Strawberries

Some of our strawberries aren't doing too well, but the ones that are growing are really tasty! They just melt in your mouth.

I'm wondering if it got too cold for them. I planted the bare roots in October. I also rooted several runner plants around the same time (from the bare root plants.) The plants that are doing well are the runner plants that I put in the ground after the cold weather. I wonder why those are doing better. I would think the other plants would have a better root system. hmmm....

E doesn't really care - she just wants me to hurry up and take her picture so she can eat the strawberry.

Hello? Is this thing on?

We're back! The garden is growing wildly, and I have a ton of photos to share. So stay tuned. To tide you over until then, here is a photo of one of our newest acquisitions to our backyard garden.

Cold and the last butterfly

We are supposed to have snow flurries in San Antonio tomorrow. While the boys are imagining building snowmen and throwing snowballs, what it really means is a few snowflakes and a possibly frozen garden.

We picked the last of our cucumbers and red tomatoes. We picked a few green toms for some salsa, but we still have a ton of green toms on the vine. It is supposed to get down to 26 degrees, and I'm pretty sure the toms won't survive that. I'll probably go out tonight and pick some more.
We also picked the last of our green beans. We had an awesome harvest this year. These beans were great to eat right off the vine. Check out M's open mouth down below - he's getting ready to insert a green bean.
The boys found a butterfly. It was obviously too cold for the little thing, as it couldn't fly and was having trouble walking. They wanted to bring it inside so it could warm up and fly away and they were disappointed when I told them it probably wouldn't work - it was just the butterfly's time to go since they don't live well in cold weather. They started talking about it being the last butterfly and how they wish butterflies could live inside and live forever and couldn't they just build it a little house inside with flowers just for a little while.....sigh.


They were a little more cheery when I suggested that the butterfly came to our garden since we have the best dill (for laying eggs) and cosmos (for eating) in the neighborhood, and we are sure to see the caterpillars in the spring.

Quick chicken update:

We finally finished expanding our chicken run. Now the chickens can come out and forage more often and we don't have to worry about tying up our dog.

Today's Harvest

Tomatoes are coming in nicely. We are still getting a few peppers and okra. And I think I can report that our chinese noodle beans have been our summer/fall bumper crop. We've been eating them almost every day, and the kids haven't gotten tired of them yet. I'm going to plant more of these next year for canning and freezing.

The gourd is trapped.

I'm not sure what to do about this gourd. Somehow it had a massive growth spurt in between the times we checked on it, and it is now lodged in the trellis. The boys would like to cut the trellis and save the gourd because ( and I quote) "It looks like a butt!!!!" And what is cooler to a 9 and 5 year old than a butt shaped gourd?

Butt I don't think I have anything that will cut through the trellis - it's pretty thick metal. Although the gourd seems stronger - it's already bowing out the metal on one side.

E doesn't seem to care - she's too busy deciding which piece of okra to eat first - tough decisions!

Grubby grubs

I have decided to grow garlic this year. In preparation, I put horse manure in one of the raised beds back in June. I let it sit there until I was ready to plant the garlic (planting dates are usually in Oct. here in Texas). As I was digging in the horse manure (which composted beautifully - the dirt looked good enough to eat!) we found several beetle grubs. We normally find a few small ones in our other beds - they come from june beetles (but we usually call them June bugs).


These were bigger than we had seen before. Maybe better dirt (or manure) equals bigger grubs? Or maybe a larger beetle found our manure pile tasty.

Well, our chickens LOVE grubs. Love, love, love. They actually fight each other other these things. So, we spent a while grub hunting for the chickens.


Look how happy the grub hunter is as he holds his catch.


As we continued our dig, we apparently uncovered a couple busy making baby grubs:

Yep. Two little june bugs getting busy in my garlic bed. Isn't nature exciting?

This blog may be dying, but my garden is not!

And I have the pictures to prove it:


Red zebra tomatoes

Broccoli (with bonus volunteer basil plants!)

Chinese noodle green beans

Birdhouse gourds

And okra is still producing pretty well:

The recent rains have brought new life to the garden - it was amazing how quickly everything sprang to life. Our peppers are still producing, and I was able to get some strawberry plants for our first ever strawberry bed.