Little Giants, Fruit Trees, Rocks, Garlic and Potatoes

How’s that for everything you want to know about what’s growing around here?

Our yard had so many rocks! We thought the rock was bad in Texas but there was a limestone layer, about 1-1/2″ thick. Vince would bust through it, remove it and be done but the soil there wasn’t very plant/tree friendly.

Here . . there are so many rocks but once you (Vince) pick them all out, the soil is pretty great.

Vince wasn’t digging huge holes to plant the plum and peach trees and from every tree hole, he got three to four five gallon buckets of rock.

These are the rocks he dug out of the two holes for the plum trees. The rain drains from the solar panels and kinda causes a washed out area under them so he’s filling that area with rocks.

He got both plums and three peaches planted . . not all in the same day but they’re all done. I don’t know if we’re going to get cherry trees or not. We know they’re not a reliable producer here and with limited space, and having to pay for water, if we’re going to plant trees, we need trees that are almost certain to produce and cherry trees don’t fit that category. I do want to find two figs to plant next year. Crabapples may not be a bad choice. I love crabapple jelly. We’ll see . . we’re pretty much done with fruit trees for this year.

We had the Little Giants delivered. There’s either 14 or 15 of them. Vince was going to plant them himself but after planting five fruit trees, he’s decided to hire the nursery to plant them. When they plant them, they fertilize them, mulch them and guarantee them for a year (instead of six months if we plant them). Vince decided it was worth it to pay them to do it and I agree so we’re on the list waiting for them to come here and plant them.

When we got here in August or September, I bought elephant garlic from the Farmer’s market and planted four of “cloves”. All four came up and are doing well. I think I’ll cut the scapes today or tomorrow and stir fry them and add them to a salad. When about the bottom third of the leaves have turned brown/yellow, I’ll harvest the garlic. You can see that the bottom leaves are starting to turn.

Here are my potatoes that I planted in bags. They’re growing like crazy. I hope they’re saving some of their energy to make potatoes and not just producing lush looking tops. The good thing about growing potatoes is that I can go out and feel around in the dirt, find a potato or two I need to cook for dinner and leave the rest alone. They’ll just keep growing and producing for quite a while and I don’t have to deal with preserving them. If they do produce, once the tops die, I’ll just take out the potatoes, find an out of the way spot in the cook, dark part of the basement and use them as needed.

The tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, strawberries and asparagus all seem to be doing quite well in their little raised beds.