It seems with the start of the semester (and a batch of essays to grade) plus a new, enclosed vegetable garden, that it has been hard to blog. The picture will show where I have been spending my "outdoors" time.
With vigilance, we can (usually) keep the deer away from the area around the house. Of course it helps right now that there is a bountiful supply of acorns. With acorns, they don't need to bother my hibiscus or impatiens.
The "back 40" is another story. Our long, deep lot has plenty of trails with tell tale cloven hoof marks. The deer march back and forth across the back of the yard with impunity. The only way to have a vegetable garden is to enclose it--and that is just what we have done. The fence is over eight feet high, as locals tell me that deer can make it over a six foot fence. I am told that eight feet is high enough. Time will tell.
In the meantime, fall, winter, and spring are ideal times to grow a lot of vegetables. Summers like the one we just experienced are too hot for many crops and certainly too hot for this gardener. The other three seasons, on the other hand, are promising.
The raised beds are an admission that the shallow soil here is not conducive to a lot of vegetable varieties, so we have been making compost ever since we arrived in Central Texas--enough now, when mixed with topsoil, to fill these two eight foot beds. There are tomatoes and peppers growing, and beet, carrot, and basil seeds sprouting. When the weather gets cooler we will switch to lettuce and spinach.
We will continue to construct some raised beds and add fruit trees in the spring. Now, if there were only a closer source for water....
With vigilance, we can (usually) keep the deer away from the area around the house. Of course it helps right now that there is a bountiful supply of acorns. With acorns, they don't need to bother my hibiscus or impatiens.
The "back 40" is another story. Our long, deep lot has plenty of trails with tell tale cloven hoof marks. The deer march back and forth across the back of the yard with impunity. The only way to have a vegetable garden is to enclose it--and that is just what we have done. The fence is over eight feet high, as locals tell me that deer can make it over a six foot fence. I am told that eight feet is high enough. Time will tell.
In the meantime, fall, winter, and spring are ideal times to grow a lot of vegetables. Summers like the one we just experienced are too hot for many crops and certainly too hot for this gardener. The other three seasons, on the other hand, are promising.
The raised beds are an admission that the shallow soil here is not conducive to a lot of vegetable varieties, so we have been making compost ever since we arrived in Central Texas--enough now, when mixed with topsoil, to fill these two eight foot beds. There are tomatoes and peppers growing, and beet, carrot, and basil seeds sprouting. When the weather gets cooler we will switch to lettuce and spinach.
We will continue to construct some raised beds and add fruit trees in the spring. Now, if there were only a closer source for water....
