On 5/30/2014 9:28 PM, bluechick wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2014 12:01:46 +1000, Fran Farmer
wrote:

What sort of things are you interested in growing?

Right now we have a couple of varieties of peaches, lots of rabbiteye
type blueberries, Celeste and LSU Purple figs, several thornless
blackberries (and about a zillion wild blackberries with mean thorns
and dewberries), 1 raspberry as a test, all sorts of tomatoes
(mostly heirlooms), several types of peppers, and bulbing & bunching
onions. We're getting the tail end of the English peas now though
some are still trying to flower even though it's getting way too hot
for them. The sugar snaps just finished producing. Most of the
blueberries were transplants of bushes we had at the old house and
they had to recover last year from the ordeal. Same for the Celeste
fig scions we dug up when we moved. I don't know if the figs will do
anything this year because they were frozen back in February and are
coming back from the root. The blueberries seem to have recovered
completely from the move and are covered in berries. I'm keeping my
fingers crossed that another calamity won't hit them. The hailstorm
and small tornado we had Wednesday didn't bother them at all though
the hail tore up several tomatoes.
Our blueberries were hit by a late frost in early May and dropped their
blossoms. We planted them last year and harvested about a gallon of
berries that year.

We had a fall garden with spinach and many types of lettuces. Didn't
bother with broccoli, cauliflower or cabbage last fall though we've
grown them in the past.
We've got so much broccoli and cauliflower still in the freezer from the
garden we had in Louisiana, we moved here in November 2012 so you can
imagine how full that freezer is.

We also finally finished the big herb bed and have several types of
basil, common chives, flat-leaf parsley, French rosemary, borage (in
the herb bed and also next to the tomatoes), several varieties of
thyme, Bergamot and pineapple sage, and Texas tarragon because I gave
up on French tarragon a long time ago in this climate. The smaller
herb bed won't be finished until the tiller comes back from the tiller
hospital and then I'll stick the container-bound spearmint in there.
What are you calling Texas tarragon? Would that perhaps be Mexican Mint
Marigold? I took the Mexican Mint Marigold out and bought a "Russian
tarragon" from a local nursery, seems to me it tastes more like real
tarragon than the other ones. True tarragon doesn't like the weather
here. I grow both Greek and Spanish oregano, the Spanish version is what
you find in the grocery stores. Always grow lots of big leaf basil,
rosemary, common thyme, flat leaf parsley, fernleaf dill (I use the
fernleaf in dill pickles or anything that requires dill as the seeds are
to strong for my taste.) Lots of scallions, aka bunching onions. This
year we bought several Texas 1015 sets and they are bulbing nicely. Lots
of garlic and onion chives, we plant them around fruit trees to keep
peach borers away.

On the deck, we have some container-type blueberries (Jellybean and
Peach Sorbet - both corymbosum types, which are new to us, and they're
the first to produce ripe berries this year) as well as some lemons,
oranges and limes. Those citrus trees did surprisingly well last
year, even though they took over the sunroom in the winter.
Our only citrus is a kumquat tree, still rather small but heavily in
bloom at the moment. I miss my old fifteen year old Meiwa kumquat, it
was very prolific, so much so that we ended up composting about ten
gallons of fruit as we had eaten and made marmalade and jellies from
many more pounds, still eating some of it two years later.

The rest of the stuff we're growing this year are mainly to attract
bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.

My lovely wife grows salvia near the vegetable gardens, salvia attracts
bees of all sorts. Our biggest pollinator this year are bee flies,
there's hundreds of them in the garden every day. Here's info on bee
flies: http://www.cirrusimage.com/flies_bee.htm when bees are scarce
these little guys really help out.

Your gardens sound like what we used to have until we got old and
decrepit. I started gardening with my parents during WWII, as did my
wife, in the family "Victory Garden," didn't garden while I was in the
military but as soon as we married we were building gardens again. Keeps
me sane most of the time.

George