Spring Garden Notes, May 18, 2015

We've finally had a full day without rain...time to catch up on garden tasks! Not that I'm complaining about rain -- I'm not.  Just to appreciate how much we love rain around here, take a look at the Drought map of Texas from 2011...the darker the red, the worse the drought.

And here's the map as of April 2015...there are still a few areas of worry, but on the whole, Texas is in much better shape....

and now you see how happy we are to see rain here!

The Green Husk Tomatillos are starting to burst their wrappers.  I'm bringing them in to ripen as I'm finding them.  Can't wait to make some tomatillo salsa.

I'm ripening several of the tomatoes in the house, too.  I wrote their names down so I can keep track of what's what.

Today I brought in the first of the Great White tomatoes.  It's starting to yellow a bit, and since I'm not sure exactly what to look for with these, I thought I'd see what this one does.  This one weighed 9.9 ounces!

Speaking of tomato plants...I found the entire top of one of my Sleeping Lady tomatoes eaten away and these webs on about three of the leaves further down the plant.  John seems to think its from a Tomato Hornworm, but I couldn't find one.  Does anyone recognize these things?  Are they egg sacks?

In any case, I destroyed them and treated the plant, so hopefully it won't happen again.

Three more of the broccoli plants have started to finally show a good head starting on them.  I'm hoping they will have time to grow out before it starts to get too hot.

I started picking all of my lettuce (two types) because it will soon be too hot for it here.  The lettuce starts to get bitter.  I'll plant some in the pots on the side of the potting shed now since its much cooler over there and in the shade a lot of the day.

I'm not impressed with the Red Romaine lettuce that I grew this year.  It grew just fine but the paper thin leaves remind me of what eating tissue paper must be like.  Not a fan.  Good thing these seeds were freebies from a seed order and I didn't chose them myself.  The Batavian Crisphead, on the other hand, is delicious and crunchy, just like I like my lettuce.  I eat a salad almost every day, and sometimes two, so growing my own is great!

I almost have enough jalapenos for pickled rings.  Those plants are just pumping out the peppers.

Take a look at these Calima beans!  This is why I've grown this particular bean every year since I found them.  Straight, beautiful, crunchy beans, and the plants are full of beans and blooms.  We picked over a pound of these today.

The forecast is for slight chances of rain the rest of the week, increasing at the weekend, so I'm planning to be out in the garden as much as possible the next few days.  Lots of weeding to do!