Drought Recovery In Progress

In a normal season, the raised beds would be chocked full of fall tomato plants and greens right now. With the endless days of triple digit temperatures and no rain fall since last fall, well, that just wasn't the case for us this year. We are in recovery mode and One of the easiest points of recovery in this years drought is in the raised beds.It's in here we can dig out the centers and fill them full of green manure we've gathered by mowing and chopping in few areas where grass was still growing. GREEN IS GOOD STUFF!!

One of the compost bins is rapidly being emptied and added to the raised beds. MORE GOOD STUFF!! And if you notice, no cost so far either.

Here we are with some progress being made. Half of the raised beds were completed last week. After compiling the green manure and compost, we layed paper across the top of the whole thing. Then we used the garden mix we had delivered from our local nursery. We used about 3 to 5 inches on top of the paper. The paper will help choke out any weeds that may want to germinate out of the green manure and compost. Next it was a matter of watering them in really good all week, each day. Then we were blessed with a few of the first rain showers I can remember in a very long time. This weekend we were able to seed half the beds with lettuce, Kale, carrots and spinach.

I'm trying not to look at the devastation any longer and found this whole adventure to be more like a complete remodel job. We decided to take these raised beds out this winter and begin a whole new area of expansion. The raised beds will be replaced with a cover crop before a spring planting of that gorgeous Native Texas Dent Corn. We will use the seed we saved from this summers harvest. Put with that corn some more Native Cornfield beans and pumpkins and we have the makings of a new Three Sisters Native Garden area. It's all good, and we shall recover!! Just gonna be a bit of hard work and a few less veggies to harvest from the fall garden this year.

I'm so thankful to be digging again. Enjoying a little cooler temperatures and seeing a small bit of rain come to Texas.Planning for a better season with more natives and drought tolerant varieties will make a big difference next season. Adding as much organic material back into the soil will help retain more moisture. That's about as ready as one can get!!

Happy Gardening!

Pammy