Houston Nesties
Crazy Christmas Kids!
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Fall Gardeners
What are you planting? I'm thinking we need to plant before we leave in Sept.
Crazy Christmas Kids!
Re: Fall Gardeners
This is long but I thought it was pretty good information. Came from teh updates I get from MAAS nursery in Kemah.
I like to prepare the soil a few weeks before planting. I will plant my fall vegetables at the end of August. Each plant will get a good helping of cotton burr compost. The compost supplies nutrients and helps with rooting. I look forward to the fall harvest almost more than spring because there are so many more cooking options once the weather cools off.
Here are some general tips for getting your fall vegetable garden going:
If you had a spring garden:
- You'll
need to take a good look at the old vegetable plants you have and
decide if they can be cut back and saved or if you need to throw them
away and start again.
- Most tomato plants should be removed - you will generally have much better luck with fresh plants in the fall.
- Pepper
plants can often be cut back and that mature root system you have will
produce a large plant with lots of peppers for the fall. Sometimes
peppers don't even have to be cut back - they just keep on looking good
till frost.
- Any
perennial herbs such as thyme, oregano, and mint can be trimmed back to
promote fresh growth in the fall when it's cooler.
- Of
course your melons, cucumbers, okra, and eggplants are probably still
producing in the month of August, so just let them keep going as long as
possible. You'll know when they start to decline at the end of the
summer that it's time to remove them, or maybe you'll decide you just
need that room for fall vegetables. At any rate it will probably be a
little different each year depending on the rain and weather.
Once you've decided what to keep and what to throw out, here's what I do next:- To my existing raised bed, I add a good organic landscape mix along with some cotton burr compost and mix lightly.
- I tilled the soil when I originally
prepared the bed, so I don't need to till again. This way I do not
disturb all the wonderful microbes which make my vegetable plants both
productive and tasty.
- Then I spread some dried molasses to feed
the microbes. Molasses works best if you rake it in lightly after
spreading. I do this mid-August and start planting at the end of the
month.
- You can stagger when you plant your tomato plants to extend the harvest season.
If you didn't have a spring garden and you're making a new garden space:Ask us about the right vegetable plants to put in at the right time. Generally, if we have them, it's the right time to plant them....and if we don't have them it's not quite time yet.
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I'm hoping that Labor Day weekend we can build and plant our fall garden.
Did you guys buy plants or just seeds?
save for my curry plant and the peppers... this.
i will plant some things for fall (we missed our window for pumpkins in time for halloween, waaah), but i am going to fill a lot of the squares with flowers. i had WAY too much harvest for what we could eat, so i'd like some pretty : )
i got some periwinkles and moss roses, they are happy in the dry heat.
i CANNOT BELIEVE how happy the bell, jalapeno, and anaheim peppers in this freaking dry heat. they amaze me.
i also potted a bunch of succulents that callmekel had left over from a wedding (they were used as decor, were going to be thrown away). they are adorable!
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I've been wondering if I should just scrap my two tomato plants, because I only have two tomatoes on them total even after it looked like most of the flowers were setting fruit.
This morning my decision was made for me. I went out to look (they're behind the garage) and my first thought was that deer had somehow gotten into our back yard! Two hornworms made the decision for me! Pretty much all that's left on them are those two tomatoes!
All the herbs that the heat killed...
Plus broccoli, spinach, butternut squash, zucchini (I planted it a couple of weeks ago), garlic, shallot, english peas, and another crop of green beans.
I'm thinking about trying cauliflower, knowing that I'll be the only one to eat it... but I haven't decided.
If I can find tomato plants, we might add a plant or two.