Long time no post! I've been keeping busy between gardening and a new job! We're still container gardening this year (until we own a house, we're not making the investment in raised beds), but I did add a no-till flower bed to the backyard to give it a try. We have two small greenhouses on our back covered patio, and a whole lot of plants that are mostly things I started from seed. Here are a few pictures, and hopefully I'll remember to come back and add more later and as the season progresses. We are in Central Texas, in zone 8b.

Glad to see you bouncing back to abundance from the big freeze! I hope the garden is trouble-free and gives you a fabulous place to relax after work.

It all looks so good, I love the ceramic pot stack. We have a similar higgledy piggledy one too. It will be full of herbs soon enough.

Amateurinawe wrote: ↑Sat Apr 10, 2021 12:54 pm It all looks so good, I love the ceramic pot stack. We have a similar higgledy piggledy one too. It will be full of herbs soon enough.

They're actually plastic planters from the dollar store! I drilled holes and stuck stakes down the center and into a bucket full of sand and dirt to keep them from toppling over. Trying them out before deciding whether I want to invest in a more expensive vertical system like a GreenStalk.

Bower wrote: ↑Sat Apr 10, 2021 8:41 am Glad to see you bouncing back to abundance from the big freeze! I hope the garden is trouble-free and gives you a fabulous place to relax after work.

Thank you! I'm officially at my limit for containers haha. I made big plans for this season since the Fall went so well, it makes me less nervous about getting everything exactly right for Spring/Summer.

Always nice to see garden updates.

Waiting for these to get perfectly ripe and kicking myself for only getting three plants! I had some bareroot strawberries as well, but they were all duds unfortunately (I miiiiiight have waited too long to get them potted). These are Chandler strawberries that I got from a local nursery last month.

I bet that your daughter will really enjoy those strawberry plants!

Awesome. What's growing in the lower left corner of the picture entitled `IMG_20210406_095541_242.jpg`? Is that celery?

MissS wrote: ↑Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:15 pm I bet that your daughter will really enjoy those strawberry plants!

She's obsessed with strawberries, even wanted her 3rd birthday last January to be strawberry themed! She's excited for the berries, but getting pretty impatient for them to get fully ripe already.

Shule wrote: ↑Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:39 pm Awesome. What's growing in the lower left corner of the picture entitled `IMG_20210406_095541_242.jpg`? Is that celery?

Yep! It's pink plume celery! I started two last fall, this is the one that survived. It's never gotten tall, but I'm planning to at least harvest and dehydrate the tops to use as seasoning.

Some snaps from the garden today: And a full dehydrator's worth of calendula that finished up today, waiting to be made into oil and salve:

Strawberry day today!
Georgie wanted to save a strawberry for her sitter tomorrow, so we decided to give her some flowers too (holy basil, cosmos, calendula):

It doesn't get more beautiful than that!

We harvested Georgie's radishes last night (she didn't want to smile but she definitely was happy about it) and I pulled a small cluster of beets this morning. Gonna check my carrots in a bit to see if any are ready and pull them while it's cool out, and we'll have roasted root veggies with dinner tonight. I also dehydrated green onions yesterday, and have a batch of herbs finishing up now. The onions finished first, so they're put away, but when I first started the dehydrator the whole house smelled like pickles with the onions and dill in there.

That gardening girl is getting a head start on all the good things in life.

Very nice photos. Fine looking crops.

Steeping calendula oil to make salve, using sweet almond oil as my carrier oil.
We've been grabbing strawberries every other day, but they're now infested with spider mites.
We harvested our first cucumber of the season and sliced it on a gorgeous handmade cutting board we got from a local carpenter at the farmer's market! No stains or dyes in his work, just beautiful exotic woods and excellent craftsmanship.

Always a pleasure to see what's going on in your garden.

What are you using for the spider mites?

MissS wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:40 am Always a pleasure to see what's going on in your garden.

What are you using for the spider mites?

I think I'm going to empty a storage tote and dunk the strawberry tier of my tower in it for a few hours or overnight to drown the mites. I've had success with drowning them in the past on some mint. I've had no luck with any spray I've concocted.