By now, many of the plants described in the last post are dead.  They all fell to dog maulings.  *sigh* Ah well.  Puppies will be puppies, I suppose, and I couldn’t be relied on to sprinkle cayenne around everything once a week.

The one thing that survived the pup last fall, other than things I protected in pots, was the Pink Turk’s Cap.  But we’ll see how it weathered the freeze last week, Austin’s coldest in something like 20 years.

All of our gardening efforts since the holidays have been focused on building a fenced potager (kitchen garden) in the backyard.  Nathan combined a chain link gate, some T-bar poles, and some simple steel fencing to create a dog barrier, and we picked up three 4×4 sq ft gardening kits from Natural Gardener.  The result is fun and encouraging.  Photos soon.

Over the weekend we planted dinosaur kale, carrot, detroit dark red beet, rhubarb chard, spinach and nasturtium seeds in the raised beds.  We’re growing turnip greens and spearmint in containers.  Radish, lemon mint, watermelon, and okra seeds are on the way from Seed Savers Exchange.