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Garden Cage

February 26, 2012 by Laura

Here’s one of the main reasons I’ve been MIA for the past several months. Moving to the country introduced me to the joys of gardening with wildlife. My original fence was deer and rabbit proof, but did nothing for the squirrels. I had to go back to the drawing board and come up with a design that included a roof to keep them out as well. Aside from puting in the 4x4x10 posts, we did the entire thing, my husband and I and a couple friend of ours. We are almost done, and will be by the time my tomatoes set fruit this spring. Our masterpiece is around 3000 sq ft.

The poles are all set in concrete. I originally planned on digging these myself, but after about 15 minutes of work I hired the guys at South Austin Fence to do it for me. They did a great job and were completely reasonable on price.

We used stucco mesh for the wire. It is a stronger gauge then poultry wire and much less expensive than other hardware cloth.

We had the posts set outside of the original cross fencing, that way I have a built in place for beans and peas to climb.

Back view

One of the poles inside of the cage. These are used to hold up the meshing that lays over the top.

Recent view of the cage, with the gates and most of the roof installed. We have about 2 work days left to completely finish.

I know we built the cage to keep critters out, but Davey lives inside. He's in a hutch of course, and he is a compost making machine.

Posted in Vegetables | 3 Comments »

Flamingo Rose Garden

February 26, 2012 by Laura

There’s a spot by our pool that has been covered with unruly groundcover since long before we moved in. Since it’s right next to the pool we decided it was a perfect location to put pink flamingos, which my husband has a love for. Last summer, after being in the house for about 6 months I also noticed a random rose bush in the middle of it all. Well this year, I decided to expand and for my birthday last week I ripped out all of the groundcover and added in another 5 rose buses to complete the flamingo rose garden. Shouldn’t everyone have one of these??

I'm thinking of mulching with tumbled glass. Regular old mulch just doesn't seem good enough in this garden. Yes that's a tiki back there. Do you really have to worry about being tacky when you've gone this far?

I bought this one at The Great Outdoors just before Halloween. It was just too cute.

Martha Gonzales

Cinco de Mayo. I just couldn't pass this one up. She's so festive!

I'm not sure of the name of this rose. This is the one that was already in the garden.

I had to show a picture with scale. This is about 6 inches in diameter and about a quarter the size of the bush. It is really something.

Posted in roses | 4 Comments »

The Only Thing Blooming in my Garden

August 4, 2011 by Laura

Posted in xeriscape | Leave a Comment »

Why My Spring Veggie Garden Failed

July 19, 2011 by Laura

Where do I start?? This year was by far my least productive spring. I am now getting okra every day and a few peppers here and there, but the rest of the garden is a huge disappointment.

The green beans are all dead. The butter beans and hot peppers aren’t producing. The tomatoes, melons and cucumbers have all been eaten.

So what happened?

1. My garden got a late start. I had just moved in and had to put up deer fencing before I could plant. It was late March before the garden went in. During a normal year this might have been ok, but with the April temperatures mimicking June my plants never got a fair chance.

2. I don’t believe my soil mixture is right. In the past I’ve always done a 50/50 mix of Hill Country Garden Soil and Compost from The Natural Gardener. This year I was having it delivered in bulk and one of the workers told me that there is plenty of compost in the Hill Country Garden Soil and it wouldn’t need any amending with compost. I don’t believe that is true.

3. Rabbits! I wasn’t able to dig several inches down to bury the rabbit fence, since the ground is so hard from lack of rain. The rabbits didn’t find the garden for several months so I didn’t think they could climb under. Well they can and they did. It took several weeks to finally get the fence completely rabbit-proof. By this time most of my tomato plants were not dead, but took a good beating.

4. Squirrels! Once I had the garden deer and rabbit proof I thought I was safe. Not with these squirrels. The ones in my yard don’t wait until the tomatoes etc. are ripe. They are so thirsty with the drought (even though they have bird baths within reach) that they steal the fruit the day it appears. My veggies don’t even have a chance to ripen.

I tried bird netting but the squirrels  just climbed under it. It also ended up catching tarantulas, lizards and giant beetles. I won’t be using that again.

5. Hot, hot, hot! This summer is the worst I’ve seen in my 6 years. It’s so hot and there’s no rain in site. I put in rain barrels in March and since then it’s only rained 2 inches. I’m just hoping the plants can hold on until fall. (At least the ones that are still alive).

I took some pics of dead, sad plants for this post, but does anyone really want to see them?

The current thinking is to build a 4000 sq ft cage. I’m starting to plan it out in my head and hope to get this build within the next few months. We’ll see!

Posted in Vegetables | 1 Comment »

Move to WordPress

July 16, 2011 by Laura

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I have just moved to WordPress, so my blogging will be a little sloppy for a while as I figure things out. Please bare with me as get things up and running again.

Posted in Status | Leave a Comment »

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