Growing Fava Beans is GREAT for your Soil!

So, if you haven't grown Fava Beans before...You need too! This vetch, (Vicia faba) is in the legume family (Fabaceae), and is even more effective at fixing nitrogen in the soil than typical beans, is frost hardy, breaks up the soil, makes a great green manure AND produces super flavorful fruit. If you have a heavy clay compacted soil, consider using fava beans as a cover crop over the winter to help break up and aerate your soil.

In Texas and similar warm climates, you can seed this in fall - September is the best time (along with peas) -and let them grow through the winter. Plants will bloom even through the cold weather then start producing fruit in spring.

The flowers are incredibly fragrant, as well as edible, and when you break the pods open they have the same fragrance. Harvest the "peas" before you see them swelling too much in the pod, or harvest the entire pod early and eat whole. Make sure to save and dry some seed for your next fall planting. The foliage is also edible and tastes great mixed in with salads. Here are a couple of photos from my garden yesterday...

Fava bean pods
PC: Leslie F. Halleck

A couple of weeks ago I spoke at the All Texas Garden Show...something I've done every February for a number of years now. As I was walking the hallway, I ran into Paul from Texas Triffid Ranch who was also speaking at the show for the first time (I think...). I was happy to see carnivorous plants on the schedule. Anyhoo...we exchanged "Oh, hey, I know you from Blogland" banter and then he bestowed upon me this lovely little gem. It just popped into bloom today so I thought you'd like to see...Paul...you're going to have to give me the correct species id...THANKS!

You Need to Grow Where the Sun Goes!

The newest addition to my ever expanding veggie garden. In addition to the two boxes we added to the back this past weekend, which filled up the remaining sunny real estate, we added three new beds to the front yard. The sun is plentiful up there and it seemed a shame to me there were no tomatoes growing in such a prime spot. Also transplanted a bunch of Iris pallida from the backyard to camouflage the concrete retaining wall on the edge of my yard. It's obvious I'm not finished planting them yet, but they will contain an assortment of tomatoes, peppers, bush beans and maybe a dwarf bush zucchini. Photos of backyard beds to come...

It's a banner year for snakes in the Halleck garden. As you can see by the blurriness of the photo, it wasn't exactly easy to get a shot of this squirmy little guy, but you get the idea. It is a Texas brown snake. I have a bounty of babies in my garden this year. Just about everywhere I've started to dig around one of two if these little guys has popped out. I was removing a decaying stump from the back fence and fount a nest of them. I'm a reptile/amphibian enthusiast so snakes and the like bring me no end of entertainment. But I do realize there are a lot of you out there that would not be thrilled to find snakes in their yard. Texas brown snakes and rat snakes are non-venomous and they are a great natural pest control. They have small mouths so their prey tends to be small as well..they eat snails and slugs so they are great for gardeners. So your backyard chickens are safe...yay for snakes.

A Favorite Tomato Cultivar

Ok, the yummy orange paste tomato I tested last year for Organic Gardening magazine is one of my current favorites. This is a tasty paste tomato, similar to a Roma, but with lemon yellow flesh and a light sweet flavor. It's heat tolerant, compact with good fruiting. Can't wait to make some golden spaghetti sauce this year...

The three ornamental peaches I planted last year are all popping. They are each a double flowering variety called 'Peppermint'. Blooms appear in shades of hot pink and white/pink stripes. They are the fascination of my 1 1/2 year old neighbor, Madeline. And the other neighbor, Lonnie...who is not so much 1 1/2 but who nonetheless gets all giggly like a little girl when new things are blooming in my garden. Delights for kids and not so much kids alike! Purrrty.

Mustard Green 'Southern Giant Curled'

I grew a wonderful mustard green in the garden this past fall through winter and it's still going strong. It's called 'Southern Giant Curled' and you can procure the seed from Botanical Interest. I'd direct seeded it out into the garden and it's been as happy as could be all winter long. But I sort of forgot about harvesting much of it. I mixed some of it into a fresh salad the other day and was reminded about how tasty it is! Sweet tasting leaves followed by just the right amount of spicy mustard flavor. This variety is very slow to bolt and the plants in my garden haven't even thought about blooming yet. It's a pretty plant to boot...

Even on chilly winter days when your toes feel like ice cubes...well, my toes always feel like ice cubes. After a bit of an ice-storm here, the sunshine is back but it's still too cold for me to venture outside. Maybe in a couple of hours. I'm on vacation right now so I'm taking advantage of my free morning to relax, have some coffee, start some seeds and record things in my garden journal. Which I'm TERRIBLE about doing by the way.That's what happens when you're a professional horticulturist...you do all the things you tell your students/clients NOT to do! lol. Actually, it's one of the reasons I started this garden blog. Not because I wanted to showcase any brilliant garden writing, have a million people view my garden, or any such pursuit. I started it so my friend Carolyn and I could keep up with each others gardens and so I could keep better track of what I did and when.

So right now I'm starting more seeds of the varieties I test for Organic Gardening Magazine, I can't divulge the variety names for the test plants (names have been blotted out for your own protection!), but there is an assortment of tomatoes, spinach, celery, squash and more. The test spinach has already gone out into the garden, along with the cutting celery and lettuce. In addition to the test plants, I'm also getting some seeds going for some of my other standard favorites. Tomatillos purple and green, Tomato 'Aunt Ruby's German Green', 'Green Zebra', 'Marvel Striped' and a few others.

I keep all my seeds in plastic buckets with lids so I can tote them around. Seeds packets are sitting in piles around me at the moment...oops, just dumped a bunch of okra seeds all over the floor...those will go directly into the garden in April. Still trying to decide what else I'll start indoors right now...