The garden is thriving on neglect

I had every intention to plant a garden this year. Life had other plans for me. It has been one thing after another since August 2023 and I have not had the stamina to keep up with everything I need to do, let alone with what I want to do. Something had to give. Gardening was the compromise this year by default. I wanted to get it planted, but week after week passed and it didn’t happen. It was not a complete waste, some things did volunteer in the garden this year and appear to be thriving despite my neglect.

This keeps my head high and hope in my heart. Why? Because I still have a place to retreat to from time to time. The garden was not all about growing vegetables (and fruits) to eat. That is the result. For me, the garden has been about the escape. Those few minutes are a change of scenery and apart from everything else. It has been a place of momentary refuge from stress and worry, a calm in my crazy overthinking brain.

The Garden – Today

This looks a lot different than it did one year ago, but it is important to not run faster than we are capable of sustaining. Since I have been battling asthma flare-ups and lung issues since mid-April, I have come to accept that this year I just cannot do everything in the garden I want to do this year. It also rained – a lot – up until a couple of weeks ago and this makes it difficult to plant and keep things growing. We reached our average annual rainfall already before June 1st.

I am hopeful that I can start again in a few weeks and plan a true fall garden for the first time. I am excited about that but a little apprehensive at the same time. We are just now getting very hot and this will not end when the “experts” say it is time to start planting for fall harvest time.

Volunteer and surviving plants

While I did plant a couple of things earlier when I thought my health and time commitments would improve, I think most of those have died and most of what you see are the survivors and volunteer sprouts from previous years.

I purchased 2 different varieties of Thyme. One appears to be hanging on – barely. The other was crispy within a week of planting it in the raised garden bed. When I purchased these, I also grabbed a single yellow tomato plant. It is still very alive in the garden, but it appears to be stunted in size. Since we have officially heated up above where most tomato plants set fruit, I am doubtful that I will see any tomatoes before the temperatures cool off a bit.

The survivors in my raised garden beds

• strawberries (a couple of plants)
• rosemary (2 plants)
• coneflowers (1 plant)

The volunteers (came back)

• marigolds
• zinnias
• basil

I did plant some sprouting potatoes in buckets and those did okay but the potatoes are really small. I have more sprouting potatoes to go into the buckets, I just need to find some time.

Plant more flowers

Do not be afraid to plant flowers in the garden! They increase the beauty as a whole and they invite the pollinators to come do their job. They are never a wasted plant.

The marigolds appear to be thriving in some of the raised beds, but a couple of the beds have been hit with spider mites pretty hard and these plants are struggling with the increased heat and now lack of rainfall. Marigolds volunteer every year and they seem to thrive on neglect. Plant them once and you have them for life. They do not always volunteer thick and lush like I have in a couple of beds, but they do self-seed very well. Some people hate them because of the smell, but I want to encourage you to plant them from seed rather than from store-bought starter plants. Also, different varieties have different scent spectrums.

These zinnias are a favorite and they self-seed well, but not to the degree that they marigolds (or sunflowers) do. These volunteered in the raised bed next to the bed filled with all the pollinator-attracting plants last year. I am not sad about this. Flowers pull in pollinators no matter which bed they are in and I encourage you to plant flowering plants right in the beds with your fruiting plants.

Coneflowers are a new thing in my garden. I planted a bunch last year but with the drought combined with the extreme heat (and then extreme cold), I thought I had lost all of them. This year has been a pleasant surprise! They did nothing last year but this year they are a beautiful presence in the garden (and flowerbeds around the house). These help the garden look like it is thriving on neglect.

Garden Surprise

I do not know why, but I get super excited when I find lemons on the Improved Meyer Lemon tree. It never gets old to me.

This year was no different. We put this Improved Meyer Lemon tree in a new pot when we put it into the shed for the winter. It was a very quick job, but it is thriving so I do not dare touch it to fix the problems.

It was looking pretty sickly a couple of months ago. I figured it was just the rain and lack of persistent sunshine. Yes, but it was more. This is a self-watering pot with a water well of some sort inside to hold a bit of water. Anything above this amount is supposed to drain off. Except, it was not. The poor tree was sitting in standing water every single time we got a significant amount of rain. I discovered that there was a “plug” in the pot to prevent this from happening. Once I pulled that out, the tree has been doing fabulously.

Today, I found the first of the lemons as my reward for taking care of the problem. This tree is such a diva, but it is a fighter for sure and produces well all things considered.

Summer heat problems

Everyone likes to say that gardening in…[insert location]…is different. Yes! It is different everywhere, but gardening in Texas is a very unique kind of different. Here in North Texas, we have extremes on both ends of the temperature spectrum. Sometimes, the only option is to let it thrive on neglect – it is too hot to get outside, it is too dry…

With the heat comes more pest stress and the more stressed the plants are, the worse it gets. I should dig up the plants plagued with spider mites, but I opted to treat them instead since they are reasonably isolated. Unfortunately, this caused more stress. These marigold plants were doing fabulous until the rains stopped and the heat kicked it into high gear.

The sprinklers have been running so I am not sure why there is heat stress except that it is just bloody hot. During drought conditions (which we are not in currently), we have two assigned watering days which we have just opted to stick to except for when I might manually run a zone as needed. Seeing the amount of cracking in the soil, I have since increased our watering schedule – longer times for each zone and doubling up morning and evening. Hopefully, it will help.

Looking forward

Right now, it is hard for me to see the end of summer. It is just now getting started with the hot stuff. Statistically speaking, July and August are our hottest months here. We have been blessed with rain this year so all of our lakes are at full pool or above. This is good! Unfortunately, it does not offset the lack of infrastructure created by rapid growth in the region. We make do. I will garden as long as I am able.

That being said, gardening for me is what it is this year. What you see is what you get from me. I am not going to start in the height of the summer heat especially when the rains taper off significantly this time of year. The best I can do is tell you that I am planning on doing a fall garden this year. My garden beds will be mostly empty and it will not be a case of “but it is still producing” and putting off removing the hot weather crops.

At that point, I will be done with school – just over a month to go from today. I am going to have to find something to fill my time so planning a fall garden sounds like the relaxation I am going to need and it will give me something to fill the void with.

I am looking forward to getting some of the cooler weather crops planted that get skipped because I always have full beds and the plants that have survived the summer heat have started producing again. But, I am not going to lie, I would love to grow some spinach!

So stay tuned for what’s to come.