Link - Companion Planting Guide

I never plant anything in rows.  My garden beds usually look like a riotous mix of plants with herbs and flowers tucked into every available spot between vegetables.  I'm a big fan of using companion planting to enhance the growth of plants, repel pest bugs, and attract beneficial bugs to my gardens.  A little knowledge can go a long way towards keeping harsh chemicals far away from your vegetables and flowers. My favorite book on companion planting is Carrots Love Tomatoes by Louise Riotte.  But you can get started with this useful link on companion planting.   It's not as comprehensive as the book, but it is a very good start.

Link - GardenToad's Companion Plant Guide

Spotlight - The Redbud Tree

The Redbud Tree is one of my favorites.  We have four of them in our front yard and they fill the space with beauty every spring.  They seem to be everywhere in this part of the state and thrive with very little attention.  With the tree being so plentiful, I had to wonder if there were any particular uses for it other than the most obvious – it being so lovely and pleasing to the eye. 

In the course of my research I found out that you can eat the flowers in the springtime and the new, soft green seedpods in the fall.  Wow.  It is a member of the legume family and shares many things in common with the pea.  The flowers, which have been described as having a sweet and slightly nutty flavor, can be eaten by themselves, mixed in with salads or other foods, or even made into jelly or relish.  In the fall when the seedpods are young and tender, they can be eaten raw or cooked like peas.   Like many legumes, the seedpods contain nutrients such as protein, iron and some complex carbohydrates.

 The picture above shows some young seedpods on one of the Redbud trees in our yard.  They look very similar to peas.

Since Redbud trees are usually under twenty feet tall, they makes a good under canopy tree in the forest.   That is not only true for the forests in parks, but also the food forest you might want to start at home.  Whether you’re just looking for an easy to grow tree to add some dimension to your yard, you’re trying to start a food forest and need some canopy trees, or you just want to something aesthetically pleasing, relatively long lived, and easy to care for that will come in handy if things every get really tough, you might consider the Redbud tree.

Video - Curing Onions

Texoma is historically known for growing onions. Our black clay and unfussy onions get along beautifully, making onions high on my list of plants to start with for people new to gardening.
Onions can grow so successfully here that you can end up with quite a harvest. What to do to preserve all of your onions? Well, you have some options. Drying, of course, is one. You can also chop them and keep them frozen in bags, to use as needed. My personal favorite is to cure them and store them in a dark, dry place, where they'll often keep for months.
Curing onions is not at all hard. The key is to not be hasty. Leave them to cure for as long as they need to set properly before storing, and you'll minimize your losses to rot. Here's a video describing the process. Good luck!

Gardening with Wildflowers - Gaillardia

As gardeners, we spend a lot of time trying to find just the right flower to accent our garden beds and yards.   The primary thing that we have to consider is what will grow in our particular area.  The Texoma area is not as forgiving as some areas of the country when it comes to gardening.  This is true for vegetables or flowers.  I often see beautiful plants at our local nurseries that just won’t tolerate the conditions in our yard.  I have learned though experience and failure that certain things just aren’t going to make it. 

In recent years, I have begun to wonder why I struggle to grow plants not meant for this area, when there are so many plants that are native to the area that hold just as much beauty, color and wonder.  Take wildflowers for instance – this time of year our roadsides and hillsides are covered with lovely flowers of all colors, shapes and sizes.  Why can’t a flower that brightens up a highway brighten up your yard?  There is no reason!  I have seen wildflower seeds for sale in many stores and have some growing here in our yard.  One of my favorites is Gaillardia – more commonly known as Indian Blanket.  This is the flower pictured above.  It is lovely and easy to grow.  It is native to this area, doesn’t need any special care and comes back year after year regardless of conditions.  Wow!  Indian Blanket seeds can be purchased in local stores and they are easy to get started in any flower bed.  You can start them inside and transplant them, or just direct sow the seeds.  This is true for many, many of the wildflowers you see growing along the roadsides. 

There are websites devoted to helping you identify your favorites.  Just look up ‘Texas Wildflowers’ or ‘Texas Wildflower Identification’ and follow the links.  Add a little bit of Texas to your flowerbed.  I think you’ll be pleased with the results!

(Just as a side note - as with many native plants and herbs, Gailladria has some medicinal properties and the roots can be dried and made into teas or paste to treat a variety of illnesses.  There are enough native flowers and herbs growing in our area to enjoy new teas all year round).

Companion Plants: Sweet Pepper & Okra

Leave room in your sweet pepper beds for okra. Okra often grows taller than pepper plants, offering a bit of shade in our burning Texas sun and wind protection.
Michele advises us to generally not plant okra before May, due its resentment of coldish weather; however, if you leave space for it where you've planted sweet peppers, then you should be able to fit the okra in nicely.

The Honeysuckle Bush

Walking the dog around the back of our place today, I noticed a distinctly sweet smell. It reminded me of honeysuckle vines, but I couldn’t remember having seen any on our property before. We followed our noses and came across several very large bushes full of sweet smelling white flowers. I had never heard of a honeysuckle bush, and had no idea what these were. They were very pretty, smelled very sweet, and were very attractive to butterflies and bees. There were dozens of butterflies flitting around the bushes. The dog and I watched them for a few minutes and then we headed back to the house to fetch the kids. I traded the dog for a camera, and the kids and I set off to watch the butterflies and take a few pictures.

The picture at the start of this post shows a couple of butterflies enjoying the flowers.  Below is a close up of the flowers.

And finally, here is a picture that shows more of the bushes and gives a better idea of how they can grow and how lovely they look.

After searching online to try to determine the type of bush – and being very unsuccessful – I typed in honeysuckle bush just because it smelled so much like the vines. Guess what, there is such a thing and some of the pictures online looked just like the ones we took here! I’m not completely convinced that’s what these bushes are (just mostly convinced), but am going to keep an eye on them this fall. The honeysuckle bush will produce berries in the late summer that ripen early in the fall.

The bush is considered invasive and there are web sites devoted to giving instruction on how to kill them! I thought they were very pretty and don’t want to kill ours. There are a wide variety of honeysuckle bushes in existence, some with berries that are slightly toxic to children and others that are fine to consume. It was noted that although it was ok to eat them, they were very bland tasting and people didn’t tend to bother with them. Birds will eat them in the winter after the other, tastier food has been foraged. That is one of the reasons they spread so easily. The flowers can be dried and used in teas or made into an oil. There are some reported health benefits that are associated with consuming them in this manner.

Here are links to pages discussing these:

http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/health-benefits-of-honeysuckle-8773.html
http://www.naturopathydigest.com/nutrition_herbs/herbs/honeysuckle_flower.php

I think I’ll wait to try any of these out until after I confirm what the bush is. In the meantime, it is a very ornamental shrub that seems to thrive in our climate. It can attract butterflies to your garden and add a sweet smell to your yard. The bushes may be trimmed to keep the size in check if your space is limited, or left to grow tall and thick like ours and used as a privacy hedge, or to decorate a fence row. Be sure if you decide to grow these that you keep them in check and don't let them choke out any of your other plants!  I know that mine are going to stay for now. I may even transplant some a little closer to the house so that we can enjoy them more easily.

Nutritious and Delicious Mulberries

The mulberry trees are full of fruit and it is ripening fast.  It will be a race to see who gets the most off of the trees – the kids or the birds.  The birds usually win, but the kids don’t do too badly.   We have four trees in our yard that we planted from seedlings shortly after moving to our current home.  In the nine years since, the trees have flourished, and have been yielding fruit for the past few years.  They are hardy here in NE Texas, like rocky soil, and are drought tolerant (although they do appreciate a drink when it’s as hot and dry as it was last summer).  What’s not to like?

Our trees, being relatively young, aren’t all that big yet, but they can get up to fifty feet tall.  A word of warning – they can be messy!  The fruit drops off and if squashed on a walkway, can easily stain it.  Our trees are planted away from any sidewalks and this will not be a problem for us.  Another thing to consider if you live in a city and the tree will be close to the house, driveway or walkways is that birds love these berries.  A lot of birds usually leads to a lot of droppings.  On the upside though, they will grow well where other trees will not, can be used as a windbreak, are easy to propagate, and the fruit is healthy and delicious.

Here is what one page had to say about the nutritional benefits, along with the link:

Mulberries are actually a good source of raw food protein, a rarity in the fruit kingdom.  They are also a good source of magnesium, potassium, riboflavin, iron, calcium, vitamin C, and fiber. One of the mulberry's greatest health assets is it's high concentration of resveratrol, an antioxidant currently being studied for its effects on heart health. An ancient fruit of Asia, the mulberry is touted in medicinal folklore as a remedy for ringworm, insomnia, arthritis, and tapeworm.

http://vegetarian.about.com/od/glossary/a/What-Are-Mulberries.htm

I sent the kids out today with a container and told them to get to work.  They came in with about two cups of berries and the stained fingers and cheeks that led me to believe they’d eaten another cup or so while they picked.  The earliest of the berries are just ripening now, and in next week or two there should be plenty more.  It is easiest to just put a tarp on the ground and check it every day.  The ripe berries tend to fall off of the tree.  If you check it often enough, you can beat the birds to the sweetest berries!  I made a batch of mulberry muffins this evening to reward the kids for their hard work.  

I think the fact that they complained that I didn't make enough is a sign that they liked them!

Trees are a longer term investment than a traditional garden, but they'll reward you for years to come.