Fall aster

As I mentioned before, Fall is the best time for gardening and to get your garden ready for the Spring. That is, if you live in Central Texas. And with the recent extreme drought and hot weather, I was finally able to witness once and for all which of our plants were truly drought-tolerant. Here is a list of my favorites and how much water I gave them – none (0), a deep watering once a week per city watering schedule (1x), or twice a week where I spot-watered a few chosen plants in the mix (2x).

• herbs (1x) – rosemary, thyme, sage, Mexican mint marigold, chives, Mexican oregano, mint, lavender, basil (2x)


Mexican mint marigold (with the yellow flowers), sage, lavender (in the back)

• roses (2x) – the antique rose varieties and a few modern roses are hardier than they’re given credit for. I have a lot to say on them so I’ll defer that to a later post.


salvia with the white flowers; rosemary just behind; rose bushes in the back row, still attractive even without the flush of roses

• salvias (1x) – (Autumn sage or salvia greggii) tough perennial that provides year-round color. Its flowers come in a variety of shades. These are my favorites of the sage family.
• Fall aster (1x) – the plants themselves aren’t very pretty but it provides great soil cover and the Fall bloom is spectacular, attracting lots of bees.
• Texas native trees or large shrubs (0) – Before we moved here, the previous tenants had cleared the area of all trees except the oaks. Leaving only oak trees is a very common practice around here. While they’re wonderful trees, such mono-culture makes them more vulnerable to disease as we’ve seen from all the oak wilt cases around town. This is just my opinion though. There have been no research that I know of that link the two, but there are plenty of research in other areas (farming, grasses) that show that a diversity of plants is more disease-resistant and healthier for the soil/environment.
  • cenizo sage – These are most often seen as bushes as they are easy to trim and shape. But left alone, they can grow to a nice, sizeable height. After our only heavy rain in early October, these bushes burst forth with beautiful lavender colored flowers.
  • mountain laurel – I’ve seen these as hedges and small trees. Evergreen, extremely drought-tolerant once established, beautiful frangrant flowers in the Spring. About 8 years ago, my husband decided to grow them from seed. Several of these seedlings are now bushes that range in height from about 2 to 5 feet. Aside from the first few months after they sprouted, we have not watered any of them. It is one tough plant. Its only drawback is how slow they grow but you can always speed that up by giving them extra water.
  • Texas remote pinyon – you don’t see a lot of these around here but you can find clusters of them at the Kickapoo Caverns State Park (though I’ve never been). We bought ours in San Antonio about 6 years ago. This one is an even slower grower than the mountain laurels. Another drawback is that we have to keep a fence around them or else will rub their antlers on them. I only hope to see the day when these pine trees reach 25 feet
  

  cenizo sage with the purple flowers; two mountain laurels to its right, from seedlings

Start thinking and planning for your Spring garden now! The free mulch from the Christmas tree recycling program is still available at Zilker park on the south side of Barton Springs Rd. It’s free for the taking which I confirmed with the Parks & Rec guys even though it wasn’t well publicized this year. As of Thursday, there was still a big heaping pile as seen in the picture and a smaller one to the side.

Low Maintenance Versatile Plants

If you’re wondering about my absence from the virtual world lately, it’s because I’ve been knee deep in my garden. The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous! In many ways, I much prefer to garden in the Fall than in the Spring. It is the best time to:

• get your plants in and/or plan out your garden for the Spring – the nurseries are also not as busy as in the Spring and thus, more kid-friendly
• get those beautiful Spring blooming wildflower seeds in. My favorites (poppies, larkspur, and of course the bluebonnets) can only be enjoyed in the Spring if you plan ahead and direct sow those seeds in this year.
• propagate!

My favorite trio of low maintenance versatile plants pictured above are (from left to right) flowering rosemary, lemongrass, and salvia greggi. They are all evergreen for year round color, can tolerate both heat and partial shade, attract wildlife but are deer-resistant, require little watering, and suppress weeds. Plus, the rosemary and lemongrass are edible and the rosemary and salvia both produce flowers for a large part of the year.

Some related posts:

• Local Austin garden resources
• Family gardening
• Rose propagation
• Cheap, space-saving seasonal ‘greenhouse’

If I didn’t already have plans this weekend, I would be dragging my family to the 7th Annual Garden Festival of Roses at the Antique Rose Emporium in San Antonio. By the way, it was from the owner Mike Shoup’s rose book, Landscaping with Antique Roses (no longer in print) where I (re)discovered my passion for roses and learned how to propagate and double my collection. He will also be teaching the art of propagating at this event – Saturday at 10am. The Festival is a kid-friendly event.

After years of experimenting with different layouts, we’ve settled on a ‘U’ or horseshoe arrangement for our cage plants. You can reach each plant from all angles and it’s very kid-friendly. Our kids love hanging inside the U. We use 6″ grid cattle panel welded wire fencing for all our cages and plant eggplants and peppers along with the tomatoes. It’s too late in Central Texas to get the Spring/Summer plantings in the ground but lucky for us, we have two growing season! Fall planting for tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers start in mid-July.

I just pulled out all of our onions this week. It is our first big harvest for this year. Onions are very easy to grow in Central Texas. We plant the onion sets very close together and use the thinned out ones as green onions. The ones I just pulled are from our edible garden but I also plant them interspersed in our perennial garden. I am always surprised and delighted to find a few pop up the next year. And I’m convinced they deter aphids and other pests.

We have a tradition of using the first onions to make a big batch of French onion soup. VERY EASY! Here’s the recipe – I really don’t measure, it’s whatever fits in my 8-quart pot:

Ingredients:
• 1/4 cup+ butter
• 12 – 20 small to medium onions, halved then thinly sliced; I use a mixture of mostly reds and then white or yellow
• 2 – 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 4 – 5 quarts of water
• 6 – 7 tbsp Better than Bouillon beef stock base
• 1 – 2 cups dry white wine; I usually use a $8 – $10 bottle of Sauvignion Blanc because it’s cheap enough to cook with and good enough to drink
• thyme
• bay leaf
• salt and pepper to taste
• baguette, sliced (you may also make good use of day old bread)
• Gruyere cheese, grated; no substitute for this cheese

Directions:
• In an 8-quart pot, saute onions in butter until soft, translucent, and lightly browned.
• Add garlic and saute for a minute more.
• Add beef stock base (first dissolved in 2 cups of water), remaining water, wine, thyme, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for at least 30 minutes.
• Salt and pepper to taste.
• To serve, ladle the soup into heatproof bowls. Cover with sliced bread and top with cheese.
• Either broil in the oven until the cheese has melted or torch it with a hand-held kitchen torch. I prefer the latter.

Note: The soup itself freezes well.

Here’s an easy idea you can implement: purchase a rain barrel and start harvesting rainwater for your garden use. Conserve water, save on water bills, and your plants will reward you for it (they do better with pH neutral rainwater than municipal water). In many cities, you can even get a rebate for your purchase. Here in Austin, you simply fill out a short form for a $30 per barrel rebate. Here’s the link:
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/watercon/rbrebates.htm

Several years ago, we purchased a couple of simple rain barrels through the city for about $60 each. It sits on top of concrete blocks below our gutter spout. Water flow is gravity fed.

Roses have a bad reputation for being difficult to grow and maintain. This may be true for modern roses that you often see at the floral shop. The plants that those long stem roses come from weren’t bred to look good in the garden. They were bred to, well, have long stems with a particular flower shape and look good at the florist. When you choose varieties that are appropriate for your area as Mother Nature would, antique roses are very easy to maintain. And being evergreen, they reward you with year-round beauty.

As previously mentioned in my family perennial garden blog post, a perennial/herb garden is a great plan to start with as it is also very low maintenance. The hardest part was creating the initial garden layout – removing the bermuda grass, digging up the rocks, creating the beds and filling it with new dirt, installing the drip irrigation, and laying the path with decomposed granite. Thereafter, my yearly maintenance calendar looked like this:

• January: mulch the beds
• mid-February: prune
• March: fertilize
• September: deadhead and fertilize though I don’t always do this every year

Of course, I weed throughout the year. It’s not that much of a chore since it’s kind of a family affair and the kids love hanging out in the garden. For the fertilizer, I use the Ladybug Brand John’s Recipe spray along with a small amount of dirt from our compost. I also add about 2 cups of coffee grounds per rose plant since they prefer a slightly more acidic soil. You can get used coffee grounds for free at Starbucks.

For the first two years, I did spray the roses with a mixture of 1 tbsp Ivory liquid soap to 1 gallon of water. Planting herbs along with the roses help deter the aphids and other pesky bugs and I haven’t sprayed since.

The following 3 books are very useful sources for growing roses:

• Landscaping With Antique Roses (”Fine Gardening” Books)
• The Organic Rose Garden
• Roses in the Southern Garden

If you’ve ever wanted to grow roses but were put off by the work involved, I hope you give antique roses a try this year. For inspiration, visit the Antique Rose Emporium. April in Central Texas is a great time for roses. This year has been especially good given the northern Pacific-like weather and absence of many pests that seem to plague the springtime blooms!