Who is growing vegetables in the Southwest? How do you battle the elements of our dry climate and hot sun? What type of soil do you have? I have very sandy soil with a slightly high ph here in southern Colorado. Altitude here is very high, and it's a dry alpine desert area. I have been researching Hugelkulture to enable less watering in subsequent years, but haven't built my first bed, yet.
Pic: My little chickadee fertilizer makers.
I use raised beds 11" deep filled with 8" of pure compost and then 2" of bark mulch. Everythings on a timed drip system with soaker hose in the beds and each gets 10 minutes of irrgation daily.
frogymon, that sounds like a nice system with the 2 inches of mulch to keep the roots cool. I set out sweet potatoes yesterday in a bed, but last night it got down to 25 degrees. I had covered the bed, but I'm dreading taking that cover off. I covered everything. Hopefully some of it survived. The hard part, here, is it gets so warm during the day and so cold at night. If I was younger, I'd dig a 5' deep greenhouse and top it with glass. I did keep some of my tomatoes inside, thank goodness.
Sounds like you need to hire someone with a backhoe to dig that hole for you.
Yep, frogymon. I have a lot of large lilac bush hedges and large elm and Russian olive trees, plus an old crabapple, so the roots are everywhere. That would be a major endeavor, just from the trenches I have in the greenhouse. 2" roots. My sweet potatoes froze last night, so I uncovered them today, snipped off the frozen leaves, and watered them, hoping they'll grow back. We'll see. Did the same for the scarlet runner beans. Received 100 strawberry plants today, too, and put them in the refrigerator. Hopefully I can plant them in a few days. My neighbor says everytime she looks at the yard, I've built something new (to plant in). The only really sunny place has grass, so having to dig up grass to make beds (the chickens love it, though). Can't wait 'til June.
Oh for cool weather! But I sure understand how frustrating it can be to grow stuff when the night temps get low --- we have that here in the winter time and work to cover tender plants at night, uncover them so the ground can heat up with the sun during the day, then cover them at night. Good luck! Have you thought about growing in pots? You can grow a lot of different veggies just fine in pots! Root veggies especially like the nice potting soil.
Salace, you have cooler nights and longer cool periods than us here in No. AZ at 4800 ft. We do have the hot days coming (still cooler than the days in SoCal where I came from) and all is very dry and, at least this month, very windy. This is my first year here and just stating to TRY to garden on this 2.5 acres that has never had anything planted in the ground. And except for the deck with whacky plywood sheets for decking, there is not hardscaping either. I have small areas fenced in against predators and working on planting, but VERY LITTLE in ground. The ground is very solid, filled with good size rocks and then about 8-12 inches down you hit caliche clay - which I thought was concrete buried in the ground!
Here is blurry shot from last weekend after the 2 apple and one peach trees went in the ground. The apricot tree is in the 1/2 barrel. So far, in the straw bales are 8 different tomato plants, 3 diff peppers, pole beans, 2 diff. squash. Still to go in are cukes, onions, and pepper. Wanted to try potatoes in one, but standing on end like some are, instead of flat, is taking too long to get soft inside. We will see. I have brussels sprouts and swiss chard in containers in a corner that get the first shade, so cooler. On the chairs are window boxes planted with seeds for short carrots, radish, flowers and some onions. Of the 4 boxes planted, barely a few have germinated. So hard to keep them moist. Will try again. I made the raised bed on a whim and am pleased at getting one in for $14! I have chicken wire and cardboard boxes under it and will plant in the blocks also. Already in are a watermelon and some green melon from small pots. Have a pumpkin and herbs to go in there too and will try more seed. I like the block bed as it can have height added or be reconfigured. And, it is so easy to put a plant into, Beats digging the hole in the bale and the dirt is not even an option.
The front yard enclosure has everything but butterfly bushes in pots. And they look like they want back in their pots, lol. Edibles there include one cherry tomato, one grape, one blackberry and 2 blueberry pots. When I asked about putting the blueberries in the ground, the nursery said keep them potted what with our alkaline soil and even to use gypsum on the bales and tops of containers as the water is alkaline too. Wonderful!
The last shot shows before apple tree went in the ground and before I tied the chairs to the fence to put window boxes on them.
Crista, I do have a lot of pots I grew much in, last year. The avocados are still in pots in the house. A couple of years ago, I bought four of those big blue Rubbermaid rectangular plastic tubs and things grew amazingly well. It was on the concrete pad in front of the garage - lots of heat - with squash, tomatoes, and peppers. The second year in those tubs I had them in the yard on dirt, and they did not do well at all. I'm slowly building raised beds, and want to try Hugelkultur this year. I have a few Russian olive logs to start with, and a bunch of elm twigs, leaves, and hay as some filler. I also will try using wood shavings and chicken litter in the raised beds. The chicken litter should replace the nitrogen lost with the wood shavings. To that I will add compost, some native sandy soil, perlite, and vermiculite. The plants will surely tell me if they don't have enough nitrogen, lol. The Hugelkulture bed will run east-west so the north side I will plant with shade loving flowers, probably celosia. I just love the idea of having flowers on all levels - a mass of flowers and greenery - towering 4 to seven feet. After the second year, Hugelkultur beds are supposed to not need a lot of water, as the rotting wood absorbs and holds moisture.
I have a Chiquita pineapple I bought at the store suspended in a narrow glass of water on a kitchen shelf that has 5 inch-long roots growing out of the bottom of the green top that I cut off the pineapple. Gonna have to pot that baby up one of these days soon. My garden this year will be split up between outside soil and inside hydroponics. I have some tomatoes and eggplant about to bloom in the hydroponics inside. It's just vermiculite and perlite (started in solo cups with holes in the lower side or bottoms) hand watered twice a day with a weak nutrient solution (called Grow Big by Fox Farm). The 'maters are now in a big tub but I need to transplant that eggplant out of the cup into a bucket. A portable grow platform is in the works to roll plants in and out of the garage. Will update you on that as it progresses.
Quiltygirl, you are SO creative! I have very alkaline soil and probably water, too. So far, I've just used Epsom salts on the garden. Iron sulfate on the grass (what's left of it, after converting so much space to garden) makes it a rich dark green. I haven't been taking care of the grass like I should, lately, though. Just starting to water it. I know the farmers in this area use a lot of gypsum, so I might eventually try that too. My organic wheat (the news today out of Oregon, though, was that everything could possibly be contaminated with GMO wheat - argh) bales were out all winter, but they're still really dry and tight, so I put some chicken litter, vermiculite, compost, and soil from the greenhouse on top of the bales and planted corn, squash, some white-meat watermelon, sunflowers, and runner beans in the mixture. I put a cattle panel hoop between two sides of bales leading to the side yard, and will transplant my scarlet runner beans to go over the hoop. Behind it in the side yard is a volunteer Aspen grove and I plan to grow strawberries and flowers along a natural curvy path the trees made. I have visions of it someday looking good, lol. Right now, not so much.
Now I know it first hand- throwing some old barley straw on the ground, dropping potatoes on it, and covering with more straw really works. Potatoes are up and seem to be very happy! No soil! Only under the bottom layer. I threw some cabbage and flowers seeds around and in the potato patch, and they're coming up, too. Will make a quasi-hugelkultur bed near them, out of wheat straw bales from last fall. They sat out all winter, so are already cooked. I'm using some of the bales for corn and squash on one side of a cattle panel arbor, and on the other side, okra is planted. I soaked the okra after scarifying (roughing them up a bit on a file edge) them and they came up in three days on one group I planted. I discovered that if you top the seeds with vermiculite and maybe some compost (I used Happy Frog soil conditioner), the seeds stay moist longer and sprout quicker. The vermiculite also absorbs the nutrients you add, so that's a win/win, I think. The strawberries I planted without soil, into the wheat bales are already blooming. I just dug out a little hole in the bale, tossed a little wet vermiculite in, and planted each strawberry. I gave them some fertilizer last week, and they seem content. I did plant another patch in the ground, and some in a small hugelkultur bed. They're all living. Now, if I can just find a place to put the rest of them- they're getting mighty tired of sitting in the refrigerator.
Hugelkulture, for those who are not familiar with it, is a method of making a high (or even a low) mound, with layers: wood in the middle, stacked up and covered with soil and compost. The benefits are many, but the two main ones is they're long-term water savers (not as much watering, if any), and a hill can be good for privacy, if needed. Many things can be grown on different levels, from root crops to trees.
