Summer Harvesting

I was out harvesting this afternoon, prompted by a visit from a friend earlier this week. "You haven't been harvesting,dear" she gestured to the Suyo cucumbers. Then she saw the okra. More lecturing. ThanNhi is one of those magical people that truly enjoys harvesting and weeding. In a perfect world she would live next door or at least walking distance from my garden. I love to build beds, mulch them, plant them, make plants grow, but harvesting I am less passionate about. I harvest when I cook, not when things need to be harvested.

So today I was out harvesting and as always once I am out there I find it enjoyable. Lots of young tender 'Hill Country' okra, a few suyo long cucumbers, several sweet peppers, some pomegranates, a dozen eggplants and a couple of 'Sunburst' squash. Tonight we ate curried okra with onions, a dish that took significantly more salt than the recipe suggested, but was tasty nonetheless. We also had glazed eggplant rounds, mmm... Anyways, I appreciate when a trusted friend comes over and shames me into harvesting. The results are often quite delicious!

Favorite Sites About Beneficials

This past Saturday, I taught part of the Fall Vegetable Gardening class for Urban Harvest. As usual I thoroughly enjoyed it. Luckily many of the questions reminded me of why I started this blog in the first place: to share information and supplement my classes. Unfortunately, I haven't been doing that. So here goes, some of my favorite resources for attracting beneficial organisms to your garden!

First of all here is my favorite article on the topic. I read it to myself right before I teach any pest control class. http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/attracting-beneficial-insects.aspx

Here is a good local site with photos of what you might encounter in your Houston garden.
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/galveston/beneficials/index.htm

Here is a link to the handout I usually give out in class. It has nice photos of the larval and adult forms of beneficial insects. It also has a few tidbits on how to attract such insects. http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/growgreen/downloads/beneficial.pdf
Note: For those of you living in Central Texas (aka Mom and Denise,) You should check out their main site http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/growgreen/garden_basics.htm

The final site is one of the best sustainable agriculture resources. At least I find it tremendously useful. http://attra.ncat.org/
I especially like their information on cover crops and green manure crops: http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/covercrop.html

It is by no means a comprehensive list, but it should give you enough information to get started. At some point I plan to layout the steps to designing a fruit and vegetable garden that incorporates attracting beneficial organisms.

Rat Face

So today we had a reminder of the not-so-pretty side of organic pest control. Various animals are quite beneficial when it comes to keeping our rodent population in check. As someone with lots of fruit trees, vegetables and a compost pile, I am extraordinarily appreciative of our friends. That being said finding a rat face in our driveway was not the most pleasant reminder of organic pest control. Here is how the conversation went:

Eric: Diana, before you go outside I need to warn you that there is a rat face in our driveway.
Me: What? Don't you mean a rat head... or something?
Eric: No, really it's just the face.
Me: (confused) How does a predator leave just the face?
(Goes to look)
Me: Wow and gross. It is just the face. I guess this is a good thing...

Note: Sometimes it is a good thing that my camera is not functional.

Finally a Fence

The fence is finally up! After 10 months, the back fence that Hurricane Ike destroyed, has been rebuilt. Yay! It is nice having the privacy. Fruit theft should go down considerably now that the fence seperates us from the apartments. Even though it isn't the ideal time I plan to get my 'Sarawak' and 'Hirado Buntan' pummelos planted along with my Panzerella lemon. Woo-hoo!

Momentum

I am finally getting around to finishing many of the projects I started in April. After part of our house flooded in late April, I put everything garden related on hold to work on the house. By the end of June we had gone 7 weeks with no rain and the temperatures were consistently in the 100's. Fortunately, it kept mosquitoes to a minimum, the evenings were nice and my fall planted herbs looked wonderful. Unfortunately, it wasn't very garden friendly weather.