By His Hand We Are Fed

Give Us This Day our Daily Bread...and Veggies!

I have already sowed my Fall/Winter garden...aka Summer Part Dos in East Texas. I cut my sweet baby romaine lettuce today for lunch...and it was so good with cherry tomatoes, sweet onion, red pepper and some EVOO.

Living in a forest has it's ups and downs. The Up Side..we have no grass to cut! Rather...Hubs has no grass to cut. After cutting 5 acres of grass for 30 years, I told him I was retiring from that job...if we had grass in Texas, he would have to cut it. He pretty much made sure we did not have any grass!!!  We basically just have weeds that need cutting. He waits for a nice rain and then cuts...it helps cut down on the dust, especially when you have sand for soil.


The Down Side, there is very little sun around our house. I call it chasing the sun. The funny thing is, we only have sun on the North side of our house which happens to be where the driveway meets the garage pad. SO, when I had 0 pepper production well into 2 months or beautiful pepper plants, I dug them up and potted them in fabric pots and relocated them to the driveway. I had to do the same with the eggplant and the artichokes. All of which really want and need a lot of sun to produce fruit.

I'm finally getting my first eggplant. Between the chasing the sun and the flea beetles, it's been a long haul. I finally ordered some organic flea powder that did the job when we lived in Maryland and is working just as well here.

I must of planted my King of The Garden Limas over 3 months ago!!! FINALLY!!! My first lima! They've done a super bang up job just growing....now hopefully I'll get some beans.

When I planted the seeds I didn't realize they were climbers....I almost always plant bush beans. But not this time! I asked Hubs to put up 2 T-posts and I ran garden twine back and forth. If they put out in bean the way they've put out in foliage I'll be one happy gardener!

Next Spring we'll be able to start cutting and eating our asparagus!!! We love this stuff!

I planted my baby broccoli starts and constructed a hoop to keep the cabbage moth from eating them up. I bought a bolt of fabric netting at Walmart for less than $1/yard. So, for under $20 I got a bolt of fabric for a row cover. My only problem was I have a trail of cutter ants that are transporting across the garden at night (smugglers I'm sure)...instead of going around my fabric they chewed a path right through it...SO, I had to squish things in a bit to allow road frontage for the ants to travel. Hey, I think it's worth the effort....they've left my garden alone! Beats eminent domain!

More netting for bugs. I've had 0 success growing chard here. It comes up and looks like it's going to grow and then over night it disappears! Again...chasing the sun with pots (free from a local rancher!). I've been pretty happy with the production I can get from containers. I'm just having to adjust to the lack of space for any type of "mass" production...that's why I say...

"Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread!"

The Okra has done beautifully....but again....bloom already!!! Today it finally looks like it's got buds...just in time for me to leave on a week long trip back to Maryland to Nana sit little Eu! That's how it goes...always.

If I hadn't seeded a patch of Zinnias I don't think we'd of had 1 pollinator. I hope it's not a sign...I hope it's just a result of living in a forest. I've had to hand pollinate almost every squash, every tomato, every melon, every everything. I'm afraid though that I've heard others around the country complaining about the same thing. Folks if we kill off our honeybees we kill off our species. 

​But....Our times are in His Hands. 

Psalm 34:8
"Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him."

Be Sweet,
Diane