Plant A Spring Garden Now

It is now time to plant a spring garden in Texas. What will you plant? How will you plant it? Will you use companion planting? Where will your garden seeds come from?

Plant A Spring Garden - 3/13/23-3/19/23

Monday, March 13, 2023

Here are a few of the potato plants coming up in the sand. When I say sand, I mean it is all we have for at least 300 feet down. But the potatoes are loving it!

It is almost 5pm as I type this. It was a very busy day that started off chilly, in the low 50s with wind and some sprinkles throughout the morning.

I opened the store and then went out back to my potato row because the potato plants have come up. I got a hoe and put dirt on top of the plants like I am supposed to. Then I harvested asparagus and strawberries, took them in, and washed them. My back hurts, but it was fun to do my own gardening like back in the old days. We had no outdoor people here today and I enjoyed it.

Our teen helpers are on spring break so they were able to come help us this morning.

Nacho and his helpers showed up late this afternoon to cut the property and do other things for David.

Coming back to the store, I have been helping with orders for most of the day. We had our first customers at 3:27pm. They wanted some plants but said we were too expensive. I said we are cheaper than Walmart. They said we are also cheaper than HEB. They bought seeds. In this day and age, $2.95 is not too expensive for seedlings that we hand planted back in December.

Anyway, the sprinkles stopped. The sun came out but it is only 67°. The low tonight is supposed to be 49°. We need to get these orders out.

Plant A Spring Garden - Danger Of Frost Needs To Pass

Sungold tomatoes are my new favorite cherry tomatoes. In Texas, start them in December or January indoors if you want to enjoy tomatoes in spring.

Now that the danger of frost is over for us as of Sunday, March 5, 2023, it is time to plant a spring garden without a problem. There are some plants that want the ground warmer than it is right now, but most spring plants and seeds can be planted as soon as the danger of frost is over. I have mentioned this on some other pages but just go to the Almanac page and put in your zip code. That website will give approximate first and last frost dates for the year. It is a handy tool. Thank you to Almanac.com for providing this service.

If you are in Texas, you already started your tomato seeds indoors under grow lights back in December or January or you are buying plants. Otherwise, it will be too hot before your tomato seeds will grow into plants big enough to give you fruits before the heat is just too much for them.

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Sunrise on this chilly, windy morning was very pink.

It is 7am, 49° and dark outside. I need to water my greenhouse plants and move some of them to the parking lot for sale but it will be in the low 40s later this week.

I have four dozen beautiful, farm fresh eggs in the store for sale this morning. First come, first served. We have quite a few beautiful seedlings in the parking lot for sale. This means, you no longer have to make the trek back to the greenhouse. We have a variety of seedlings and plants out there, just outside the Fulfillment building.

Encino Pest Control showed up to spray the business as well as our home as I was helping to close the orders this morning. No customers have come because it is chilly and quite windy.

We saw the weather forecast for the weekend and it will get down in the 30s for several nights so we jumped the gun and all of the plants have to go back inside. I got help for my area plants and they are all in the greenhouse now. I watered everything. Now the parking lot plants, the hanging decorative plants, and the plants out by David's greenhouse all need to be put away.

At 2:55pm, we had our first set of customers of the day because it has been chilly and windy all day long. The sky is overcast and no one wants to think about gardening on a day like today.

Nacho and his helpers are here again today working on different projects for David. Our teen helpers were here today as well.

It is now almost time to close up shop and the plants have all been put away.

Plant A Spring Garden - Soil Temperature

These garden beds near the Farm Store are ready to be planted.

To plant a spring garden, not only should the danger of frost be past, but the soil temperature should be high enough to support the plants or seeds you are putting in the ground. Spring planting soil temperatures should be between 60° and 70° Fahrenheit. The ideal ground temperature for planting tomatoes is 65°.

Cool weather plants like brassicas, spinach, kale, peas, lettuce, and potatoes need soil temperatures of 50° to 60° Fahrenheit so you can plant them earlier in the spring. You can even plant some vegetables when the soil temperature is at 40°.

The best way to measure soil temperature is with a soil thermometer which you can buy at Amazon or at a garden center. David's Garden Seeds® does not sell them. Don't plant a spring garden until you have checked on your soil temperature.

Here is a handy Plant A Spring Garden temperature chart:

40° Fahrenheit: Lettuce, kale, peas, spinach
50° Fahrenheit: Leeks, onions, Swiss chard, turnips
60° Fahrenheit: Beans, beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower
70° Fahrenheit: Corn, cucumbers, melons, peppers, squash, tomatoes

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

This is what sunrise now looks like thanks to the time change. Instead of a nice clear shot of the tree, we get to see it through electric poles and other houses.

Well, here it is Wednesday. I hate it when I get up early and it is pitch black outside so I can't do anything until about 7:15am when the sun starts giving some light.

It is chilly at 56° and it is now 8am. I got a nice shot of the sunrise a little while ago. Of course, it would be nicer if all of the junk polluting the photo were not there. The big white blob under the sun is our high tunnel.

I have my gardening boots on and I need to go harvest before David sends one of his employees who don't know much about asparagus out to do it. Someone has been hacking away on some of my asparagus. It looks horrible. They have been cutting down the fern plants instead of leaving them alone. It makes me upset because I am the one who got down on hands and knees for hours planting it back in 2020.

I picked asparagus and strawberries. Then I checked on my potatoes and some of them are already coming up through the sand that was put on them on Monday! So I reburied them.

We had one set of customers looking for some Zipper Cream peas. We were happy to oblige. It is still chilly.

I asked Alexa what the weather will be on Monday the 20th, the first day of spring. She said the high will be 47° and the low will be 37°. That does not sound very springlike to me!

David has a corned beef in the oven and I will be cooking potatoes, mushrooms, and cabbage later on this afternoon. It is currently 3;30pm, dreary, and 70° Fahrenheit. So far, we have had three sets of customers. Each time I go to the house to clean up or load the dishwasher, someone comes to the store. I guess I should go over to the house more often!

The lettuce in the grow tower is getting bigger. I fertilized it with liquid fertilizers that came with the tower.

The corned beef tasted good but it was overbaked and stuck to the bottom of the pan. David was going by a brisket recipe instead of a corned beef recipe that I pulled up. Total cook time should have been two hours and 45 minutes. His brisket recipe said six hours and he listened to it instead of me. When I was a little girl in New York, we had lots of corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day and it never took six hours.

Plant A Spring Garden - Soil

Testing our soil here on the farm. You can get a soil testing kit online or at garden centers. We do not carry them.

Make sure you have good, rich soil. If you have hard clay or soil with a lot of rocks, till it up, remove rocks, or consider building raised beds and bringing in good garden dirt from a local soil center. In San Antonio, we had hard clay and David went through a lot of tillers until he decided to build raised beds and fill them with good garden soil from a local soil place.

Make your own compost and mix it in with your soil. Always mulch after planting. Out here on the farm, we have sand. That is it. For at least 300 feet down, it is all sand. I know that because we dug our well at 300 feet down and it was all sand. Surprisingly, things grow very well in the sand. We add compost plus, once the plants are established, we use a good liquid fish fertilizer once a month to help the plants along.

There is also a no till method where you can fill up raised beds with cardboard and rocks at the bottom and put some soil on top mixed with compost. From there, you are never supposed to till again. Each year, you add compost and mulch to the mix. We have not tried that yet but I have watched videos about it.

Thursday, March 16, 2023

When I got up at 6am, it was dark and raining. The rain came down off and on all morning long and I had to use my umbrella. Now it is overcast but it hasn't rained in several hours. The sun peeps out every now and then. It should hit 80° today and I am feeling quite warm in the store now. Time to turn on the fans and the air conditioning.

Nacho and his helper are here working indoors because of the rain. Michelle is here cleaning the house. I have had to complete business forms for David and I started a YouTube Ad campaign, something I have never done before. The ad campaign is waiting approval by YouTube. I am going to run our TV commercial on other people's videos in hopes that they will see it and come over to our website for their spring seeds.

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It is now close to 2pm and it has been a very busy and full day with all of this and with customers.

I am about to clean out the pond again. I did not get a chance on Monday. I have some algae killer in there now. My problem is that I can never turn the water back on. For some reason, my hands just can't turn it back on. I always have to have Matt turn it back on. It is tough. He struggles with it. It turns off easily. Of course, it is all cheap plastic so you have to be careful. That is why we threw out the last pump. It was cheap plastic and we could not turn it without breaking it.

The pond has been cleaned and filled. Amazingly, I was able to turn the filter on while one of our new guys watched. I have no idea how. We had more customers this afternoon. The sun has come out and it is hot and humid, 83° Fahrenheit at 4:50pm.

Plant A Spring Garden - Watering

If you don't get a lot of rain in your area, it is important to be able to provide a way to water your garden or it will die.

If you live in a place where you get a lot of good, spring rain, the soaking kind that lasts most of the day, you are fortunate. Of course, we are in South, Central Texas and most of the time, we don't get much rain. That means we have to water our garden regularly. So many of our customers come in and tell us that if it doesn't rain, they won't have a garden. We always need rain here in Texas but if you don't water, that is right. You won't have a garden. You have to water your plants or they will die. Don't depend on rain to do it.

Friday, March 17, 2023

Happy St. Patrick's Day. Yes, I am part Irish on my father's mother's side. It is 9am and 45° Fahrenheit. It rained in the night and I think we will get more. It was pouring while I was out with Ethel after 6am. I am sitting here in a hoodie in the store. I just turned on the heater so you know it has to be cold.

The mailman came at 10:40am today, the earliest he has ever been here. Not sure why but he has been early here all week long. He says he did not change his route, just that the mail is lighter than usual this week. It is spring break here in Poteet but you would never know it with this cold weather.

It is 1:36pm and windy at 55°. We haven't had anymore rain since early this morning. I have restocked the store but we haven't had any customers. It is just too chilly to think about planting a garden.

So I went over to the house at 3:05pm to put the corned beef in the oven for St. Patrick's Day. This is a new recipe. Once I got the meat in the oven, I chopped all of the veggies and made a loaf of bread. The meat is baking. In another hour, the vegetables will join the meat. The bread is rising.

While I was in the house preparing the meat, a customer finally came. Matt waited on him. Now I am back in the store for the final 30 minutes or so. Of course, no customers are in here now. That is okay because my head is pounding. I took some pills while I was in the house. I am sure the cold front that blew through has something to do with it. It is only 58° now and tonight it should get down to 41°. Tomorrow the high should be 51° with a low of 42°.

The house smelled so good while the corned beef and veggies were cooking. The meat came out so tender and the veggies were flavorful. The secret? I cooked it all in beef broth.

The meat sliced effortlessly. The crust of mustard, brown sugar, and pepper was tasty and kept the juices in.

The corned beef and cabbage meal was super spectacular! I mean it was so good! The house smelled wonderful. The meat was tender and juicy and the vegetables were so good. I made bread as well.

Plant A Spring Garden - Compost

Behind the small tree is our current compost pile. The melons you see had no taste whatever. They grew voluntarily in our yard but were not good.

Plant a spring garden with plenty of compost that you have made from your household scraps. I have made compost for the garden since I was a young girl in upstate New York. Coffee grounds and filters, egg shells, vegetable peelings, fruit peels, pulled up greenery from garden plants, grass clippings, and autumn leaves should all be included in your compost pile.

You can use a barrel, a stand alone compost container, or one that spins around when you add new scraps to hold your compost. You can even have a compost pile out in the yard if you have room.

These compost bins spin after you add scraps and a bit of dirt to mix the compost.

Every time you add some scraps, you want to add a bit of dirt and stir or turn to help the scraps decompose. Once everything has decomposed, you can add it to your garden soil and mix well. It brings a good supply of nutrients and nitrogen that your crops need to grow well.

Saturday, March 18, 2023

The roses in the parking lot are blooming beautifully!

Good Saturday morning. It is cold and raining at 40°. David made a nice waffle breakfast. Then I had to go out into the cold, wet world and feed and water all of the animals. The chickens somehow knocked their water over so I had to refill it. I filled it last night so I would not have to be out in the cold for too long this morning. Ha ha!

The store is open but I will be surprised if we get any customers at all today in this monsoon type weather and it is cold. My foot is aching. The plants are looking great again now that they are back in the nice warm greenhouses.

No customers at all until I went to the house for lunch at noon. A few minutes after I left the store, the mailman showed up followed up by five sets of customers. I got to take three bites of lunch and got to finish up at 2:30pm when the last ones left. Keep in mind that we close at 2pm. Now it is 2:44pm and I am waiting for more to come because that is usually what happens. It is still cold but the rain has temporarily stopped. It is currently 47° Fahrenheit. I sold all four dozen eggs. Hopefully, we will have more on Monday.

My right foot has been hurting for most of the week and today, with the cold weather, it is really hurting. I am so sick of always being in pain. For a short while, both feet were good but late last week, I stepped on something wrong and my pain started back up. The animals are taking a nap and David is still in his office. I am enjoying a bit of peace here in the house.

Today's asparagus and strawberry harvest. Yes, those are my boots. It is muddy out.

In the sprinkles, I went out and picked a ton of asparagus and a few strawberries. I looked at my potato row and the potato plants need to be buried again but it was too wet to do it. Whenever the rain stops, I need to go do it.

Purple Majesty potato plant.

Most of the potato plants have this coloring.

Matt made lasagna and brought it over for the Svengoolie movie. I cooked some of our garden fresh asparagus and I made strawberry vanilla ice cream for dessert.

Plant A Spring Garden - Mulch

This is one of our asparagus hoop houses. The beds have been mulched for winter with hay.

After you plant a spring garden, you want the soil to stay moist for as long as possible. That can be accomplished by using mulch. Mulch covers the entire amount of soil, keeping moisture in and heat out so your plants are not overheated in the Texas sun. Mulch also protects plants in winter gardens from frost but it does not protect from a hard freeze. Cover with garden cloth for light freezes. If the freeze is hard, it won't do much good.

Mulch can be hay. We use hay over our garlic and asparagus beds. Mulch can also be wood chips. We use a lot of wood chips, especially cedar chips. We do not recommend rubber mulch as it can be toxic to plants with high levels of zinc. You can buy wood chips at stores. You can also get a wood chipper and chip trees, Christmas trees, and branches for mulch for your garden.

Sunday, March 19, 2023

Doesn't it look like the rain will come down any moment now?

Early this morning, sometime after 6am, I was in the kitchen getting some coffee and I heard Pamela toss her dog biscuits in the den. David called me...I cleaned it up with our little carpet cleaner. I think she was trying to swallow the innards of some toy that the puppies ripped up. There were all these grass-like shavings on the floor in there. Evidently, they did not agree with Pamela's tummy so I had to vacuum those up, too.

What a fun way to start a Sunday! Now it is 7:40am and just light enough that I think I can feed the outdoor animals. It is 44° and I do not want to go out there.

The animals have all been fed, I made eggs plus we had leftover waffles from yesterday. It is time to get ready for church. So far today it has not rained anymore but the sky looks like it could break loose at any moment.

We spent the afternoon watching The Chosen and Perry Mason. I caught up on a lot of sleep.

Plant A Spring Garden - Good Seeds

This is the David's Garden Seeds® Farm Store where I spend most of my days. We have a large selection of fresh seeds. Most are heirlooms.

This is our David's Garden Seeds® Farm Store where I spend most of my days. We have a large selection of fresh seeds. Most are heirlooms.

When you plant a spring garden, you want to use the best seeds possible, good quality, fresh, heirloom seeds when you can get them. Most of the seeds we sell at David's Garden Seeds® are heirlooms. We do have some open pollinated seeds that are not old enough to be considered as heirlooms yet. That takes a good 75 years for a seed to be called an heirloom.

We also carry some hybrids, but very few. The ones we do carry are known for their special flavor and/or their disease resistance. Most of our customers come in asking for heritage seeds or heirloom seeds.

Our seeds are packed fresh every day, Monday through Friday. We ship them out all over the country. Of course, they are all Non-GMO. We do not have a GMO license, nor do we want one. GMO seeds are not for home gardeners.

Return from Plant A Spring Garden to Our Fourth Year

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