2018 Garden Update #5: Spring Gardening has Started

So it’s taken a bit longer than planned, but we finally got around to getting the garden started for the spring! Yes, I know spring doesn’t officially start for a few more weeks, but in South Texas, we already have spring weather.

We went to Lowe’s this past weekend and bought a bunch of stuff for the garden and got to work. The garden beds were overrun with weeds because we hadn’t worried about it for a few months since nothing was growing. It took us about 2 hours to pull all of the weeds, but it was worth it.

Last year, a few of the beds had too much soil in them, so after pulling the weeds we also leveled those out a bit and raked the areas out. Even though it took half the day, the yard looks so much better now.

Justin also cut down all the dead limbs on the ginger plants (I won’t do it because of the wasps that like to live in them!) and when he cleared that out we also saw that a few of our Asiatic lilies are starting to grow in as well. I honestly had forgotten that we moved some of those to the backyard last year!

Once the garden beds were ready, we got to work planting our seeds and bulbs. The celery from last year had all died off, so we pulled that out. The outdoor herb garden was taken apart and we used a piece of the wood from that to create a barrier to keep all of the mint plants on one side of that garden bed. They can really take over if you aren’t careful, so hopefully, that will help.

The green onions from last year are still growing, and we bought bulbs for white onion as well and planted those near them. The only other thing that will go in that garden bed will be the okra if it grows back from last year.

As of now, the corner doesn’t have anything growing. We are saving that area for the bell pepper plants, but it’s a bit too early to plant those seeds just yet. In the other half of the vegetable garden, we planted romaine lettuce, spinach, and arugula. These will only last through the beginning of the summer because of the heat, then we plan to plant some zucchini and squash in that area.

We didn’t add anything along the back of the yard, we only cleaned them out as I mentioned. But everything there is starting to grow back in again!

The blackberry bush had been trimmed back a few weeks ago, and we planted some strawberry bulbs around that structure. Last year we couldn’t harvest them before the birds would get them, so I’m hoping the structure will help. I think we also planted too late in the season and it got too hot for the strawberries to grow.

I don’t know what’s going on with the orange tree. It isn’t growing, but it isn’t dying either. It’s just kind of there. The pineapple plants were killed in the freeze so we dug those up. We haven’t planted anything in that area yet because we are going to try watermelon this year in the summer.

I said we took apart the herb garden, but I still have some herbs growing. We bought starter plants for 5 different herbs last weekend, and I decorated a few leftover sauce jars and have them on a shelf in the living room. The last two years, as soon as the temperatures get too warm, the herbs would all die off. I don’t know if they will get enough sun where they are, but I can’t put them in a windowsill because our cat would probably eat them.

We were going to completely take apart the herb garden and put grass there again but then decided that we are going to keep just the outer pieces to hold the dirt in and that will be the boys garden. We will let them plant what they want in there, and if they want to dig, I’ll warn them it could hurt the plants but I won’t stop them. They are so excited about this idea, we just have to kill all the weeds that are currently in there.

Our aloe plants were also getting out of control, so we got two new pots for those. One is a large standing pot that we got for our bedroom and put a lot of the aloe in there. The other is a much smaller one that I have sitting on the entertainment center with some of the aloe. Then we left a little bit in one of the pots outside.

Almost a week later and my back and legs are still feeling the workout they got in the garden and backyard, but it was so worth it. We had about 6 inches of rain the next day, so I’m hoping we planted the seeds deep enough that they didn’t wash away.