Wednesday, November 28, 2012

San Antonio Vegetable Gardening Guide and Resources

I want to grow a vegetable garden, but we have caliche which is basically rock. So, I'll need to create raised beds.  Given the state of my neck, I will probably get my husband and/or the lawn guy to build them for me.  Then I'll just kneel down to work in them.

Living in Louisiana, it is harder to kill plants than to grow them.  Living in San Antonio now I have the opposite problem.  While I'm new to San Antonio gardening, I will share with you what I learn.


San Antonio, TX Gardening Info


TX A&M AgriLife Extension
TX AgriLife Extension: Vegetable Resources
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/vegetable/
One of the best free resources out there with lots of relevant pdf files on vegetable gardening including planting, composting, fertilizing, etc. in TX. Also pages for fruits and nuts.


2013 Farmer's AlmanacFarmer's Almanac
http://www.almanac.com/gardening/planting-dates/TX/San%20Antonio
Although somewhat northerner biased, this classic reference covers a wide area of topic including regional planting and frost dates.



TX Growing Regions
Vegetable Seed Varieties by TX Region
http://www.texasheirloomseeds.com/
See which varieties are the best to plant in your area of TX. San Antonio is in Region F.


Heirloom Organics
http://www.heirloom-organics.com

Great site with growing guides for all your home gardening crops including the how to on: seeds, seedlings, spacing, sun/shade, soil type, harvesting, and much more.


San Antonio and Texas Gardening Products


Milberger's Nursery
Milberger's Nursery
http://milbergernursery.com/
Large nursery selling all kinds of plants for TX gardening. NE - 1064 and Bulverde


Fertile GardenFertile Garden
http://www.fertilegarden.com/bulk.asp
A good place nearby to get a variety of soils and mulch in bulk. - have not been there, but will update when I know more about it. NW - 1604 and Culebra

Update: They're great!  They'll even give you a military discount if you've ever served.



Willhite SeedsWillhite Seed
http://www.willhiteseed.com
Located in Poolville, TX outside of Dallas, this company sells TX appropriate seeds. They specialize in watermelons. I ordered seeds and got them within a few days.  I'll let you know how they grow.

Update: Very nice people.  Not really tech saavy.  No fancy email notifications on shipping, but the stuff got here in 3-4 days.  You may need to call them if you don't see your seeds within a week.


Composters
Great article detailing various compost bins including many tumblers
http://www.squidoo.com/Cheap_Easy_Composting_Solutions?utm_source=google&utm_medium=imgres&utm_campaign=framebuster


Worms!
Texas Red Worms, all the worm you'll ever need.
http://texasredworms.com/

Gardening Planning

TX A&M AgriLife Extension
From the TX AgLife Extension, a pdf on how to plan your garden including spacing, lighting, location, and timing.  You'll have to use old fashioned paper with this one.


Vegetable Garden Planner
http://gardenplanner.motherearthnews.com/gardenplanner/gardenplanner.html#
From Mother Earth News, this software lets you plan your garden layout, choose vegetables, get planting reminders, plan crop rotation, and lots more.  I may try it and let you know how it goes.  Subscription is free for 30 days, $25 - 1 year, $40 - 2 years.

Other free sites - out there, but they are very limited or more biased to northern climate gardening.

That's all for now.  As usual, I will update when I have more info.

Update:

 I tried the software.  I like the feature that lets you add your crops to the garden and automatically tells you how many you can plant given your space.  That is a huge plus.  The drawing tools are not feature rich, and some objects are very difficult to click on to move them around.  If you're good at using your own graphic editing software, I recommend doing that. Otherwise, it is worth the free trial to see if the software meets your gardening needs. 

2 comments:

American said...

Thanks so much! I want to start a garden in San Antonio- I'm new to here, too- so I'm very grateful for this post.

MuttNut said...

Glad to be of help!