This past Saturday at the Teaching Gardens at Zilker Botanical Garden, we added all types of seed to the collection. Everything from zinnias, okra, peppers, fennel, black eyed peas, cosmos, and epazote.

​Thanks to the volunteers for all of the help in collecting seeds and continuing to prep the soil for fall. Danielle Basil surprised us with her awesome collection of seeds. She also brought some dried okra to shake and get the seed swap party started.

Since we are a 75-year-old garden club, we have a lot of stories and heirloom varieties of vegetables in this garden. This fall we plan to partner with the central library seed collection and start to archive the stories and seeds and make them available to everyone in the community.

We just passed the Sturgeon Moon, other names include the Fruit Moon, Grain Moon and the Green Corn Moon. 

We are now going into a waning period of the Moon—from the day after it is full to the day before it is new again. As the moonlight decreases night by night, plants are encouraged to grow roots, tubers, and bulbs. It’s always best to try to plant with the coming rains which are in the forecast. 

DIRECT SEED
Potatoes (Irish)
Radishes
Rutabaga

TRANSPLANT
Bunching Onions

WHERE TO BUY
The Natural Gardener and Cultivate Holistic Supply will have bunching online transplants in September. 

MORE IDEAS
For more ideas on Ornamentals, Perennials, and Herbs, visit the Central Texas Gardener and The Natural Gardener lists online. Download the Texas A&M Extension Planting Chart and Varieties.

We just passed the first quarter and the moon is now waxing gibbous going into a full moon. Now is also a time to seed-in plants that fruit and seed like beans, corn, cucumbers, okra, and squash. If you already planted these things, remember that it’s a good idea to succession plant and grow twice as much as you will need in case of disease and pest. As always, it’s best to transplant and seed-in with coming rains. 

DIRECT SEED 
Beans (Bush, Dry, Pole)
Corn
Cucumber
Melons
Okra
Peas (Southern)
Squash (Summer & Winter)

TRANSPLANT
Peppers
Tomatoes

For more ideas on Ornamentals, Perennials, and Herbs, visit the Central Texas Gardener and The Natural Gardener lists online. Download the Texas A&M Extension Planting Chart and Varieties Chart on our website.

This last Saturday we broke out the Bt to try to stop the army worm invasion in the corn in our fall milpa (three sisters) bed.
Cooler temperatures and widespread rain events across Texas have created ideal conditions for armyworms, according to a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service expert.
Armyworm caterpillars are the larval form of a moth that migrates by the millions northward in the spring and summer to lay their eggs. Infestations of the caterpillars can be extremely destructive to home gardens and forage and row crops from Bermuda grass to corn and rice. 

Danielle planted 1500 year old cave beans next to the corn as they were getting to be about 6 inches in height. Hopefully the interplanting and extra nutrients from the beans will help fend off the army of worms. We will see how the corn is doing later this week and plant more if we need to.

GROW WITH US
Join us this summer as we continue to learn in the garden together. We meet Saturday's and Wednesdays from at 9 - 11 am. This fall we will be doing a major change to the garden as we design a 4-square garden! We are also looking for seed and plant donations so let us know if would like to contribute to the garden this way. Please email us and let us know if you can grow with us!

This last Saturday we began prepping our soil for our fall garden. It's important to protect and prep the soil in the peak heat of summer. You want to have a healthy soil web and the easiest thing you can do is just cover the soil with cardboard. You can also plant cover-crops, especially this year with August rain in the forecast.

At the teaching gardens we used the lasagna technique in one bed that grew our spring Milpa (Three Sisters). Since corn is a scavenger and absorbs a lot of nutrients, we revitalized the soil by following these steps.

1. Chop and drop nitrogen rich, green compost (cover crops, fresh compost, coffee grinds from the kitchen).
2. Sprinkle in a fertilizer such as Microlife Ultimate 8-4-6
3. Crumble up recycled oyster mushroom blocks to add organic material and spores that will breakdown wood and touch to decompose lignin. You might also get some fresh culinary mushrooms growing in your garden considering we are still getting rain in August.
4. Cover area with cardboard.
5. Water every few days. You can optionally cover with composted mulch or moldy leaves to add more organic matter to help retain moisture on cardboard.

This study shows that using spent mushroom blocks as fertilizer on many plants is a viable alternative to other fertilizers and soil conditioners and should be looked at as valuable product and not simply a waste material. It is a cost effective way for farmers and gardeners to build soil health while operating in a sustainable fashion and the benefits seem to get better with time and persist long after initial application. Learn more about the benefits of adding mycelium to the soil here.

There was a lot to harvest this week at the teaching gardens at Zilker Botanical Garden. Black Diamond watermelon, black-eyed peas, Blauhilde Pole Beans, bell, banana, and jalapeño peppers, cucumbers, burgundy okra, and a lot of herbs and warm season greens including lambs-quarter. One of our lambsquarter plants has grown into a tree (lambs whole🤪), almost 10 feet tall! We also did foliar seaweed sprays on tomatoes, peppers and plants that looked stressed from the increase of heat.

The main activity was getting our Fall Milpa (Three Sisters) planted on time with the moon calendar. We cut back the corn stalks at the base in the old Milpa beds. Since corn is a scavenger and absorbs a lot of nutrients, we revitalized the soil with mushroom compost and recycled mushroom blocks. We did the same in the Fall Milpa beds. Recycled or spent mushroom blocks contain common by-product ingredients such as wheat straw bedding, coffee chaff, cottonseed hulls, poultry manure, brewer's grain, cottonseed meal, cocoa bean hulls and gypsum. Many of these ingredients are already great organic amendments to soil. This study shows that using spent mushroom blocks as fertilizer on many plants is a viable alternative to other fertilizers and soil conditioners and should be looked at as valuable product and not simply a waste material. It is a cost effective way for farmers and gardeners to build soil health while operating in a sustainable fashion and the benefits seem to get better with time and persist long after initial application. Learn more about the benefits of adding mycelium to the soil here.

We just passed the first quarter and the moon is now waxing gibbous going into a full moon. Now is also a time to seed-in plants that fruit and seed like corn, melons, pumpkins, squash, okra, corn and southern peas. If you want to grow pumpkins for Halloween, get your plants started by mid-July. If you already planted these things, remember that it’s a good idea to succession plant and grow twice as much as you will need in case of disease and pest. As always, it’s best to transplant and seed-in with coming rains. 

DIRECT SEED
Corn
Melons
Okra
Pumpkin 
Southern Peas
Winter Squash 

TRANSPLANT
Eggplant
Peppers
Tomatoes

TOMATO TIPS 
When nighttime temperatures soar above 70 degrees F, tomato plants tend to produce fewer blossoms and the blossoms often drop before they become pollinated, resulting in fewer fruits. Here are some time and water saving tips for getting a fruitful crop in the fall. 

From The Natural Gardener:
“Cut back spring-planted, indeterminate tomatoes leaving about 1/3 of the plant, and feed with a high-phosphorus fertilizer to rejuvenate them for fall season. Sometimes there are still flowers and green tomatoes on the plants, but it is better for the fall harvest to cut them back around mid July. You can use any unripe fruits to make fried green tomatoes! Pull any unhealthy looking plants and replace them, then set up 40% shade cloth to protect your plants from the hot afternoon sun. Once temperatures cool off, the flowers will begin to set fruit. If you’re successful in keeping your plants consistently watered and happy, you’ll enjoy a good fall harvest.”

From AOG Member Tim Miller:
You can also cut the tips off of Tomatoes and put them in water for a week until they sprout roots and then pot them and put them in a shady spot or under shade cloth. You can transplant them in the late summer/early fall. These literal and figurative tips will save WATER and TIME in planting your fall tomatoes.

This past Saturday we volunteered with longtime AOG member David Kramer at the Blackland neighborhood community project. We harvested and enjoyed a seedy, heirloom watermelon, cut back amaranth and tomatoes. We saved some green tips of the tomatoes plant in the fall. Watch this video to learn how to do it. The biggest challenge of the day was moving the bicycle bamboo trellis to a bed where malabar spinach had volunteered. After we cut back the plants in one of the beds, we did two things to revitalize the soil for the next crop.

1. Inoculated the soil with recycled/spent oyster mushroom blocks. This study shows that using spent mushroom blocks as fertilizer on beans, beets, garlic, greens, peas, peppers, radishes, and tomatoes is a viable alternative to other fertilizers and soil conditioners and should be looked at as valuable product and not simply a waste material. It is a cost effective way for farmers and gardeners to build soil health while operating in a sustainable fashion and the benefits seem to get better with time and persist long after initial application. Go here to sign up to get spent mushroom blocks.

2. Added Compost We had the opportunity to meet Alan Schroeder of Save the Food. Part of his food rescue mission includes converting organic food waste into compost. We took turns sifting compost from the last step of the process. It was steamy!