Texas

[TexasLisa]

Let me know how that goes. Never tried winter gardening.

I was reading about the soil which made me wonder about it. Dang gumbo clay!

I am ordering my seeds from Baker Creek Seeds. I ordered from there last year and everything but my zucchini did really well. I am trying a different variety of that this year.

Has anyone grown onions from seed?

We have gumbo clay also. UGH! DH has been mixing a coarse sand into the garden. I am seeing an improvement. We need to get some more sand though.

I grow my onions from bulbs. I have a good crop in the ground right now. My garlic did so-so this year.

Lisa

 

[ronniewayne]

We have gumbo clay also. UGH! DH has been mixing a coarse sand into the garden. I am seeing an improvement. We need to get some more sand though.

I grow my onions from bulbs. I have a good crop in the ground right now. My garlic did so-so this year.

Lisa

lisa if you have a source for sawdust it will help your clay also you can put a lot like 6" deep then disk or tiller it in does wonders. good luck

 

[Ms Jellybean]

My garden is a raised bed out in by the previous owners. They put in organic soil and manure. I compost my leaves in it over the winter. The garden soil is great!

The rest of the yard is ok. Almost 50 years of people living here have helped. I add peat moss and mulch to the new beds I put in.

My herb garden is about 1/3 pea gravel. Not sure why the previous owners had so much pea gravel there. I tried to get up what I could and finally gave up. My herbs do really well there.

 

[bnjrob]

Let me know how that goes. Never tried winter gardening.

Winter gardening is totally doable once you get the kinks out. We've had so many issues trying to garden here - locust plague from hell (still had grasshoppers eating the garden up until mid-December), no shade with too hot and minimal water in summer, clay and poor drainage, high winds.

Right now I have spinach, broccoli, kale, lettuce arugula, mustard, carrots, parsnips, sugar snap peas, and snow peas in the garden. They are all green and growing and have survived well being inside the plastic covered hoops. I planted in mid-November - really need to get planted sooner in order to be harvesting right now, but that will be a challenge since it is still often quite hot in October and November and winter plants don't like that kind of heat. But since we bought shade cloth to cover the hoops with for this year, I'm thinking that I can plant winter crops sooner and just keep the shade cloth on basically year round and that should help with the heat issue. As long as the temp is below 70* I am leaving the plastic closed up and that is keeping an ok temp inside the hoops for the plants. On the days in November where the temps got higher, I opened up the ends of the hoops so that any heat buildup could escape. We've had to do a lot of staking - tying ropes to the hoops and then to stakes in the ground - otherwise the high winds rip the hoops off the beds. Thought we had it worked out and then the high south winds yesterday ripped the hoops off their rails from the other direction. But now we seem to have the hoops staked for both north and south winds and hopefully will not have to mess with that too much more except to release the ropes so I can move the hoops off the beds to work in them.

We used 6 mil plastic to cover the hoops made out of pvc pipe and it is doing a good greenhouse job. Very pleased to see the sugar snap and snow peas growing in winter. Planted them in April last year and they died in the heat without ever giving us any peas.

Our goal is to try to do year round gardening. Would really like to be more self-reliant, including growing more food. It's getting bad when I go to the grocery store and there are shelves, especially produce spots, that are empty and they tell me that they are out and don't know when more is coming.

 

[mi2bugz]

Winter gardening is totally doable once you get the kinks out.  We've had so many issues trying to garden here - locust plague from hell (still had grasshoppers eating the garden up until mid-December), no shade with too hot and minimal water in summer,  clay and poor drainage, high winds. 

Right now I have spinach, broccoli, kale, lettuce arugula, mustard, carrots, parsnips, sugar snap peas, and snow peas in the garden.  They are all green and growing and have survived well being inside the plastic covered hoops.  I planted in mid-November - really need to get planted sooner in order to be harvesting right now, but that will be a challenge since it is still often quite hot in October and November and winter plants don't like that kind of heat.  But since we bought shade cloth to cover the hoops with for this year, I'm thinking that I can plant winter crops sooner and just keep the shade cloth on basically year round and that should help with the heat issue.  As long as the temp is below 70* I am leaving the plastic closed up and that is keeping an ok temp inside the hoops for the plants.  On the days in November where the temps got higher, I opened up the ends of the hoops so that any heat buildup could escape.  We've had to do a lot of staking - tying ropes to the hoops and then to stakes in the ground - otherwise the high winds rip the hoops off the beds.  Thought we had it worked out and then the high south winds yesterday ripped the hoops off their rails from the other direction.  But now we seem to have the hoops staked for both north and south winds and hopefully will not have to mess with that too much more except to release the ropes so I can move the hoops off the beds to work in them. 

We used 6 mil plastic to cover the hoops made out of pvc pipe and it is doing a good greenhouse job.  Very pleased to see the sugar snap and snow peas growing in winter.  Planted them in April last year and they died in the heat without ever giving us any peas. 

Our goal is to try to do year round gardening.  Would really like to be more self-reliant, including growing more food.  It's getting bad when I go to the grocery store and there are shelves, especially produce spots, that are empty and they tell me that they are out and don't know when more is coming. 

I am going to try year round gardening this year. Do you have any pictures of the covers you write about and how you anchored them for the winds? We get pretty good winds here .

 

[boxofpens]

I have grown onions from seed. ONCE. LOL. It had to be a fluke. I always tried to sprout them and--nothing. Finally I got frustrated and just threw all the seeds in the bed and planted other things along with them. I figured they were going to go bad anyway. It took about a year and a half for them to come up. I had actually forgotten about them, and one day there they were. I have absolutely no clue what I did right. I do remember that it was fall or winter when I first saw them coming up, and I think I had planted them in the spring about a year and a half prior.

I've had good luck with sugar snap peas, broccoli, lettuce, and celery in a winter garden. I had THREE whole celery plants that I grew from seed!!! It was awesome.

Like bnjrob, our sugar snap peas died in the heat. But they seem to absolutely LOVE Texas winters.

 

[bnjrob]

I am going to try year round gardening this year. Do you have any pictures of the covers you write about and how you anchored them for the winds? We get pretty good winds here

.

Here is the link to the article we decided to use to make our hoop system:

http://www.grit.com/farm-and-garden/pvc-hoop-house-zm0z13jazgou.aspx

They run on a rail so that you can slide the hoops to the end of the bed out of the way or squish it in the middle - that way you can get to various parts of the garden bed but not have to disassemble the hoops. We decided to go with this retractable system instead of individual hoops or hoops that attach to a hinged "lid", due to the size of our beds (4 ft x 12 ft). It does well and I'm pleased. And it will let us put on shade cloth easily for the summer.

We used 10 ft lengths of PVC pipe and to stretch over the 4 ft wide bed, it gave us hoops roughly 4 ft tall - so good size for even things like tomato plants. The tall hoops we made are a little over 6 ft tall - we cut the pipe in half and then used elbows to attach the top pipe - they are more squarish looking and are in 3 pieces as opposed to the short hoops that are just one piece of pipe.

We used washers and small exterior screws and screwed the plastic onto the pvc at the bottom of each hoop except for the end hoops which had screws/washer at the bottom on the side and then up at the top middle and then partway down on each "shoulder" of the end hoops. Not my favorite way to do it but we didn't have any of the special clamps you can get to hold stuff on. The screws and washers work and we haven't had a problem with the plastic being pulled out with the high winds - we used washers that are pretty big, I think they are a little over 1" in diameter but they are the ones that have a small hole in the middle just big enough for the screw. I did end up getting some Snap Clamps to hold the end sheets onto the hoops and they work great. For the ends we basically just hung a sheet of plastic, and then put the top and "shoulder" screws into both the end curtain and then length of plastic. Then I use the Snap Clamps to hold the plastic in place down low on the hoops but I can still take off the clamps to roll up the plastic and tie it up with a piece of rope to get it out of the way. Got the long Snap Clamp pipe tube because it was cheaper, and then just used the chop saw to cut the Snap Clamp pipe into 4 inch long pieces to go onto the hoops. Here's the link for those you can look at:

http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/snap-clamps/s

For staking we put a screw into each side of the end hoops about half way up the hoop - that's to keep the rope from slipping. Our beds run from northwest to southeast so the ropes are tied around the end hoop on each side above the screw and then we used tent stakes to anchor into the ground. The tallest structure we made also has rope coming from the top of the end hoops going to the ground since the tall hoop is over 6 ft tall to accommodate the trellises for the peas/beans. It took several different days of winds coming from different directions and seeing how the wind pulled the hoops off the rails, and then we could tell from which direction we needed to add a rope and stake. Just used the same color poly rope that we use to hang poultry feeders/watering buckets - has like a 50-90lb rating on the rope. Basically it's like staking a tent in the wind. Once you see how the wind is blowing your hoops around, you can see right away where to tie a support line at.

Here's a link that has the photos I took of our hoop set up:

http://www.polarisstarfarm.com/adventures/2013/12/01/winter-gardening-begin/

 

[Jobele]

Here's a great site for anybody who wants to set up sprouting seeds to feed your animals fodder. You can purchase the plans and build your own.

Also, a good site to learn how to garden in small spaces. I personally love the potato sacks for growing potatoes.


http://www.half-pinthomestead.com/

 

[mi2bugz]

Here is the link to the article we decided to use to make our hoop system: 

 http://www.grit.com/farm-and-garden/pvc-hoop-house-zm0z13jazgou.aspx 

They run on a rail so that you can slide the hoops to the end of the bed out of the way or squish it in the middle - that way you can get to various parts of the garden bed but not have to disassemble the hoops.  We decided to go with this retractable system instead of individual hoops or hoops that attach to a hinged "lid",  due to the size of our beds (4 ft x 12 ft).  It does well and I'm pleased.  And it will let us put on shade cloth easily for the summer. 

We used 10 ft lengths of PVC pipe and to stretch over the 4 ft wide bed, it gave us hoops roughly 4 ft tall - so good size for even things like tomato plants.  The tall hoops we made are a little over 6 ft tall - we cut the pipe in half and then used elbows to attach the top pipe - they are more squarish looking and are in 3 pieces as opposed to the short hoops that are just one piece of pipe.

We used washers and small exterior screws and screwed the plastic onto the pvc at the bottom of each hoop except for the end hoops which had screws/washer at the bottom on the side and then up at the top middle and then partway down on each "shoulder" of the end hoops.  Not my favorite way to do it but we didn't have any of the special clamps you can get to hold stuff on.  The screws and washers work and we haven't had a problem with the plastic being pulled out with the high winds - we used washers that are pretty big, I think they are a little over 1" in diameter but they are the ones that have a small hole in the middle just big enough for the screw.  I did end up getting some Snap Clamps to hold the end sheets onto the hoops and they work great.  For the ends we basically just hung a sheet of plastic, and then put the top and "shoulder" screws into both the end curtain and then length of plastic.  Then I use the Snap Clamps to hold the plastic in place down low on the hoops but I can still take off the clamps to roll up the plastic and tie it up with a piece of rope to get it out of the way.  Got the long Snap Clamp pipe tube because it was cheaper, and then just used the chop saw to cut the Snap Clamp pipe into 4 inch long pieces to go onto the hoops.  Here's the link for those you can look at:

http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/snap-clamps/s 

For staking we put a screw into each side of the end hoops about half way up the hoop - that's to keep the rope from slipping.  Our beds run from northwest to southeast so the ropes are tied around the end hoop on each side above the screw and then we used tent stakes to anchor into the ground.  The tallest structure we made also has rope coming from the top of the end hoops going to the ground since the tall hoop is over 6 ft tall to accommodate the trellises for the peas/beans.  It took several different days of winds coming from different directions and seeing how the wind pulled the hoops off the rails, and then we could tell from which direction we needed to add a rope and stake.  Just used the same color poly rope that we use to hang poultry feeders/watering buckets - has like a 50-90lb rating on the rope.  Basically it's like staking a tent in the wind.  Once you see how the wind is blowing your hoops around, you can see right away where to tie a support line at.

Here's a link that has the photos I took of our hoop set up:

http://www.polarisstarfarm.com/adventures/2013/12/01/winter-gardening-begin/ 

Thank you so much for the info! Tremendous help!

 

[TexasLisa]

lisa if you have a source for sawdust it will help your clay also you can put a lot like 6" deep then disk or tiller it in does wonders. good luck

Thank you for the tip! I will start looking around for sawdust. (It ought to be cheaper than the sand) I got stuck in the garden again this year.

It had been raining and everything was dried up except for parts of the garden. I wanted to get in there and pick tomatoes, jalapenos, etc. I was trying to be careful where I stepped and wasn't! I fell with my right leg going at an odd angle. The more I struggled, the worse it got. Thank goodness my husband was home that day! O it is a shame we didn't have a camera. We both were up to our knees in mud and I wasn't helping matters by laughing! That was the 2nd time I had got stuck, Ken's first. heheee

Lisa