This blog is a diary to keep track of stuff in my garden in East Austin. Mostly this is a way to organize information learned in the garden. Pictures of common bugs or weeds and their different stages of life. It’s pretty specific to this locale but I’m sure there’s information gardeners from all over can find useful. We’re a zone 8b though since I’m in the city I can get away with some zone 9 plants. My neighbor has two 18 year old grapefruit trees that produce huge amounts of grapefruit yearly. I grow some ornamentals for their predatory insect attracting benefits, but mostly it’s all edibles. Supposedly we get 32″ of rain a year but it’s usually much lower then that, especially since the drought we’re in. Every now and then we get a massive flood to bring our rain average up. Whereas most of Austin is plagued by calicha we’re lucky to live in the former Boggy Creek floodplain. Our soil is pretty high in clay but according to my neighbor who’s lived here for over 30 years it’s the same dirt at least 30′ down. Our tap water averages around 9.5 pH due to all the limestone in Central Texas. Since the winters are usually so mild here we can to grow veggies all through the winter. The drawback is at in the summertime it gets so hot everything but the most adapted plants wither and die.