Like Gardening in Phoenix...

In the last week, 2 of my favorite Texas garden bloggers announced regretfully they were giving up on their veggie gardens... and the second one is a farm!

Harvests hardly justify a water bill quadrupling. Even with mulch, no trees on the west side mean it needs water twice a day and temps hit 104-112 out there daily the last 3 weeks of June. If I'd known this was coming I'd have hung shadecloth from the house to the fence but this year is just an anomaly, right? At least I didn't install gutters and rainbarrels as planned.

Here's why I'm not giving up just yet. With summer cucumbers and green beans turning brown and dying one by one, the collards, mustard greens, chard, bok choy and brussels sprouts from winter are thriving on the west side. I would have bet money nobody could grow those in a Texas summer, much less this one. Brussels never reached harvest size by May but I left four of them to shade the cantaloupes and they keep growing. I could roast a mess of them tonight... if it weren't so hot. Ready to try more "winter" veggies during summer.

When the first cukes died, I started a small garden on the courtyard because, with shadecloth over the concrete area, it only gets direct sun from 10am - 2pm and needs watering once a day.

Left: courtyard Dec 2010 when Houston was still a muggy tropical paradise. After several days in the mid-20s, and 1" of rain since the end of Feb, pulling those 12" tall weeds is no longer a monthly chore.

Lost the palm on the right in an unpredicted hard freeze. Sad because it's the last pup of one I bought the day before our '98 trip to Italy. Never put it in the ground because of freezes.

Below is today, with evidence of Asta's passive-aggressive fight (this was done while I was grocery shopping) over what I see as beets and turnips to the left of the lemon basil, and she sees as her 3pm napping site. In the middle are radishes, green onions, chard. On the right is Genovese basil. The tomatoes in 3 pots full of pure MiracleGro garden soil are outperforming the organic fertilized ones on the west side. All are still producing flowers and 2 nights last week lows were 75 which is the miracle point when they'll set fruit. I'm still babying and watering them and waiting for Fall.