| By Wardell Miller
Freelance Writer |
Some lifetime East Texas residents said that the summer of 2011 was the hottest and driest year they had ever seen. June and July temperatures felt as hot as temperatures in the Sahara desert. Hot southerly winds blew through these parts non-stop on a daily basis. Any work done outside, especially in the garden, had to be completed early in the morning or gardeners would suffer the effects of too much heat later. Extremely dry weather conditions brought a ban on all outside burning. My several years of successful gardening efforts in the community of Woodlawn came to a halt as 100-degree temperatures and drought made their presence known. By the middle of July my watering efforts ceased due to the lack of rain, low water levels and extreme temperatures. It appeared that everything green withered and died.
I decided to put all gardening activity on hold and plant my fall garden in September to make up for my spring garden failure. The hot, dry conditions still gripped this area into the month of September. As I walked down a row of dried plant debris, a few days before the start of September, I noticed several small green plants had emerged from within the dried brown debris. I never imagined growth of any kind living through two months of such extreme heat. A few days later a light rain shower fell over the area and the small green plants grew large enough to recognize them as collard green plants.
A part of my spring gardening strategy was to obtain transplants for the fall garden by planting Georgia collard seeds on this row. The plants were allowed to mature to about four to six inches in height. Finally, they were relocated to another row and allowed to grow throughout the summer and into the fall gardening season. I had used this routine in previous years with good success and obtained plenty of transplants for the fall garden. Normally, by the first week in November, collards have matured enough to face their first frost. However, all those plans were altered with the historic drought conditions realized.
Collard greens or collards, as they are commonly called, are heat-tolerant in normal Texas summer temperatures. A week or two of 100-degree temperatures in August doesn’t do much harm to their survival. They are known to withstand cold winter temperatures and seem to improve in flavor after exposure to frost conditions. However, drought conditions are somewhat a mystery. I was skeptical as to whether the plants should be relocated to another row. Yet, laying all doubt and skepticism aside, I decided to transplant them to a row to see what would happen to the plants.
The relocation process began after I watered the fragile transplants. Several days later the small plants grew and developed stems large enough so that they could be safely handled and moved. With shovel in hand, I prepared a row containing several holes about six inches deep, three inches in diameter and approximately fifteen inches apart. Each hole was filled with water. The water was allowed to drain into the soil. I carefully removed several plants from their original row and placed them into respective holes. The holes were refilled with the original soil removed. A tablespoon of Mag-lime was sprinkled around each plant and worked into the top two inches of the soil layer with a garden fork. The entire row was watered again and the plants left undisturbed for a couple of weeks. The plants grew vigorously and doubled in size. Finally, a side dressing with a tablespoon of 5-20-20 garden fertilizer was sprinkled around each plant and also worked into the top two inches of the soil layer.
The final results were simply amazing. The start of November yielded collard plants that grew profusely and provided strong sturdy leaves for picking at the time of harvest in December. I had plenty of collard greens to spare and to share with family and friends.
The lesson I’ve learned from this experience is that collard greens can survive through the driest of seasons. The Texas drought of 2011 was extreme in heat and temperatures. However, my garden patch will always have a row of collard greens ready to endure the weather extremes of heat and cold found only in the State of Texas.