June- Harvest Time in Texas

Now in my mind, that does not compute.   JUNE, harvest time?  Don’t you mean September?  Not in Texas apparently. I think, soon, my garden will just be a crispy critter. If these temperatures hold up, I shall be picking stewed tomatoes, that is, if there are any tomatoes left to pick. Who knew that Golden-fronted Woodpeckers liked tomatoes above all else?  Lets back up a bit here and share what this first year of Texas gardening has been like. 

First, the notion of planting the garden no later than mid-March was wild.  I am used to putting in a potato by St Patrick’s Day but the rest always had to wait for at least late May.  But of course, here things heat up quickly, so in it went.  And then because sun and heat were abundant, things grew in a “Jack and the Beanstalk” manner -tomatoes shot up and through their cages in no time.  I was double-checking that I knew where my canner was and thinking, along with the peppers, that I could make enough salsa to go to market with.

Also, the previous owner had been kind enough to plant fruit trees, something I always had wished we had had, but in our active-duty military life, moves of every 2-3 yrs made that pretty impractical.  Now, here I was, proud owner of peach, plum, apple, pomegranate, loquats and then some.  Wahoo!  But, hold it right there Tex, don’t reach for the canner too soon, for what I had failed to factor in was my wily competition. 

I have always fed the birds, but I had forgotten how varied their diet could be.  Plums? Yum, peaches, well, there used to be an old song, “Going to the Country Going to Pick a lot of Peaches”. It was popular when my children were young and we lived in PA where people DO pick a lot of peaches, maybe it was just a local hit.  Either way, here it could definitely be re-mastered to say “Going to the Country, Going to PECK a lot of Peaches”.  

 As we speak, what was salvaged from the pecked over crop is resting under cotton sheets attempting to ripen from its still-to-green state.  A pair of Mockingbirds were the confirmed culprits.  My neighbor was out of town for a week and sadly I see their once heavily laden tree is now empty of fruit.  Somewhere in the bushes lie some pretty bloated birds.

With my tomatoes, I had managed to get a small basket of Celebrity tomatoes and cherry tomatoes and they were DELICIOUS.  Clearly though, I wasn’t the only one to think so, for soon, even the tiniest hint of color would appear and next day it would just be a hollowed out shell. Mockingbirds again, but then I started to see the aforementioned woodpecker clinging to the tomato stick and for one naïve moment I thought, good it will help with the squash bugs, but no, wham, wham, it started hammering right into a green tomato.  

What’s a non-violent gardener to do?  Finally wise up and buy netting.  I did, and now I watch as it sits upon the stick looking frustrated, if a bird can look frustrated, that these tomatoes below him are ripening and he isn’t getting a beak full. HA! But now I feel guilty, so watch I hang some suet today or some offering to soften the blow.

More disturbing though, are my cucumbers that are growing and flowering to beat the band but no cucumbers appear.  Ditto the pomegranate tree that was covered with flowers but only has three pomegranates developing on it.  One plum tree produced prodigiously, another, only three.  My mind goes to pollinators, or lack there of.  I hope it is because of something else, but bees that were buzzing all over the acacia tree in April, seem completely gone now.  Its rare that I hear any buzzing (maybe they can’t be heard because of the continuing katydid din –see previous blogs), and so sadly, I fear my garden is the poster child for what life looks like without pollinators.  Maybe someone clever will read this and can tell me what else it might be.

I have said before that thankfully my livelihood isn’t linked to my success as a gardener and that I really should just see this as very kind of me to make sure that even our feathered friends are meeting the requirement to “strive for five”.  Just doing my part to make it a healthier America for everyone, birds included.