The Sprout-B&B Gardening 2015

This year's gardening equipment.

That looks like my back yard. I felt bad because I hadn't gotten my peppers planted. Luckily I haven't- they would be toast.

Not a garden, but I do have a mango tree in my yard and I'm starting to get some fruit from it.

Oooooh, just love the mango. For a change-up, sprinkle just a little chili powder on the top of some slices. You may be surprised.

Thanks for the tip. We'll give it a try! [emoji106]

good to see the gardeners getting to it. i container garden on my patio as i have no yard. nice thing about l.a. is warm winters. i had mandarins and blueberries and some swiss chard in january and february. the blueberries are getting going again and my corn is already knee high(just a few plants of red popping corn - we'll see how it germinates). i planted some lettuces and my chard is still giving off leaves periodically. also planted some limas next to the corn and two amaranth. i used lavender to infuse some cyser, and rosemary and sage to flavor my latest ale. i'll include pictures on my next post. here's to rain, but not floods.

Poor little garden...still soaked. Especially after all the rain we got this weekend. Only way to cut some of that grass down is to put on some hip waders and use the weed eater.



Here's the Red River earlier this morning at a little over 7 feet above flood stage. At least it's not as bad as the Austin or Houston areas.

Going from Texas to the Oklahoma side.





From Oklahoma to Texas.

Damn, Mike. Stay safe!

ouch said:

Damn, Mike. Stay safe!

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Not much worry...I'm about 5 miles south of the river and on some of the highest ground around. Dad always said...buy on the high ground. Although we do have about 2 inches, or more, of water standing in the ditches going down the sides of our driveway. With the ground so saturated there is no way my 600+ pound zero turn lawn mower will even be able to drive over the yard without getting stuck. And I have about 2 acres of yard to mow. No way the people that lease my pasture will be able to bring the big tractor and 15 foot bat wing out to mow it down for quite awhile.

If you look at the first river picture you can see water behind the tree line on the Okla. side. There's a house, at a horse ranch, about 150 yards north of the river in a low spot that has I don't know how much water standing in the yard. I thought I got a pic. of it but apparently the camera didn't trip as I was driving. I heard he evacuated and got his horses out. When I turned around on the Okla. side one lane was closed right before the bridge with about 2 inches of water over it and the bar ditches were full. The highway crews were using a backhoe to dig a trench to try and drain some. They have several highway trucks on both sides of the bridge and barricades at the ready if they need to close it.

Edit: Being as Oklahoma owns the river it looks like Texas just got a little smaller.

As an aside, SWMBO got tired of lookin' at the grass in the front yard and decided she'd use the push mower for a section in front of the porch.

Just a little section.

She couldn't mow all that she was trying to do as there was water still standing...about an inch-and-a-half by my measure, in the little she couldn't get the light mower through due to standing water. Even the light push mower left ruts.

Now...back to gardening...unless you want to go to Aquaponics

Hope you get dried out soon.

Hey Mike get your blower out.

For those in TX and OK, stay safe.

When did we start talking about rice paddies?

Alacrity59 said:

When did we start talking about rice paddies?

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Texas produces 7% of the nations rice supply. After all this rain it's going to be a bumper crop.

This is the beginning of our raised bed keyhole garden. Tomorrow we will fill it with leaves and (hopefully) manure from my sister-in-law's goats and cows. We will let it sit for about a week, add potting soil, and plant.

We used about 75% reclaimed materials in building it. The people who owned the house before us left a bunch of wood, bricks, and cinder blocks. We utilized those but had to buy extra cinder blocks.

I'll post another picture when it's completed.

Here's the (mostly) finished product. We filled it with sticks for drainage, a layer of cardboard, magnolia leaves from the backyard (five trips with a 96 gallon recycle bin!), dirt from under the leaves, another layer of cardboard, and a whole bunch of manure from my sister-in-law. We'll let it settle for a week, maybe add some more fill, and plant.

This is what's known as a push mower up here.

davent said:

This is what's known as a push mower up here.

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No grass up there, huh?

Oh we have many a pointless expanse of grass but they'll use powered mowers on the bigger ones. We do have the same machines just refer to them differently. When you said push mower i envisioned something like the mower i posted, a Herculean task for your wife or anyone else to tackle.
dave

Ps. Garden is starting to produce now, radishes and arugula for tonight's salad and a few rhubarb pies to date. Will put in the tomattoes and peppers this week. Weather's i bit crazy, yesterday we hit 31C, today's high was 9-10C, but the first substantial rain this year.