Fall Garden - Wagon's Ho!

Now is the time to start putting in the fall vegetable garden.

I know, I know, if you've been gardening all along you're probably tired of slogging it out trying to keep up with weeding and irrigating. But a little time spent now will keep you in vegetables until we get a really bad freeze.

Or, if you are like me, now is the time to start the garden in the first place. I didn't move to Austin until March and had no time to get my vegetable garden started during the normal spring planting season. I've been spending the summer getting my raised beds built and soil composted. I have just enough accomplished to have one raised bed ready to go. I had to cheat a little and buy two bags of top soil because I ran out of home grown compost, but at least I can finally get some seeds into the ground and envision the day where I don't have to buy produce at the local HEB grocery.

I brought quite a few seeds with me from Oregon. I had ordered my full calendar of inventory last winter, having no idea that I would suddenly be uprooted from the Northwest. I have greens, beets and carrot varieties that are all designed to be planted in late summer for fall harvest. Since I only have the one area completed, I had to settle with planting only carrots, spinach, and a row of bush beans.

My raised beds (made from old cedar fence boards) are perfect for this kind of intensive combination planting. I usually eschew rows and just space the seeds into a grid pattern. That way I use every inch.

The challenge for me here in Texas is the heat. Seeds need moisture and warm soils to germinate - not hot prairie winds and ground you can fry on egg on. My solution was to create a row cover. I already had a piece of floating row cover on hand. It is light gauzy stuff that will allow rainwater to penetrate, keep bugs off my seedlings, and hopefully serve to filter a little of that hot sun.

I created the "hoops" out of branches pruned from the neighbor's tree. There were several overhanging the fence that were just the right size.

From Yard makeover

I just did a little pruning and then bent the sticks into an arch. They weren't quite long enough, so I wove the ends together and secured them with some wire.

From Yard makeover

That done, I placed the row cover over the hoops. The previous homeowner had left some lengths of metal pipe in the garage, so I used that to roll up the ends - sort of like a window shade. That way I can just pick up the wrapped pipe, lift the cover, and water the bed easily. It also serves to weigh down the cover so the wind doesn't carry it into the neighbors yard. I secured it into the ground with a piece of 12 gauge wire bent into u-shape just to be sure.

From Yard makeover

When I stepped back to survey my work, it sort of looked like a covered wagon. This made me laugh because my family came out west via a wagon train those many years ago. All I need is a pair of oxen and a sun bonnet and I'm ready to walk back to Oregon. Nah, think I'll sit here in the shade and wait for my seeds to germinate.