The garden is gone until next year now.

[bearfan454]

It wasn't my best garden but it was okay. Too much rain and too much rain again. Dissapointing.

[Gormy Cuss]

1. Oh crap. That's awfully early for you, isn't it?

I haven't had a great summer garden either but it's for the opposite reason -- not enough heat. My heirloom tomatoes and eggplant are just starting to peak now and that's about a month late. The melons and cukes have been pitiful in production too.

[Raven]

2. How do you put your garden to bed for the winter?

I'd love to know since this is my first real garden.

[bearfan454]

3. Here's what I do

I pull out all the dead plants, remove the cages, till really good, and wait until Jan or early Feb to start getting it ready again.

[brer cat]

4. Can you do a fall/winter garden?

TX should accommodate many fall and winter vegs. We are in No GA mountains, and we have onions, beets, lettuce, turnips (for tops and bottoms), mustard greens, collards, and garlic for the next season. Onions, garlic and mustard will last all winter. The rest will be picked before or soon after 1st frost, or later if we use floating row covers. It's really lovely to pick fresh veg during the winter.

[tigereye]

5. mine is a dried up mess

very little rain, only the perenials are still hanging on...

time for bulb planting and yanking a bunch of stuff.

[Gato Moteado]

6. i wonder if a raised bed would have given ample drainage....

...and made it so the tomatoes could have weathered austin's unusually wet summer this year.

what kind of soil do you have? when i lived in austin my yard had a heavy black clay that seemed to be full of nutrients but it was a bit too heavy and alkaline for many plants. i amended the hell out of it with compost, decomposed granite, compost and more compost. eventually, i had the best soil in all of central texas as i could grow anything back there.

if your soil is that predominantly heavy black clay that i saw in most of austin, a lot of rain will certainly cause damage to things like tomatoes by keeping the roots constantly sopping wet.

as for the winter garden suggestion someone made...austin is great for that...things like lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, and other cold weather crops should do fine.

so, how the hell have you been? have you made it back to roundrock for an italian beef sandwich or chicago style hotdog?

[hedgehog]

7. I'd go with raised beds. I saw some used to very good effect on

red clay soil in a monsoon climate ( warm all year with dry and wet seasons)

[Raven]

8. We've had a very dry summer here in NH but my raised bed

garden exploaded! I built a stone wall about 1 1/2-2 feet tall. I put a crushed stone base in (about 8") then I mixed loam and composted steer manure. I have hardly had to water and the drainage seems very good. I planted marigolds all along the perimeter and so far I haven't had any critters dining on my veggies. All the stones came from my property and the wall looks very pretty and I'll never have to replace it.