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Mystery Plants: No, That’s Not a Skunk. – SOLVED
Something I haven’t talked about on this page yet (but maybe should have) was that there was some mystery source of STANK in my front yard. We noticed it when we first got the house, and we weren’t certain of the source. We thought originally it was a tree with some moldy looking leaves by our front porch, so we pruned it back excessively. That was a mistake, as the smell persisted. It was a mystery until last night, when I saw a post on the Austin gardening subreddit, where someone proudly showed off their “Society Garlic” plant that was shooting new growth after the devastating freeze we had two…
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The Aftermath: My Garden Before & After Texas’s Record-Breaking Winter Storm
With shards of ice raining down from the trees, the snow is finally melting down here in Central Texas. It’s a little early to start running victory laps for my garden, but we know how good I am about waiting… I didn’t even have the patience to hold off until temps reached 32F (like I told myself I would) to uncover the plants. Just before 9AM, the temperatures were around 25F, and the plants were already getting sun and I said “F- it. I’m uncovering them.” Many of the plants had a soft little layer of frost on them, but overall everything I covered looked pretty darn great. I wanted…
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My Accidental Experiment – Comparing Indoor and Outdoor Zinnia Growth, Days 11-21
Day 15 Outdoor update The outdoor zinnias have endured a few temperature dips below freezing, and have handled them quite well. Their position in the front yard could not be better. They receive unobstructed sunlight practically from dawn till dusk. Second sets of leaves are starting to grow, and the plants look very healthy overall. Indoor Update The indoor zinnias are doing ok– they were starting to look leggy, so we ordered another grow light and hung it above all our seedlings. We also started rotating the seed cells to try and balance their angles of exposure. I originally questioned my hypothesis, thinking that the outdoor zinnias may be doing…
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Deja Vu – The Big Freeze
Considering the volume of *content* I was cranking out last week, it may have been a surprise to all 6 of you regulars who check on my blog to see that I haven’t posted since Monday. Well, we have been very busy preparing physically… spiritually… emotionally… for the cold snap that came barreling through Central Texas this week. As my husband would say, this wasn’t my first rodeo preparing for the cold weather. I saw the forecast early on and did my best to protect my plants (detailed here), but as a Southern California native new to gardening, it was quite a struggle for me. The Calm Before the Ice…
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A New Recurring Segment – Mystery Plants
All my neighbors warned me to just let things grow in my front and back yard – the OG MG’s (remember, that means original owners, the Master Gardeners) planted a ton of beautiful flowers, and they just pop up at random. Much of my gardening is playing a game of “is this a weed or a flower?” and it looks a lot like this… The goal with this segment is to (hopefully) crowdsource information from more knowledgeable gardeners, so I can know what is growing in my yard. And, of course if it’s something I want to grow or yank. Today’s Mystery Plant I’ve counted 4 of these seedlings that…
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Bad Weather Beware!
As usual, my impatience has come back to bite me in the butt. I planted a number of seeds mid-January after a frost, thinking that was the last one. Well, I was wrong. Imagine my dismay to see that there’s a cold front coming in, and we have more consecutive days of lower temperatures than I’ve seen all winter. I’ll have to go out and cover my plants at night, and likely keep them covered most of the morning until the sun has a chance to warm things up. Consider this your warning that there’s inclement weather ahead, and use this as an opportunity to prepare appropriately! Make sure you…
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Iris I Knew What All These Plants Are!
Hi guys, it’s me, just hanging out in the irises! I know I said that I would be posting more about the flowers I had actually planted myself, but… here we are again, the blooms planted by the original homeowner Master Gardeners (OG MG’s? that’s how I’ll be referring to them from now on) are really starting to pop up. Irises are interesting flowers – you can plant the rhizomes, and year after year, they will multiply underground to create more flowers. In the limited research I’ve done, it appears that we can dig them up and split them to promote more growth. The ideal time of year to do…
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Attack of the Frozen Javelinas
Yep, you read that right. In the final segment of my “How I Got Here” series, things get shaken up a bit. I had left off talking about the bounty of roots and bulbs I ordered for fall planting in the yard at the old house. As you can probably surmise by my calling it the “old house,” Andrew and I moved. All garden and landscaping plans I previously made were now on the cutting room floor. I held off on planting everything for a few weeks so I could bury them at the new house. A New Chapter On the day we received keys to our house, our To-Do…
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Dunking Some Ranunculus – A Crash Course in Pre-Sprouting
Hiiii everyone 🙂 Me again, your friendly neighborhood gardener. Today, we’re going to talk about how I planted my ranunculus. I’m a first-time ranunculus grower, so I looked to my one of my greatest sources of inspiration and floral knowledge, Floret Flower. This fall, they sent out a number of lovely guides that showed the best way to grow cut flowers. I don’t have a shareable link to those pamphlets, but they do have a post on their blog that summarizes how to pre-sprout, just without the pretty pictures. Here, I won’t try to re-create the wheel – I followed Floret’s instructions quite closely, and if you’re a stickler for…
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mea culpa!! – la vie en rose
Well guys, it was inevitable, but I didn’t expect it to occur so soon – my first correction! My dad read my first post and has informed me that the measuring device used in the below photo is not a yardstick, which is what I called it. No, that measuring device is a level that happens to be four feet long. Never one to undersell my father’s accomplishments in the garden, I must inform you all that the stem is 33% longer than I previously stated. I also have learned a special detail that my maternal grandmother, Annette, was the one who gifted my parents their original Eiffel Tower rose…
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My Accidental Experiment – Comparing Indoor and Outdoor Zinnia Growth, Week 1
I feel a bit like I’m back in high school, doing a project for biology class. Initially, I had intended to do some succession planting, so I planted some seeds outside on January 16 and saved some to plant two weeks later. Well, Mother Nature heard that and laughed. The only seeds, as far as I can tell, that survived the direct sow are the zinnias. A week later, Andrew and I decided to start the plants inside– which had already been recommended by the seed packets and friends alike. Sometimes, I just insist on learn things the hard way. In this post, I will be comparing the progress of…
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La Vie en Rose
Imagine a backyard of beige concrete, some 1000 square feet, bordered by bone-dry clay soil. A productive Meyer lemon tree shades the right edge of the yard, and the back is covered by a small Japanese elm, a large, a rounded juniper, and a guava tree with fruit I’ve never tasted because the squirrels always beat me to it. In the stretches of soil between these trees, which more closely resembled decades old Play-Doh than any sort of fertile ground, my dad decided to plant a rose garden. We researched what types of roses we wanted, weighing what qualities we valued most – color, how it opens, stem length, and…
blogging about buds & blooms
