End of Month View - May 2015

As you might have gathered from reading my or other Central Texas garden blogs or listening to the news, our area has been getting a lot of rain over the past month, including torrential downpours during the last several weeks, which has led to severe flooding and destruction in some parts of the region.

The rain has positive and negative effects on my garden.  On the positive side, it is getting plenty of water and I don't have to use supplemental watering.  On the negative side, too much water makes the garden soggy and results in root rot.  Not to mention, the heavy rains and strong winds have taken a beating on some of the plants, especially some of the tall varieties in the garden.

Let's take a look around to see how the garden is fairing after our record-setting rainfalls:

Veggie Bed

The vegetables are generally doing well, despite a couple of the tomato cages being knocked over by the strong winds.  The tomatoes, eggplant and green beans have been producing well.  The peppers are getting a slower start than normal.  I don't think they are as big of fans of the cooler temperatures and heavy rain.

You can even see a little pond has formed in the park behind our house.  This has dried up significantly in the last week.  After last Monday's heavy rains, the water was nearly at the level of the gravel path.


Shade Bed

The shade bed is filling out with summer-time plants, though there isn't much blooming right now.  Over the past month, I added some Mexican petunia pass along plants from a neighbor, as well as some Frostweed transplant pass alongs from fellow Central Texas garden blogger Tina of My Gardener Says.  I look forward to the new additions blooming later this year.


Deck

The deck border also doesn't have much blooming at this point.  Many of my parsley plants were cleared out after they toppled over from root rot or pests (I couldn't quite decipher what caused the root damage).  The artichoke additions from earlier this year are filling out and I hope they will produce next year.


Bulb Bed

Gladiolas, day-lilies and Black-Eyed Susans are going strong in the bulb bed.  I still have some open spots that I hope to fill with some perennials that will help keep year-round interest.


Central Beds

The middle beds are a bit sparse at the moment.  There are some zinnias, cosmos, and shasta daisies blooming, but most of the beds are full of spent bluebonnet, sweet pea, and larkspur plants that have dried up.  However, I don't want to remove the plants because I'm hoping they will reseed so I can enjoy the same blooms next year.

Rose Border

This is the first season for my rose border, so the plants are still quite small and only produce a couple blooms from time to time.  I keep looking forward to what this bed will look like a couple years from now.  In the meantime, I'm enjoying the sunflowers that bloomed in part of the bed.  I tried to do succession planting with the sunflowers, but seeds planted after the first round didn't take.

Pomegranate Bed

The main eye-catcher in this bed is the foliage of the canna lilies.  There are even a few plants started to show off their orange blooms.  Since I did a lot of dividing of the canna's last year, I won't be surprised if a lot of them don't flower this year.  Then again, I won't be surprised if they do flower, since they are very resilient plants.


Front Fenceline

As is the theme in my garden right now, not too much is blooming in this bed.  The only blooms are some purple ones, found in both the spikes of the Mystic Spires salvia, as well as the Black Knight butterfly bush.


Front of House

The front house borders have really filled out from this time last year when many new plants were added.  The yellow oleander is finishing up blooming while the lantana are just getting started.

In the very front bed, the vitex is putting on quite a show with its lavender blossoms, which are highly favored by many butterflies and other insects.

All in all, the gardens are doing well after the heavy rains.  I just hope the rains will lighten up to limit future flooding, but I wouldn't mind some steady rains continuing throughout the summer to help Texas continue out of drought and fill up the lakes again.

Thanks, as always to Helen over at The Patient Gardener for hosting the End of Month View garden meme.