side of the roads near Sugar Land. Apparently this is a common thing?

Week 2:

• Visited the Urban Harvest farmer's market on Richmond, bought okra & eggplant (in October!!!), joined Urban Harvest, and bought their gardening book Year Round Vegetables, Fruits, and Flowers for Metro Houston: A Natural Organic Approach Using Ecology, by Bob Randall.
• Visited Wabash Feed & Garden Store and Buchanan's Native Plants Nursery. Both were very cool and I will be returning to both stores for soil amendments, plant starts, seeds, and more.

First Potato Harvest 2014

I have been pulling greens, peas, and radishes out of the garden for some time, but today I pulled out my first potatoes of the season: a few Colorado Rose and a few All-Blue. I also have French Fingerlings planted but did not find any yet and didn't want to dig too much if they aren't ready. I'm boiling the potatoes I found for an oil and vinegar salad for lunch tomorrow. They look so pretty in the pot!

I also pulled out another pound of raspberries. I'm having trouble keeping up with those and will probably have to start making jam soon. 

Natural Egg-Dying

Last night I dyed eggs with friends, and we tried our hands at making our own dyes. We used instant coffee for the deep brown, red onions for red, cabbage for blue, and turmeric for yellow/orange. The cabbage eggs had to soak overnight to get much color, but the results are beautiful!

I think they turned out pretty darn good. I will be making egg salad this weekend :)

Grad School Hiatus

While it was not my intention, I have obviously been on a bit of a blogging hiatus while I finish graduate school. If you subscribe or follow my posts, hang around. I should be back in the swing of things this summer after I graduate.

In the meantime, feel free to follow me on twitter at @MTbeekeeper.