Wet and windy

We live near the gap in the mountains where the clouds, heavy with rain, squeeze through. So while all of Albuquerque is dry, we have had terrible wet weather. It has rained every day for 15 days and has been unseasonably cold. This is a bad beginning for our cotton plants. We have had more bugs and more windy leaf damage. However, you can see a good leaf forming in our stunted little plants right in the center. We have a lot of hope for a nice crop. We did lose a lot with the last hail - more than half this year.

So if you have poor looking plants, do not despair. Wait for the warm weather and have a happy surprise.

My tree cotton tale was so sad, I hated to bring it up. The seeds were from Ruth Schooley and I got them just before she died so suddenly. I babied the plant and took it in for the winter since I got the seeds kind of late. When it came back out, it looked fine for a couple of days but we had wind gusts over 60 mpg for several days running. I lost almost every leaf. The plant meant so much to me that I was distraught. But I should have been confident since it is coming back. We had to tie it a lot until leaves came.

Even on branches where the leaf fell off completely, a new one begins.

On the next two photos, you can see the damaged leaves, but good ones are coming out from the crown.

And the other garden plants? They are going ape. Look at the size of these two lavender bushes grown from seed. They are about 1/2 way up the mailbox which is a bit higher than most on the street. The bluish plant on the side is another variety of lavender which is larger than normal for scale.

How is your cotton doing this year?

Bottle garden

We are still covered up here. Cold last night but plants are surviving.

The volunteer poppies are just about done for the year. They will fade out quickly with lovely seed heads.


Started inside but hardened off here, this plant has some true leaves and is ready for a growth spurt.

Pima babies are coming on strong.

We put our last seeds in the garden this weekend. Some Peruvian Brown and some of Judy's nice long brown. We had planted those early but had snow and I think it stopped the seeds. The new ones should come out fine. Oddly, at this point, some seedlings are far along and some just planted but you won't be able to tell who's who later in the season.

Seeds in the ground

Finally it warmed up enough to plant seeds in the soil.
Fiberguy made crisp edges for the bed with a tamper and rake. These will hold a pool of water in, forcing it down deep into the soil. We do this also because we live on a steep slope.


Next the seeds are planted with soda bottles put on every site. Lovely rocks keep the bottles in place from strong blowing winds. The bottles will also protect the plants from bugs and especially hail. It is about 2 weeks to hail season here. Each bottle covers two seeds and gives us some to weed out if everything sprouts.


The green plants on the edge are volunteer poppies just about to bloom. They keep the other weeds down and hold the sides up nicely. Besides, I love how they look with the red blooms swaying in the wind. The poppies started up the street and around the corner and have worked their way down to us. Now we collect the seeds and sprinkle here and there in the backyard, but near the cotton it is all volunteer poppy plants.


Today we put in Pima and green but we still will be planting our three types of brown and a tree cotton. The tree is in fiberguy's office and will need to be hardened off. We are debating whether to leave it in the current pot or transplant it. Cotton is not fond of transplanting.

And so it begins

Planted some of the crop in pots this year. We are still having very cold weather, especially nights so this will be our latest planting yet, I fear. But the little seedlings are popping up nicely. Pima gets planted first due to the very long growing season. Then brown followed by green.