6-month urban garden update

It's been six months since we planted the first of our urban garden. Since then, we've expanded a little; the backyard is now home to all the original herbs--rosemary, parsley, thyme, cilantro, and oregano--in addition to the original broccoli heads. In February, we purchased lemon and lime trees, roma tomato plants, Italian basil, and Thai basil. We had to show up bright and early at the nursery and elbow all the old people out of the way to get to the tomatoes and basil--those things sell like hotcakes. We were happy to get our hands on some but ended up destroying so many of them anyway. So here are the lessons learned during the first six months of our brown-thumb urban gardening.TOP 5 BROWN-THUMB LESSONS LEARNED IN THE FIRST SIX MONTHS

• Lesson #5: Don't plant your lemon and lime trees in terracotta pots. Terracotta clay is too hot for the heat of Houston summers and will likely burn the roots of your trees. We learned this only after we already bought the terracotta pots and planted our dwarf lemon and lime trees in them. All other pots were either ugly or too expensive so we left our trees in them with the hopes that excessive watering will keep the roots cool. (Who said trees can't be fashionable?) Too bad we are probably not watering them as often as we should. The curse of a lazy gardener.
• Lesson #4: Give your tomatoes plenty of room because those suckers are wild. The roma tomatoes were rampant which you think would be a good thing, but we used weak bamboo sticks to hold up the vines a la zip ties, and the result is a crazy looking mess. Better to buy tomato cages and give the tomatoes plenty of space. We planted our Thai and Italian basil too close to the tomatoes, and now the crazy tomato vines have overshadowed the basil and stunted their growth.
• Lesson #3: Make sure you use the right ratio of soil-to-fertilizer for each plant. In other words, check the chemical levels of the soil and fertilizer used because different plants require different ratios. The Black Kow fertilizer was fine for the herbs but virtually burnt our tomatoes. The tomato plant bore scores of little tomatoes but they all had burnt black bottoms, a result of too much nitrogen in their diet, I believe. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
• Lesson #2: Watch your dogs very carefully. My delinquent dogs have been eating all my Thai basil. I didn't even know until I smelled it all over their breath. Why couldn't you dogs at least eat the parsley which is better for your breath and more plentiful anyway? I haven't even had a taste of my Thai basil because they've all gone in my dogs's tummies! And to think I blamed it all on the crazy tomatoes.
• Lesson #1: Don't be lazy about watering. The problem with the Houston heat is it truly makes one lazy. It's so hot and humid outside--we've already hit a record-breaking 100 degrees the first week of June!--that nobody ever wants to venture outside. The downside is our plants are also dying of thirst. The broccoli is probably having a heat stroke right now as I type this. To combat our weariness, my husband rigged a homemade irrigation system: he made a rain water collector out of a garbage can and some piping which he attached to a porous hose that seeps water out through its gauze-like exterior. He also bought a water timer so now promptly at 7:30 CDT every other day, the garden gets a drink.

John is already talking about building another garden bed--the Beta Bed, it would be called. This garden bed would be built from scratch (rather than from the Costco kit) so that exact dimensions are achieved at a fraction of the cost. In this Beta Bed, we will employ all of our lessons learned in the first six months of urban gardening and try our hand at bettering our brown thumbs--maybe they can become beige. We'll use the correct dirt, give plants enough space, use an efficient crop rotation. Check back later for more updates.