It’s been a rough month.  Whiny details will be spared, but the lowest point was having one of our trucks stolen from the storage lot in East Austin, the first truck that my friend Farmer Mike and I converted to run on waste vegetable oil two years ago.  APD came to file the report the morning we discovered our still locked gate removed from it’s hinges and a little pile of broken glass where the truck was parked the night before, and to assure me that “they’d catch the bad guys.”

So after 3 weeks, when I had given up on recovering the veggie truck, I get a call.  “Mr. Walther, this is Detective Price with the Austin Police Department, just calling to let you know we’ve recovered your truck.  It’s at an auto body shop east of San Marcos, sounds to be in pretty good shape.  It was towing a stolen trailer and stolen bobcat, abandoned near a road and stashed under some brush.” 

What?!  I figured it was in 5,000 pieces by now, or in Mexico smuggling guns or drugs or people.  I didn’t expect it to be 30 miles away, still in one piece, and almost driveable.  What happened?

The short answer is that the waste veggie oil system saved the truck.  From what we can tell, the thieves accidentally flipped the switch next to the steering wheel that night, drawing waste veggie oil from the auxiliary fuel tank in the bed of the truck, instead of diesel from the main fuel tank.   As far as they knew, the fuel gauge on the dash was the gauge for the tank they were using. 

So when the truck started sputtering outside of San Marcos and the dash fuel gauge still read “full”, they had no idea what was going on.  The truck eventually dies from lack of fuel,  and they crank and crank and crank on the ignition in vain to get it restarted, draining the batteries, and eventually, realize they’re stuck.  All they had to do was flip a switch, and they could have made it 200 miles into Mexico before needing to stop to refuel.

Instead, they ditch the truck,  trailer, and Austin Habitat For Humanity’s stolen bobcat, and a sheriff’s deputy eventually comes along and runs the plates to realize that something’s not right.  A couple of tow truck trips, two new windows, 37 phone calls, two new steering wheel locks, one recharge on the batteries, two new gate padlocks, one new security light, and one new steering column later, we have the truck back, good as new!

The FSM garden is now a certified wildlife habitat through the National Wildlife Federation.

To earn certification, the garden needs to provide supplemental food, like from this hummingbird feeder,

Supplemental water, from this grade-level water trough built from stone and lined with re-purposed vinyl billboard (which leaks, dammit),

A mix of plants that provide seed, fruit, pollen, and/or nuts (check), some kind of cover for wildlife, like a dense stand of shrubs/grasses (check) or a stone pile (check), and places to raise young, like dense shrubs and native trees (check).

September was also transition time in the garden, as we pulled out watermelon, cucumber, and some squash plants to prep the beds for new cool-season seeds, like radish, chard, beets, and carrots.   We also did a major cleanup of all the horseherb, which is  a great native groundcover most of the time, but in this case, had become a great nuisance.   Peppers continue to produce, including the rare Chihuacle peppers that we had started from seed this summer.

Jake “V. Pup Buttrot’s Buttrot” and the Cobbler started a project for our people in Kerrville during the holidays of 2008-9.  With a little help from the biodiesel-powered German Donkey and a crooked-tailed senile dog, we began by ripping out the Asiatic Jasmine along the front of the house.

We then brought in 18 tons of limestone from a local quarry to create some terraced beds along the full length of the house, while some little kid raked the dirt around.

Next, we brought in dump truck loads of compost blended with sand and soil, and planted a variety of native and adapted plants, testing out what we thought would be the most deer-resistant plants.   This includes a large patch of one particularly common hybrid found in only the most boring landscapes of Central Texas; a plant which will remain unnamed out of a self-conscious fear of at least one person calling me out for including it.  This plant whose name will not be spoken ended up being the most deer-resistant and colorful plant to survive the last 20 months.

Our people have done a great job on maintenance, re-attaching popped off micro-tubes in the sprinkler lines, weeding, and pruning back the perennials.  Thanks to their dedication to maintenance (and a little rain), it’s been one of our most successful projects yet.

Built in 1930, this home in East Austin is set to receive a state historical marker as the former home of one of the first Chinese immigrants to Austin, Joe Sing.  The house has now been passed down to Raul Hernandez, the great-great-grandson of Joe Sing.  Raul is dedicated to preserving the historical context of the home, and wanted to fix up the landscape in anticipation of the historical designation ceremony to be held this October.

Landscapes of East Austin homes in the 1930s were not what you call inspiring.  East Austin homes that are most period-accurate for that time are either cluttered with random pots and trinkets celebrating Catholicism, or are nothing but small compacted dirt plots maintained with a broom.  We didn’t have much to go on.

So Raul decided to keep it simple.  Don’t do anything to take away from the house.  Don’t make it modern, gaudy, or too simplistic.  Add a little color, but make it easy to maintain. 

We laid ‘Zorro’ Zoysia grass, famous for its thick bear fur texture, on a 3-4″ bed of Thunderdirt from GeoGrowers.  We filled the existing beds with Fall Aster, Twist Leaf Yucca, Orange Bulbine, and Mexican Oregano.  We added a ‘Desert Museum’ Palo Verde.  We also installed a fully automated water-efficient drip lines in the beds and MP Rotators for the lawn, and a simple path using sawed limestone slabs.

Maybe not exactly period-accurate for BioGardener 2010 with its..gasp..lush green lawn!  But it’s an appropriate turf for the site, on top of well-drained rich soil, and the sprinkler system uses about 50% less water than typical systems.   And we just want to roll in it, so that’s nice too.

Check out the Fall 2010 issue of Edible Austin, on the streets now.  The Johnsons own a 70-acre organic farm in East Austin, and are living the dream, or living in hell, depending on your perspective.  But I suppose like many of us, both are appropriate descriptors for most days…

I’ll admit, the garden is looking a little, hot, but I suppose it should after the driest August on record, and more days over 100 than not.

But like mama says, it’s not the cover of a book that counts, its how many juicy tomatoes and hot peppers it gives you.  And this struggling little garden is still cranking out the juicy hotness. 

Jalapenos are spitting in August’s face.  Same with the basil, tomatoes, watermelon, and cut flowers, all of which serve both a culinary and display role inside the restaurant and bar. 

Fall seeds have been purchased and planting begins next week, as we’ve spent much of August cleaning up and prepping new beds.  It’s raining at this very moment, my money is on the garden to perk up by sunrise…

July has been harvest time.  Watermelons, cherry tomatoes, Creole tomatoes, yellow squash, jalapenos, zinnias for the tables, purlane, mint, basil, marjoram, hauzontle, chard, and the random surprise here and there. 

We’ve had problems in some beds, most like due to poor soils and insufficient amending during bed prep, so we’re trying to correct those issues for the next planting season with lots of manure compost. 

Planning for the fall season has begun, as we’ve already cleared out one expired watermelon bed, and will do the same to the doomed cucumber bed next week.  Seeds will be ordered this week, and sent to our friends at Gabriel Valley Farms in Georgetown to start for us, so we’re ready to plant in the next month or so.  Be on the lookout next month for freebie starter plants, we’re planning on giving away the leftover plants we don’t have room for!

Summer is maintenance time in the garden.  The only new plants in June were Red Aztec Spinach and a lone Summer Cilantro that finally came from seed we started a couple of months ago in a greenhouse off-site.  So instead of planting, we’re pulling and harvesting, with a little help from Goldberg and friends.

As the heat sets, we’re also giving the irrigation system a little extra attention, making sure those little leaks are patched and that everything is functioning properly.  The hackberry got a little trim, as did the interior perennial beds that are filled with pollinator plants.  And the weeds, including the not-weed Horseherb, which is taking over the pathways.  We’ve left this native wildflower growing on the edges of the path to help insulate our raised beds, but weeded out the ones blocking the path. 

The heat is making the colors of Mexico happy, as the Zinnias and edible Purslane explode from seed planted in May.  The Zinnias will provide cut flowers for the restaurant all summer as most everything else withers later in the season.

We’ve harvested several gallons of Sun Gold tomatoes, some old garlic, and several buckets of yellow squash, both of which are being used by the kitchen regularly.  Watermelons are just about ready, and should start showing up in bar drinks by early July. 

Farmer Mike gave us a great tip this week on how to know when it’s time to harvest watermelons, so you aren’t just wasting them until you finally get it right:

Mike says, to know when an indivual watermelon is ready for harvest, look at the first two tendrils (little flexible things that grow from the woody parts of the vine and wrap around trellises or wires or sticks or anything to do pullups on) on the vine, above the stem.  If they’re brown and dried out, it’s time to eat.  If they’re still green, leave it be.  The tendrils in the photo are brown and not quite dried out, so this melon is almost ready to eat, but we’ll give it another week or so.