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.

We’ve seen leaf footed bugs on veggies lately, especially tomatoes.   These pests feed on ornamental and wild plants.   They also fly, but are slow to move so they’re easy to grab and kill, if you don’t mind a little stink on the fingers.   The Bug Book says healthy biodiversity will prevent leaf foots from becoming a problem.  I’ll show you healthy biodiversity.  We might try a little orange oil to see if it helps, and will continue to enjoy the rewarding crunch and squish audibles of manual control.

We’re just about done with planting for the summer season at the Fonda garden.   Which is a good thing, cuz there’s a six-foot thorny weed in the back corner, assembling an army to take over operations.  I think the big one threw a rock at me last week.

Early this month, Fonda inspiration and author Diana Kennedy visited the garden and gave us some pointers for what we should and shouldn’t be growing.  Most of the stuff we planted this month was her recommendation.  A run down of what will soon be appearing on Fonda plates and tables:

• Squash – Ronde De Nice, Straightneck, Zucchini;
• Tomato – Sun Gold, Creole;
• Pepper – Early Jalapeno, TAM Jalapeno, Poblano;
• Dill – Hercules;
• Sweet Marjoram;
• Thyme;
• Mint;
• Cinnamon Basil;
• Cucumber;
• Watermelon – Sugar Baby, Crimson Sweet;
• Purslane;
• Zinnia;
• Hoja Santa;
• Epazote;
• Chard;
• Random edibles running wild throughout the Fonda landscape

Buffalo grass is weedy.  The time spent mowing, fertilizing, watering, and bugging in other turf grasses is compounded and concentrated into just one simple task for Buffalo:  weeding.  This is especially true for highly disturbed sites, and which sites aren’t?

But after a tip from Jon Ahrens, we tried out the ‘Density’ variety from a grower in Poteet (south of SA, esay) on a recent project in NW Austin.  Already, the ‘Density’ is much thicker than other Buffalo grasses, so we’re hoping the fur chokes out nut sedge and other stuff that we woke up when amending the soil in preparation for planting.  If it works out, we’ll have another solid alternative to non-native turfgrasses in our little green tool box.   Go us!

Jose Sr., Lance Armstrong's Stunt Double, Roberto, Some Little Kid, and Rich (photo by Mike Martinez)

Last Friday, part of the BG crew celebrated National Bike to Work Day by strapping an electric weedeater, propane blower, weed bags, and hand tools to our backs and riding to perform our weekly landscaping duties at Austin City Hall.  With some bikes borrowed from the best bike team in town, we enjoyed free breakfast tacos and pastries at the City Hall tent set up that morning exclusively for bicycle commuters, and wrapped up the day as Grupo Fantasma took the stage during the weekly Live From the Plaza event.  As the interviewing reporter from KLBJ so cleverly observed while fishing for the perfect sound-byte, our “green thumbs were a little greener” that day.

Like the ones that have come before it, this season will change everything forever.  The dust will eventually settle under the humidity of summer, and we’ll be a little older, a little wiser, and a little closer to the place we really want to be.  Some premature reflection half way through:

Mix of Buffalograss, Curly Mesquite, and Blue Grama

We’ve been testing a new mix of native grasses, as an alternative to the options that just don’t seem to cut it.  Bermuda is invasive, St. Augustine can’t take the sun, Buffalo is too weedy, and Zoysia doesn’t live up to it’s hype.  Turffalo is expensive, and native beds take way more effort than most people want to give.  Can the Wildflower Center’s new solution be the answer?  We’re testing it out.

Jose and Roberto Breaking Rock

Rocks, on the other hand, don’t need much maintenance.  So we use them to take out lawn areas plagued with problems, and convert the space into a shady hangout, equipped with a fire pit and bordered with raised veggie beds.

Lawn Sedge

Thanks to Pat McNeal, we’ve used alot of sedges this season.   He grows dozens of native sedges as a tough, low-maintenance, low-water alternative to turf grasses that can take a variety of conditions from wet to dry to sun to shady.  It’s the real future of lawns in Austin, no doubt, and they look cool too.

Andreas and Juan, on an Unsupervised Day

I’ve had several occasions to almost cry this season, when I’m reminded by how much ass the BG crew has busted this and every year. 

New Patio from Old Concrete

Our favorite project of the season, we basically threw the original design out the window and figured it out as we went.  Including what to do with all this concrete we busted up from an old patio, which we converted into a much more baby-friendly space.

April was a maintenance month in the garden.  The kitchen harvested all our beautiful sweet carrots at the end of the month; I didn’t realize how attached I was to the carrots until we showed up during our last visit of the month and they were all gone.   Broccoli and radishes have all been harvested for the season, but the chard is hanging in there.  Otherwise, weeds are the major story for the month, which repeats what we’ve seen in landscapes all over town this spring.  I had to bring in the BG army for an hour one morning to help get a grip on it:

Oh, and we also had some visitors on the fennel for a of couple weeks:

We got into a rhythm prepping several beds for May planting.  The first step was to not feel overwhelmed by an overgrown bed, like this one, full of self-seeded cilantro and peppermint:

Pulling up the unwanted plants is actually pretty easy in these beds, thanks to the previous double-digging effort by Scott and Randy during garden construction.  Below photo represents the end of Phase 1 of Bed Prep: “Weeding”:

Once the weeding phase is complete, then we turn the soil by using a hard rake or hoe, to create a trench or two along the full length of the bed:

Then we add about 2-4″ of high-quality, fully composted, Manure Compost into the trenches and on top of the mounds:

Then we work that compost into the soil as evenly as possible, filling in the trenches and raking the bed smooth, then replace the drip irrigation hoses:

Then, we plant our starter plants or spread seed, or in this case, spread alfalfa hay on top of the prepared soil to help regulate soil temps and moisture levels until we’re ready to plant:

Stay tuned for the May update: news will bring lots of planting, and a celebrity guest to the garden!

We have about one cubic yard of leftover cedar mulch, fresh from Natty G last week.  Free to the first one who wants it, comes to our lot in East Austin between 7am and 8am on a weekday, and takes it away.   We’ll help load it, but you’ll need a truck, or a car that can get really messy.  We also have some pallets, perfect for constructing a compost pile or other crafty project. 

Almost every day, the BG crew collects excess leaves that could not be mulched and returned to the landscapes they came from.   We also haul away invasive plants, winter cuttings from dormant perennials, fallen limbs, tilled up lawn grass to make way for new native beds, weeds, carcasses of dead trees and shrubs, and more weeds; most of that year round.  What happens to all that stuff?

Most of it is wrapped in reusable jute tarps, or bundled as bulk limbs, or stuffed in plastic leaf bags or reusable plastic pots, and hauled to our lot in East Austin.  Every week or two, we load a truck and trailer with the accumulated treasure, and haul it to a brush recycling facility about 5 miles from the lot.  The frequency of these trips is an excellent measuring stick for how busy we are; and brother, there ain’t no stick big enough right now.  We’ve make weekly trips this spring, with the big trailer and truck stuffed with about 20 cubic yards of brush each time.  Last year, we collected about 675 cubic yards, enough to fill a large house with no walls from floor to ceiling, packed tight.

The brush recyclers use huge cranes with grapple attachments to drop the brush into massive industrial tub grinders, which spit out the shredded brush into massive 30-foot mountains. The mountains are watered, and allowed to age for up to one year.  At that stage, we buy it back from the recyclers; only this time, we call it “mulch.”

This closed-loop process is so common, that most of the bagged mulches available at places like your local Home Depot are actually sourced from Austin brush recycling facilities.  Buying directly from the source, in bulk, helps make the loop even smaller.

We’re a little behind on monthly updates, but it’s a sign of how busy things have been both in the garden and beyond.

Tom dug up a Yucatecan recipe for “ensalada de rabanitos” to give the kitchen reason to harvest the bounty of radishes we seeded in Feb.   They also harvested the first round of broccoli, off starter plants installed a month ago.

Two months later, the carrot seeds are finally starting to resemble carrots, as evident during the infanticide we dealt out when thinning a couple weeks ago.  Spinach seeds are now spinach.  Chard continues to be strong, from planting way last year. 

We picked up some Hoja Santa to take over the Fonda landscape, and planted the first round of cherry toms and squash.  Next is cucumbers.  One of the few beds with less-than-good soil will get 2 flats of native gayfeather this month, for a great source of cut flowers this fall. 

And thanks to the legacy of Scott, the garden is now busting! with bluebonnets and other color, which my camera just can’t do justice for:

So come out and see it for yourself, and bring your favorite weeding tool.  Anytime.