Wow! What a great time of year to start a gardening blog! My daughter Jennifer Moreman (the artist) has picked my brain for two weeks about the how to's of planting herbs. I finally agreed to write her blog on herbs this week. jennifermoreman.blogspot.com Well, one thing led to another, and she convinced me to start a blog about all things gardening. I agreed if she would help me get started.
My husband and I live on 5 acres in East Texas. After living in a Dallas area neighborhood most of my life, I absolutely love having so much gardening space! This past month we planted our veggie gardens and plenty of herbs too. I am a big fan of companion planting-- planting complementary plants together such as tomatoes and carrots, corn and squash, and okra and watermelon. I am also very interested in adding herbs to all beds to help in pest control. One thing about living in the country, there are plenty of bugs. Did you know that Basil and Rosemary repel flies and mosquitoes?
I am learning about square foot gardening too. I have raised vegetable beds, but I haven't added the grids yet. I might though. More about all that later.
Other gardening topics I love are growing roses, hydrangeas, berries and daylilies. Right now everyone is finishing up their vegetable gardens in Texas so we will go that direction first and pick up some of the other topics another week. Haven't started a vegetable garden yet? It isn't too late, but it almost is in Texas. In the more northern states, people are just putting out their broccoli. The nice thing about vegetable gardens in Texas is that in August you can start all over and make another one. We can get two full cycles of produce here if you want to. We start in February with the cool weather veggies like broccoli and spinach. The last frost is usually the middle of March. We go through the hot weather with tomatoes, corn, okra and squash, to name a few. Then in August we start over with tomatoes, and eventually go back to the cool weather veggies. Our first frost is usually not until after Thanksgiving so we have a very long growing season. Everyone needs to know their first and last frost dates so you can plan. You can find this info on weather.com. I really like this sight for gardening maps.
For your convenience I included the frost date maps as well as a planting map of the USA for May.
As you can see, even Texas is still planting tomatoes, my favorite. More about tomatoes tomorrow.
Ta Ta for now! Check back tomorrow, okay?
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