Welcome back to gardening! Not being from your area I can't advise you. I'm sure someone will come along soon and be full of suggestions.

The Forum has been slow since everything kinda went to sleep, but it will pick up again shortly. Keep reading and checking in.

Thanks! I have been on here reading and before I know it Ihave been on for a few hours, lol! I have a better idea now, but I love hearing from gardeners who might have some techniques they have tested out.

Welcome back! I started gardening in the Houston area this past August, and have really enjoyed it.

I've grown some of the same veggies as you mentioned(zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers) and have mostly had good luck. The zucchini have paid off the most, but have also been the most trying (especially with caterpillars). The tomatoes were a bit hard to grow, and squirrels (I think) stole a number of them. I moved them away from the fence and into containers, off the ground. I still have a green pepper plant that seems to tolerate the cold. I've eaten a few peppers right off the plant (using all organic principles) and they were great.

Please keep trying. I really don't spend a lot of time on my garden, but it's worked out. Maybe some simple changes will help, and I'll be glad to try to help too, and maybe learn things in the process! :-)

If you already have the beds in and ready, go ahead and plant your salad stuff...lettuces, cabbages, radish, all sorts of greens, carrots and cilantro. I'm way north of you, but generally this is the best time to grow cool weather crops. If we get an arctic express, you may need to throw a sheet over them until it's a tad warmer but I remember plenty of warm weather in Houston in the winter. Summer crops are just so iffy here. We've been too dry and the summer was just too hot. Tomato seeds should be started inside now and planted as soon as possible to your zone's last frost date...even if you have to cover them in the event of a surprise freeze. This should allow them to be large enough to set fruit before it gets too hot. Melvalena posted a great link to a well amended soil for tomato growing a few days ago.

The Houston area does provide some relatively mild conditions for pushing the seasonability of crops, compared to many areas of the country.

I currently have kale, zucchini, rosemary, green peppers, parsley, as well as newcomers broccoli, lemon thyme, and kohlrabi. I had real good luck with radishes, but they were a bit intense in flavor(hot and spicy), so I won't continue them. The zucchini plants are still producing veggies, but the leaves are getting powdery mildew, and the plants are slowly fading away. But hey, they are called summer squash for a reason :-)

Items that seem to grow too slowly, and that I wouldn't recommend are carrots, kolhrabi, and maybe lettuce and spinach.

JimR36: I tried tomatoes in containers this past summer and the summer before that and they are much harder than when I lived in Dallas. Your garden does sond lovely! I am just starting from the ground up instead of trying the same thing I attempted to do. This website is a goldmine! I have been a computer junkie learning and reading. Are you panning on preserving any of your harvest? I am hoping I will be able to can and jam if everything turns out right!

pkponder: I don't have my beds yet. I am in process of finalizing parameters. I would love to have a winter garden next year though!I will start my tomatoes, thank you! THis past summer was horrific. My baby is so hot-natured to begin with, all he did was wear his diaper, no clothes. He gets cranky when he is warm.

I ended up going to the library and picking up three books. 100 Most Asked Texas Gardening Questions,
a Garden Book for Houston, and Readers Digest Guide to Gardening.I wasn't really planning on doing a garden because of the drought but my husband has started keeping fish as a hobby (we have 5 tanks) and the water changes are a lot of water to just waste. So I plan on, somehow, creating a rainbarrel for the discarded water to use in my beds.

On another note completely, I saw that walmart had blueberries, grapes, and blackberries for about $5 for a small plant of it. I know blackberries do well, but I would love to try blueberries! My son eats blue berries almost everyday so it would be a blessing to have a bountiful plant for him!

Aquarium water is perfect! We water plants with ours too :-)

smdane05 - Sounds really good! I've definitely found gardening to be relaxing and interesting. It's work too, but even that's rewarding. I wish I would have started a long time ago.

I hope you do well with tomatoes. I'm not sure when would be a good time to start those, as they seem to like warmth.
I'll probably start back with them in April or so. I did get a lot of experience with them last summer. I got some good ones, but also had several battles, which I can go into more detail later, if you'd like. As for preserving, I've only dabbled in veggies, and preferring a quick harvest. Maybe this year I can get into fruits.

I've read conflicting information that blueberries are either hard or easy to grow. They're so healthy for a person though that it does makes sense to try and grow them. I'd imagine that they would need more sunlight than veggies.

Books and reference materials do sound like a great way to go, along with these great online forums. I have a Rodale's Illustrated Guide to Organic Farming (think that's the title) with great information, and an herb book.

I too have thought about catching the rainwater, though this past year was certainly not a great one for that. The tricky part around here is making sure the mosquitoes don't get into the water. You know, they'd breed terribly. I haven't seen a water catchment system yet that gets around that, though I have an idea/design to try that might work.

I wonder though about using aquarium water. Doesn't it have algae and bacteria, and/or clorine in it? None of those could be good for a healthy garden. Seems risky to me.

It's important to strive for good materials in everything you use. I recommend going organic as much as possible, and watch for recycled items with a possible checkered past or connection (even through Wal Mart and Home Depot).

I'm still researching the aquarium water use. There is a water conditioner used to zap chlorine. Nitrites would be high since it is fish poop water. I gotta really look into chemistry here. I will say that my front yard is very green from the water, lol! I may end up using it as a supplement water as opposed to primary source. I don't know if having the water sit out in the sun would have any effect on the contents.
Mosquitoes are terrible where I am at. I am leaning more towards organic side of gardening the more I read about it. Good luck with your water idea!

I'm going to try the blueberries in pots first. They need mnore acidic soil so I think it would be easier for me to control the soil chemistry. We shall see how this turns out. It will be a few years before I see any fruit, but my son will be of age to pick the berries by then:)

Okay, yeah. Chlorine might not be an issue. The poop might help, although some kinds are to be kept off the gardens. I do composting, and I know that rabbit droppings are great to have to enrich the compost with nitrogen. [We have a rabbit as an indoor pet] But human poop (diapers anyone?) is definitely a no-no, and is to be kept out of gardens and compost. I think we both have little ones around our homes :-) So there are good kinds and bad kinds. It will be interesting to hear what your research shows on that kind.

Another possibility is to boil the water in batches, then set that aside to cool, and use. That adds more steps, but might increase the possibilities for using that water. As we've seen, this past drought was horrible, and we need to wisely use what we get and have.

That's great about getting started with the blueberries. And the container approach - especially at first - sounds good to better control the pH. I've come to figure out what my garden pH probably is by what has grown well and what hasn't. It seems to be fairly neutral, but slightly alkaline.

I forgot that I do have a pear apple tree and a pecan tree in my backyard. Both are huge, but have not very productive or useful. I guess that's why I've focused on vegetables. But I'm looking forward to giving fruits a try. Maybe blackberries and strawberries down the road, and ultimately blueberries.

Let's keep ourselves updated on things. I'm so glad to be able to communicate with someone else in the area! :-)

That aquarium water will be fine for use on plants as it is. Why pay extra for chemical nitrogen when the nitrates exist in the water already? :-) People pay for fish emulsion :-)

That's what I was thinking PK! Fish emulsion is fish guts and 'fish parts stuff'. Poop water shouldn't be any issue at all to use on plants.

Chlorine dissipates quickly when exposed to sun and air. Which is why pools that use chlorine have to constantly be replenishing it.
You don't even need to give that a second though. I doubt there is much chlorine in fish tank water, if there was it would have killed the fish.

It has been a while since we had fish but pretty sure we declorinated the water.

You should be able to trim the fig as much as you want. I haven't killed mine yet! I would do it soon so you don't lose the spring crop. It will need water to make figs but they don't need as much and other fruit trees.

Jim, I read (somewhere, lol) that pecans are normally sprayed with Zinc in order to get bountiful.

Fish emulsion is what made me think about recycling the water. BUT as it turns out, there is a warning on the food we feed the fish that advises to not use on anything we consume or eat the fish. I hope my research will show it only means eating the fish rather than water.

I know to stay with manure from animals that are herbivores. I already have a contact for some rabbit manure. We all got caught up here with this head cold crap that has been going around. Once we all get caught up, I'll be able to finish planning and start executing!

I've been thinking about using my washing machine water to water as well. I make my own detergent, so there aren't as many chemicals as the commercial ones. One step at a time, right?

Please don't do anything that makes you uncomfortable, but here's a little tidbit that I learned in school.
Plants have a root cap and cambium layer that protect the plant from taking up toxins in their water and the soil.

That being said, when I used gray water from laundry for carrots and radishes, they tasted soapy!

I believe that the warning on the fish food is cautioning you not to sprinkle it on your food, I'm guessing because it's not FDA approved for human consumption. I highly doubt that the conditions that fish food is manufactured under would meet sanitation standards that human food requires.

I'm off the soap box. Good luck with your garden and congratulations on the new baby! :-)

Pam

Here is a link that might be useful: Plant Structure

Good comments above. Thanks smdane05 for the note about zinc and pecan tree's. Zinc is of course a natural element, and it would be perfectly fine to add around the tree.

Someone talked about "chemical" nitrogen, which I guess they mean synthetic nitrogen. Since I'm using organic principles, I'd never use that synthetic fertilizer junk on my garden. There are plenty of natural sources for nitrogen and minerals to enrich the soil, without having to rely on man's chemistry factory. Nature will always do a better job and get it "more right" than man. Enough said! :-)