I Love Texas Fall Gardening

These were my green beans earlier this month.  I had to tear the plants out of my garden yesterday after they succumbed to the recent freeze, but I've enjoyed snacking on them this November.    I had to tear out some of my peppers too...but my Cheyenne Peppers and a couple of my Bells survived (I hope they'll stay until the two peppers growing on them mature.)  The Cheyenne's hardly seemed fazed...they must be more hardy than most peppers.  Surprizingly, my basil are still surviving too.  I had both regular and lemon basil.  The regular took a pretty significant hit..can't use the current leaves but enough survived to keep the plant alive (don't know if we'll have any spells warm enough for it to send out more shoots).  My lemon basil seems hardier.  Some of the leaves have little brown spots, but I could still use them in a pesto in a pinch.

And I have onions and radishes and lettuce that are doing well!  I love living in Texas where you can still have a garden in the dead of winter!

Oh, by the way, a little tip...if you forget to water your garden, then make up for it with a LONG watering (um...like all day long because you forgot to turn off the sprinkler) this is what will happen to your radishes.  A dry spell followed by a heavy water makes them split.  It still tasted good, though!

But the BIG thing I wanted to share with you was a surprise that sprouted in the area by the fence where the fire burned this summer...

Those are CARROTS sprouting under those wild morning glory leaves!  Hundreds of them are growing where the fire burned.  And not only that, there's CILANTRO too!  (Not hundreds...there's just a couple of those).

You see, a couple summers ago when I was first trying to start a garden I accidentally left some seed packets out and they blew all over the yard.  Last spring two carrots came up near where the fire burned later this summer...but I had no idea there were even that many carrots in the packet!  What a cool surprise!

Oh, yeah, and one more thing popped up un-expected:

I planted morning glories last spring by this wall, and they never came up.  But look at them now...aren't they gorgeous?  I've been growing morning glories every spring since we moved into our first apartment in Texas, but I've NEVER gotten them this big and healthy.   Guess I should try growing them in fall!



(Oh, and you know how I've been complaining that all the gardening linky parties close down during the winter...well, I found one that was still going at No Ordinary Homestead!  Yipee!  Check it out below along with This is Wherever Wednessday (where you get to chat about what makes your town/state/etc. unique) and What I Love Wednessday (where you can share about stuff you love)!