After a long dry period, rainfall has once again returned to Round Rock, Texas! Starting around 4:00 pm yesterday afternoon, the rain has kept on throughout the night and is still going at this time. I don’t have a rain gauge (bad me!), but I have a fire pit on the porch and several five-gallon buckets which serve the purpose quite handily.
My guess, just looking at what was in the fire pit, is that we received about 2-3 inches of rain so far. I’m expecting more and will GLADLY take whatever the clouds can deliver. On a high note as well, I ventured out this morning and was happy to see that my bush beans and lettuce from my fall planting has sprouted! Also, the winter squash and cabbage I planted in the growing bins have burst through as well.
Well, it’s that time of year for us southern gardeners to plant our fall crops. Because of the extended warmth here, you can almost duplicate your spring plantings for this season.
If you started tomato plants last month, now is the time to transplant them. Although some people will claim that you can prune back your tomato plants from spring and get a second harvest, I’ve tried this here, and they grow quite nicely, but never set. So, my advice is to just start anew. I’m not planning on planting any fall tomatoes, as I want to get a good load of horse poo in those beds for spring.
Nom Nom Lettuce
My concentration this fall will be beans, greens, winter squash and members of the onion family, primarily bunching onions.
For beans, I will be planting bush beans in three separate beds, separating them by two weeks in between plantings. Rows will be 6″ apart with plants being 4″ apart in the rows. I have the first bed planted and managed about four rows in my four-foot-square beds. With each bed, I’ll water it in the morning, around noon and in the evening, just before dusk until the first sprouts emerge, then I’ll cut the watering down to morning and mid-day until they are well-established.
For greens, I’ve planted Swiss chard, collards, and multiple types of leaf lettuce, in addition to starting head lettuce and cabbage in my growing bins in the garage. I’ll transplant the head plants after they establish themselves. Down here, greens are somewhat sensitive to the heat, so I’m keeping the beds moist, but not saturated, until the cooler weather sets in. I’m not to worried about critters getting in my beds as I have two heavy-producing pecan trees which are keeping them busy. PLUS, I heard an owl in the front yard yesterday morning, so I might be putting up an owl house to see if I can keep them around.
For onions, I’ve already planted bunching green onions and I just received my box of seed garlic, which will supplement the box of elephant garlic my mom sent me last month. I’m planting garlic heavy this year and will leave some of the beds alone once the tops die off, letting those get established. I may leave them all alone for a year, but we’ll see. I’m also going to try and plant some sweet onions for the fall and see what happens.
The squash I’ve started in the growing bins and will transplant after I’ve hardened them off. Hopefully the vine borers will not be trashing my plants this go round. I’m talking to the local organic garden center and hoping their advice will pay out.
So, first, I have to admit, I’m one of those home improvement show junkies. If I see something in the cable guide that sounds like a really neat home improvement description, I’ll watch it. My favorite shows are Yard Crashers and Bath Crashers. If just find it fascinating what they can do with some of these projects.
Needless to say, this project was on Yard Crashers.
We replaced our privacy fence about a year ago, when we had our slate walkways put in. The fence we had before was falling apart and, for the most part, rotting. It had to be done. Ol’ Yeller is our yard improvement company of choice most of the time, so we called up Seth and they got the job done nicely.
Unfortunately for me, privacy fences have always seemed bland and boring. After seeing one of the Yard Crashers episodes, I decided to build some small plant shadow boxes to hang on the fence.
Here’s our boring fence before:
Fence Project Before
The project consist of constructing boxes of whatever size you want, (we chose 1.5′ sized boxes), mitering the corners, putting them together and then painting them the color of your choice. We wanted a nice contrast so chose lettuce green for the paint. Standard high-quality 2X4 studs were used for the boxes. Nothing fancy needed.
Putting the boxes together was pretty easy, with the help of our friend Dan, who lent his feet to hold everything still while I nailed the corners together. I should probably invest in some clamps so I don’t have to wait on projects until he happens to be in town. It took a few coats of paint and a few days of drying until they were ready to hang.
Fence Project After
A trip to Lowe’s for some mini-planters, a couple decking screws to hold them up and we were good to go. This is a really fun and easy project to spruce up any boring privacy fence!
