Pomegranates!

I guess that's really false advertising. There weren't Pomegranate[s], plural. There was one. 

And I watered it and watched it for months. 

I purchased the miniature pomegranate tree from the Natural Gardener in south Austin last spring. It had little flowers about to bloom. I watched the blooms open up with such hope! The fragrance was divine.

But, alas, only one lone fruit remained on the tree. 

So I protected it. 

I put a little fence around it to keep the dogs from digging it up. 

And I waited.  

We first found out about the joys of pomegranates in Davis, California. Our friends had a pomegranate tree outside their front door. They taught us how to open the fruit in a bowl of water - keeping the juicy little seeds from spraying out around the room. We had such fun with that fruit and always loved eating them over there.

If you know what pomegranates look like from the store, you know they're not always pretty on the outside.  So I was unsure of when to pick ours from the tree. Part of it began to turn brown and I worried that either the heat or some other catastrophe had befallen my little fruit. 

Then one day, I went outside to water and discovered it had fallen off the tree! There my little fruit sat, on the ground, in it's little fenced raised bed... waiting for me. Hooray! I was excited! But what if it was rotten? It would be such a disappointment! 

I called to Katie and told her our little Pomegranate was finally ready. She didn't even know we had a Pomegranate tree. I am just in my own little world so often, it seems. Anyway, she was thrilled okay with with trying it out with me.

We gathered our bowls of water, and split the pomegranate. 

Success! No rotten fruit! And delicious - just the way we remembered it from California!

Katie and I chatted a little more about pomegranates and she finished hers off with glee finished half the bowl and wandered away. So, not to let all those antioxidants and vitamins go to waste, I took some pictures and finished hers off too. Yes, with glee. 

Garden Success!

Here's my first crop of figs! I'm so excited because I just planted this little stick of a plant last year, and now - FRUIT! Now my only task is to get over to the side yard before the birds peck a hole in these!

 My blackberry crop was good this year. Last year the drought wiped them out. I just couldn't water often enough.  This year, much better.

 I kept my bell pepper plant in the greenhouse throughout the winter last year, and had an early crop this year. Now, I'm already on my second wave of peppers - they're smaller though.

The only other plant worth mentioning (my flowers are all pretty dried up) is our lemon tree. At least, Ron keeps telling me that it's a lemon and not a lime tree. He says that they will yellow up in the fall. Ok. This little "tree" has been with us for a long time. We bought it in Wichita Falls in probably 2003. We were forever trying to protect it from the cold up there. One year, all the leaves fell off. And still it came back. This year, it had some sticky black stuff on it from in the greenhouse. I cleaned off each leaf and stem with alcohol. Then suddenly, it had all these tiny little limes growing. Most fell off. But a few stayed. It had a couple of flowering periods, and now, this is what we have! Our biggest success with this little tree - ever!

They grew!

I didn't plant tomatoes this year, for the first time in I don't even know how long! But it's August, and it might be okay to plant some now. For one, temps will start to change a little around here. And there's still a long enough growing season before we have anything close to a freeze around here. And secondly, Gracie isn't here as much. She was quite the digger, so the plants are pretty safe.

I'll keep you posted!

Garden Greenhouse

We've done a lot of work in our yard this year. With the onset of the Texas Drought, we had to make some serious changes. Add our three dogs to the mix and the grass in the backyard had to go. So we enlarged the patio square footage and put down pea gravel.   This meant that most of the gardening had to be done in pots. Another reason for this decision was the propensity of Gracie, the Siberian Husky to dig. I was tired of going out to find that she had dug up a bush and was gnawing on it in the corner of the yard. Anyway, we have a solution for the winter!

I got my Greenhouse! 

It's 8' x 8' - not 12'x12' like I wrote in a previous blog. But it's plenty roomy! I have two shelves on the sides and a small folding table in the middle toward the back. I'm able to slide 2 rubber maids full of potting soil under the table.

It's just off the deck, so the electricity is handy. I'll be able to put grow lights out there to warm it up when temperatures really start to drop (Not by most other states' cold temperature standards, but Texas standards. We freak out if the double digits go to the 30's!)

So last night, the cold front came in. I don't even know what the temperature was, but the wind was blowing so hard, it was making it so much colder. I brought all the plants into my new greenhouse! There was PLENTY of room! Shelter from that wind! This is going to be soo much better than dragging them into the bathtub and setting up a grow light in there. Or worse, letting the plants stay out just a little longer than they should, and then pulling in their nearly lifeless stalks.  Only to worry about watering them in the house and overflowing to the floor, or letting them just pile up near the doorway in a cluster of dying leaves.


Not this year!

I even pulled up my now flowering green pepper plants and repotted them. Hopefully they'll produce a little with this protection.

And my little cacti are going to be so happy in there!

This morning, when I went out to check on them...I unzipped the door and it was nice and warm in there; the sun was shining through the plastic walls.

Yep, this will make a nice winter home for my plants.