This is just a general everything mix post to show off how things are going in my backyard garden.
Prologue
I grow in north-east Texas. We experienced extreme stage D4 drought last year. The soils are heavy clay and with summer suns the ground cracks into large fissures and cause extensive foundation damage to homes requiring everyone to water their clay to protect their property’s value (using my method in the backyard I could remove the ground cover in stage D4 drought and no longer see black cracked clay but lighter gray clay completely moist and crack free. I was focusing on my backyard food garden while not the front yard flower garden. I am actually in a HOA and wrangled permission to convert to a covered ground mulch gardening system. I know!
This year my entire seed germination station, was completely dedicated to my front flower garden, a zero additional water garden full of Master Gardener Texas SuperStar selections and a bunch of my own research and selections of native American flowers and plants that should do good in this area or have been grown by Native Americans in the past in this area, etc. My backyard is all food production and experimentation space for new flower selections before deciding to grow them out in public in the front yard. Both yards are zero water gardening style, the front is completely my own method as I’ve never seen it done elsewhere. The backyard is the “orchard” version method of wood chip mulch not the “vegetable” growing method of wood chip mulch, two completely different methods so I have a mix of a known orchard method and my own flower garden method.
New Seed Failure Rates
Just sharing some failure rates to those that may be getting started so they can see what to expect.
I got Kajari Melon from a farmer in Washington that cleaned up the seed before sending it on to companies such as Baker Creek Seeds, etc. I had no time the previous year to grow kajari melons so my seed sat for a year before planting out into the backyard.
I had about 60% transplant failure from the kajari melons. They would refuse to grow and after weeks to just over a month would slowly wither and die. I have a hard Grow or Die mentality and I don’t want these genetics being passed on to the next seed I collect and grow out next season so I was very happy they decided to die and go away so I didn’t have to worry or do any work for them.
I had two plants that decided not to die. But also decided not to grow.
Example Plant#1 - Did not Die, Did not Grow and Develop
But I had almost 40 percent of the plants that not only did not die but exploded into growth. These are the plants whose genetics I want to collect the seed for next seasons planting from.
Example Explosive Growth of the 40 percent
Even nestled within the explosive growth you can see another refuse to die but refuse to grow plant. Grow or Die. I don’t want this plants genetics in the seed collected for next seasons grow.
Example Plant#1 - Did not Die, Did not Grow and Develop
In the foreground is tobacco, I had read the Native Americans grew it in this area and as an experiment I raised a selection of varieties and planted them out and observed. Not only did they grow explosively (with some plants succumbing to my Grow or Die mentality as with Kajari this first season), but I cut them down to ground level and left the roots to decompose in situ in the ground so they could feed the soil ecology and improve the soil. This year I did not plant any new tobacco but I had just under 20 percent of the plants regrew from the roots (we had two severe not normal to this area ice covering the ground freezes this winter). Perennial tobacco?
I am using the leaves of the plant this year to drop around the new plants in case the nicotine in the leaves, a known insecticidal poison, had any benefit to protecting the new plants until they could grow and develop. I have zero hopes this will be effective as the leaves need to be consumed before the insects get nicotine in their system. So its really only giving nutrients back to the yard but I can still have happy wishes about it.
Native and European Grapes
I bought a bunch of native American grape vines and planted them last year along with fruit trees. On a complete whim I said why not and bought one single European grape vine to try as an experiment. European grapes are not supposed to grow well here which is why everyone is growing the native (Muscadine) variety of grapes.
To my astonishment, with my Grow or Die mentality, no watering, no fertilizing, you are on your own plants! The European grape is thriving while almost all the native grape vines died off.
European Grape thrives while grapes native to my state and America died off.
Tiny Fruit Trees with Large Productivity
Dwarf root stocks need not apply! You can do this method without dwarfing root stocks and on the original root stocks of fruit trees. I had a mix of both when buying from the local nursery.
My second plum tree got fully shaded by the single and only okra plant I had of the Choppee variety. Only having single plant grow from a packet of otherwise dud seeds meant I needed that okra plant to not only grow but to thrive and grow fresh new seed for next season, how is that for Grow or Die mentality. Now that I have the seed from this single okra plant my second plum tree can now get full sun light instead of being nearly shaded out completely and get to grow and develop this season. But this is a perfect opportunity for you all to now see the details of how I cut the tree less than a foot off the ground throwing away the majority of the fruit tree which is something I have not found too many folks with the fortitude and willpower to do to trees they spent hard earned money on. I then train out four scaffolds in a roughly plus sign configuration “+”. Those scaffolds will grow and develop horizontally less than one foot off the ground and the new verticals will shoot up from them and keep the tree shrunk down to six feet or even shorter. This means I can, or anyone who does this method can, work the entire tree and harvest all the fruit standing on the ground and without any need for a ladder instead of growing to large twenty to thirty-five foot tall trees only good for feeding the birds, squirrels and other critters and dropping heaps of rotten fruit to splatter all over the ground. After this seasons growth the scaffolds will swell in size and I can remove all the bricks and training rope. As I trim the European grape I throw the leaf trimmings down on the base to decompose with rain and send nutrients back into the yard rather than into the municipal garbage cans.
Tiny Fruit Tree Large Productivity Method first years stage
All the fruit trees get trained by this method. If they have a root stock it goes like this: root stock into the ground, then if they have a grafted scion then the graft goes above ground less than a foot in height then the entire rest of the fruit tree is cut off and discarded unless collecting scions. Then I train off four lateral scaffolds. Then the verticals grow off of the scaffolds. Then I am set for life for a tiny fruit tree that is highly productive since I can work it all through the season at my height caring for it, thinning fruit for optimal individual fruit size, netting individual fruits, etc.
The first plum tree that got full sun last year. You can see how much further along it has grown and developed. I am not letting it fruit this year and instead am allowing vegetative explosive growth to grow thick lateral scaffolds to hold the future weight but you can see the tree will never get taller than this and everything is at my height standing on the ground.
Tiny Fruit Tree Large Productivity Method additional season from first years stage
Tiny Fruit tree method has two separate tree pruning for the method. One in winter time develops the shape of the tree you want. A second pruning in summer time controls the height and growth and ensures everything stays at your working height while standing.
Epilogue
I have lots of other projects keeping me busy. My ultra crossed collard landrace project is in year two and I just started my watermelon landrace project this year using 6 varieties of watermelons of differing watermelon phenotypes. This time I did not have the benefit of farmers cleaning up seeds for commercial companies or friends or landrace buddies to draw from so I bought from the big box stores of America. I would say 97%+ of the plants died. Horrible rates, but expected based on a lot of experience buying big box store seeds in my lifetime. I needed a start and didn’t have time or seeds handy so I just got what I could. Out of 6 entire packets of seeds I have 5 watermelon plants with a Grow or Die mentality of growing but not explosively but not deciding not to grow and just linger around and not die. I have 3 late planted plants in an entirely different section of the yard showing signs of growth, although again not explosively. I will be watching any seed I collect from any successful fruiting very closely to see how any subsequent plantings of seeds performs compared to this very first year of working on building up a landrace.
And one day I won’t be so busy so as to mark down I need to buy some Lofthouse landrace seeds and then end up completely forgetting about them and going without for another year without starting to work on all the beans and all the squash 
Edit: A final reminder that everything you see is a zero water garden, I have not spent a penny watering anything. I have spent not a penny on fertilizer this year, I have spent not a penny on insecticidal sprays this year.
