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Strawberries, Blueberries, and Blackberries

It is berry time at the Bell House, and Little Joe has been enjoying a big handful of strawberries everyday. When I get home, he runs to the edge of the deck, points at the garden, and starts grunting with excitement. I go pick whatever strawberries the mockingbirds haven't already eaten, and he gobbles up them as fast as I can pick them. It feels pretty good to be able to give him home-grown organic fruit everyday, which is my ultimate goal with our edible backyard landscape. If my strawberry plants live their full 3 years, that means I'll be able to give Joe approximately 10-15 quarts of fresh-picked organic strawberries for a total cost of ~$15. Not bad.

Joe with his mouth full of strawberries

The blueberries have also begun to ripen. So far we've only picked around 10 or so, but they're very good. Joe is slowly discovering that they are edible. At first he just treated them like pebbles (he plays with the pebbles in the bottom of the planters), but now I think he knows. He still seems to prefer the strawberries though. I've been very pleasantly surprised not to have seen any bird damage to the berries yet. I hung an inflatable bird-scare from a sturdy-stake near the berry bushes, and it seems to be doing the trick. I move it every few days to keep the birds wary of it. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to just eat the berries with Joe, or if I want to freeze the berries as they ripen and make a blueberry pie. If I can keep the birds away, I should have a few quarts of berries by the end of the season. Not bad for year #2.

First Fruits

The blackberries are finally ripening as well. The kind we grow are called 'Kiowa', and I think they're delicious. Dr. B thinks they're a little too tart, but I like them that way. I imagine I'll be picking a half-pint or so from the two large brambles every day for the next week or so. I just need to decide what to do with them: eat them, cobbler, or jam?

Blackberry Bramble

Once I've picked all the berries, I'll cut down the old fruiting canes, and tie up the new ones. The two mature brambles already have canes 5' tall that are falling over under their own weight. I'll get them tied up and trimmed, and with any luck we'll have many more berries next year. They really seem to like it on the east side of the house. They only get half a day of sun, but they get plenty of moisture there, and I've got them under 8" of composted leaves. Volunteers keep popping up all over the place, so if anyone wants a transplant, let me know.

Bowl of Blackberries

Inventory

I've noticed on the fruit/garden forums that fruit growing enthusiasts like to make and share lists of their collections. Here's my list of fruit trees and bushes:

In the ground:
6 Kiowa Blackberries
Orlando Tangelo
Bloomsweet Grapefruit
Wekiwa Tangelo
Hirado Buntan Pummelo
Tropic Snow Peach
Tropic Sweet Peach
Red Barron Peach
Anna Apple
Dorsett Apple
Cara Cara Pink Navel Orange
Pong Koa Mandarin
Sarawak Pummelo
2 Meyer Lemons
"Genoa" Loquat
Mexicola Grande Avocado
Lula Avocado
Okitsu Wase Satsuma
LSU Gold Fig
4 Texas Loquats
Methley Plum
Santa Rosa Plum
Sharp Velvet Pomegranate
Red Silk Pomegranate
Garnet Sash Pomegranate

In Containers:
8 Blueberries: Tiftblue, Brightwell, Woodard, & Climax
Everhard Navel Orange
Moro Blood Orange
Mexican Lime
2 Calamondins
Variegated Calamondin
Meiwa Kumquat
Changshou Kumquat
Miho Satsuma
Ujukitsu Sweet Lemon
Ruby Grapefruit

Grand Total: 53 trees and plants, representing 35 cultivars, and all in a suburban in northwest Houston.

Building the Vegetable Garden

I built my vegetable garden in March 2009. It was a lot of work, and as gardens go, I would call this one "bomb proof". I used cinder blocks because I wanted something that wouldn't rot, and my previous wood-frame veggie patch was constantly being invaded by grass. One advantage of the cinder blocks has been their resistance to rot and weeds, they don't leach wood preservative into the soil, and you can plant stuff in the holes. As mentioned in a previous post, we planted strawberries in the cinder block holes all the way around the garden.

The whole bed is 5.5' x 20' (110 sqft), which is probably just a bit too wide as I can just barely reach the center. I divide this big bed into 4 'plots' for different crops. For example, right now:

Plot 1: Green Beans
Plot 2: Tomatoes
Plot 3: Cucumbers
Plot 4: Peppers

If Dr. B would let me, I'd pull out all the grass in the backyard and put in 4 or 5 more beds just like this one. If I could expand to 400 sqft, I think I could grow enough produce for 2-3 meals every week, and be able to grow enough peppers and tomatoes to make salsa, hot sauce, and spaghetti sauce. Plus, that would be that much less lawn I'd have to mow. Stupid grass.

Laid out first level of cinder blocks.

Leveld out first level of cinder blocks.

Added 2nd level of blocks and filled it with soil.

Ran underground water line to soaker hose.

Planted!

May Garden Tour

Here are just a few pictures to show you what's going on in our back yard. Everything is growing well, and we're looking forward to the first fruits of the year very soon. I don't have time to post pictures of everything, but I'll get around to it.

New Herb Garden

Jalepenos

Tiftblue Blueberries

Derby Bush Beans

Lula Avocado

Sweet Charlie Strawberries

In addition to these, we have several green tomatoes, a new mint bed around one of our potted citrus trees, and several new butterfly/hummingbird habitat plants. We planted mexican bush sage, pineapple sage, white butterfly bush, and blue plumbago in containers on the deck. We also planted a turk's cap by the rain tank, and some coral honeysuckle on a trellis near the kitchen window. I hope to add some mexican fire bush (hamelia patens) by the kitchen window later this year or next year.

I was planning on installing an asparagus bed, but now I think it's too much time and expense. I'd have to wait 3 years before harvesting any stalks, so I think I'll build a vermiculture worm bed instead. I can put this together for $15 (worms included) with scrap lumber, and I need help composting my kitchen scraps anyway. My dual bin system just can't break down our kitchen waste fast enough, but I bet the worms can.

First Strawberries of 2010

Our strawberries made it through the freezes without any difficulty. The variety is called 'Sweet Charlie', and so far I really like them (from Ison's). We planted 80 plants, and probably 75 survived the winter. The berries are small but very sweet, and the plants seem to be good producers, considering that we have them confined to holes in the cinderblocks of our garden. I've been picking 2-3 every day for almost a week now, which makes me think that I'll have a bumper crop next year if I can keep them alive through the summer.

The Suburban Energy and Food Chain

The Average American Family:


The average American family buys tons of cheap processed and subsidized food, uses electricity from the burning of fossil fuels, is overweight due to poor diet and lack of exercise, and sends copious quantities of garbage to landfills.

The Green Family:


The green family grows some of their own food in a family garden, and purchases some from local sources. Thus, the green family eats fresher, higher quality food while depending less on the grocery store. The green family makes the conscious choice to conserve power, and to purchase electricity from renewable sources like wind. The green family recycles and composts kitchen scraps and yard wastes, which in turn help grow fruits and vegetables in the garden. Thus the green family sends much less material to landfills.

Be above average. Be Green.

Blackeyed Peas and Tomato Progress

The blackeyed peas (blackeyed and purple hulls) have been doing great! They've put out tons of pods. I've been picking and shelling a handful everyday.


After a week, I had a pound of fresh shelled peas. Dr. B doesn't like them, so I went to town.
What could be better than fresh blackeyed peas and hot buttered cornbread?
Delicious!
My grapes from are starting to ripen. These were a surprise because they were supposed to be a bronze grape, not purple. I had a bronze one ripen on one of the grapevines by the fence as well. They were both unbelievably delicious, with unique textures and potent flavors. You can really taste/feel the pectin (what makes it 'jelly'). Dr. B said it was like eating an eyeball. I loved them, and I can't wait for more. Hopefully next year the vines will all be established and they'll really start producing. I'm going to transplant the vine that I think tastes the best to an actual muscadine trellis this winter (vineyard style) over by the 5-gallon bucket tomatoes.
Speaking of which, the 5-gallon bucket tomato experiment is going very well. The photo above shows what they looked like shortly after transplanting, and the photo below shows how much they've grown in the short span of one month.

Almost all have flowers, and one of the Sweet Chelseas already has a little tomato. With any luck there will be a bumper crop this fall. Dr. B and I are hoping to make and can spaghetti sauce and salsa.

Bamboo Tee-Pees

Victor did good. He got 0.5-inch diameter, 7-foot long bamboo poles in yesterday. I picked up 30 for less than $1 each. I haven't quite decided how I'm going to do it, but I'll be tying and caging the plants as they grow. These poles are much much sturdier than what i was using. I put three in each bucket, and tied them at the top. They're very strong, and should hold up the tomatoes very well.

5-Gallon Bucket Summer Tomatoes: Phase 2

I thought for sure that some of the tomato seeds I planted in June would die. Every single one is now a healthy transplant size. I couldn't believe it. I had originally intended to grow 6 plants (two of each variety) in 5 gallon buckets, but with such seed-sprouting success I expanded to 9 buckets.I planted 3 of each variety (Arkansas Traveler, Sweet Chelsea, and Texas Wild) in a five-gallon bucket. To prepare the buckets, I drilled 8 1/2" diameter holes around the base, and covered them from the inside with window screen. Then I filled them up with potting soil. This will hopefully provide more than adequate drainage in the bucket. After planting, I fertilized with fish emulsion, and put several handfulls of mulch on top.


All the books and websites say to make tomato cages out of concrete reinforcing mesh, but it is way too expensive. It would cost ~$25 per cage, and I'm not going to pay it. For the short term, I put the skinny, cheap bamboo stick in the buckets, and tied them at the top to make a bamboo tee-pee. Victor ( Plants for All Seasons ) is ordering some more robust bamboo poles for me to make my own cages. It will take a little more work, but save lots of money.


I put the buckets against the east side of the house where they'll get good morning sun, but will be shaded from the scorching afternoon heat. I put them up on cinder blocks so it would be easy to mow and trim the grass around them.

After all this work, I now have 9 thriving transplants that will hopefully produce tons of tomatoes this fall once the weather cools down enough for them to fruit. I had 30 plants, and only planted 9, leaving me with 21 healthy plants to try to find homes for. I gave a bunch to Nick at church, but I still have 13 or so.

I'm a bad influence on children:

Pickles!

We've had so many cucumbers, I thought it was time to do something with them. I googled a no-cook pickle recipe, snuck off to the store, and got pickling.


I also pickled a small jar of jalepenos and banana peppers. These are all "refridgerator pickled". While they have to be kept in the fridge, they're also ready to eat after 24 hours. I'll let you know how they taste.

On a side note, my summer tomatoes are doing great so far. I'll be transplanting them to their buckets this weekend.

Fruits of Our Labor

The picture doesn't do it justice. I had an excellent home-grown lunch at work today. (Don't look Dr. B)

Our tomatoes have been the envy of all our friends, neighbors, and co-workers. We really didn't have to do anything. I didn't do anything special. I guess fresh picked is just that much better than store-bought.

I've planted more cucumbers, summer/fall tomato seeds, and more green beans (the first ones quit producing). My plan is to try the summer tomatoes in 5-gallon buckets on the side of the house where they won't get scorched. I'm trying 3 different sizes: Arkansas Traveler (big heirloom), Sweet Chelsea (plum-sized cherry), and Texas Wild (small cherry).

Next up: Building trellises for the green beans and cucumbers, and finishing burying the water line to the soaker hoses.

Our Produce

Just thought I'd post some pictures of our veggies. I forgot to take a picture of the green beans before I ate them. I've been getting one raspberry per day, and will have to make salsa so all the tomatoes don't go to waste. I think I'm going to start weighing all the vegetables and fruit we produce, and find out how many pounds of food we can squeeze out of our backyard. Yesterday I put in the soaker hoses, and I'll spend this afternoon after work burying the supply hoses.

Expansion!

Major expansion. Or at least major for us. This past weekend I put in eight 2.5'x8' raised beds in between the fruit trees. I've already transplanted the peppers, and have planted summer squash and black-eyed peas. Everything is going really well. We've had more tomatoes than we could eat (3-4 per day), and 5 huge cucumbers so far. I've only been able to pick ~ a half pound of green beans, but hopefully production will pick up. If you look closely in the picture, you can see that the beans have grown up into the gutters on the porch, and are almost 10 feet tall. All the peppers we've picked so far have been delicious. (and hot!) The bugs got one of our bell peppers, but there are few more still on the way.

Next up: Soaker hose irrigation system

Hydrangeas

The Endless Summer Hydrangeas we planted are really doing great! Three of them at the front of the house have some really pretty flowers. The first and third ones are blue and the second one is pink. The fourth hasn't bloomed, but I think it might need a little more time. Originally I wanted them to all be blue, but the pink one is really pretty. 

I do think it is odd that the plants next to each other aren't putting out the same color blooms. The color should be dependent on the pH of the soil. They are close enough together that I would have assumed they would be the same color...I guess I still have some things to learn about these particular flowers. For now I am just happy they are thriving and blooming. 

Progress

I can't believe how well things are growing. Our tomatoes are HUGE, and are escaping the confines of their cages. We have several tomatoes on the plants, and I think the Coreopsis planted in front of them discourages stink bugs.

We also have two new addtions: a Fuerte and a Mexicola Grande avocado tree. If we can keep them pollinated, we should have avocados all but 2 months out of the year. I think they've got some growing to do before they fruit, but we're hoping for the best. I'm going to keep them in large pots for the time being. I'll put them in the ground if another tree fails.



Our blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries are doing very well. We've got several large blackberries, and they've started to change color from green to deep red. They have also started to put out new canes for next years cropt. We have just a few strawberries, but they're still blooming, and the raspberries are just beginning to bloom. The raspberries seem to be doing extremely well in their pots, unlike the blueberries. I've lost two so far. They may need to be planted in the ground with peat moss to really take off.

Look at all the lemons!

Our big bell pepper

Our pole beans are taller than I am.
We've got Monarch Caterpillars on our butterfly weed!
We still have a few pests to deal with though.