God's Bountiful Blessing!

Ok, so everybody who has a veggie garden is posting summer pics on their blogs right now, but I'm going to do my own anyways.  Gardening in the deserts of the southwestern US can be challenging to say the least, but the second year into this attempt has actually given us some quantifiable results.

The biggest success (and blessing) has been the tomatoes.  Up till now, we have never been able to do very well with them.  This year, we have really gotten quite a lot.  We are still trying to figure out how to keep the tops from splitting and the bugs and birds from thieving, but we have enough to harvest and eat every day.

We sort of stumbled on to a solution that keeps the hot desert sun from just cooking them on the plants, without rigging shade screens.  I suppose tomatoes are supposed to be planted 3-4 feet apart in order to keep them from growing together.  Well, ours are about a foot apart.  We affectionately call it 'the tomato mass'.  It makes them a little bit difficult to get to, but they seem to be self-shading.  We are actually able to get a fair percentage of un-split fruit out of them.

We have also gotten some decent cucumbers too, although we seem to be having a battle over them with mildew.  It has been attacking the leaves.  Removing the affected leaves seems to help, but we are having to remove so many of them, they are really sad to look at.

We also have had elephant garlic (already harvested), and onions.  Still waiting to see what the taters do.  We aren't even sure how they will do here.  The plants themselves look great though.

We have some corn that is fixing to bear:

We now also have a few melons and cantaloupe starting:

The spaghetti squash was a big fail, not sure why.  Probably not enough direct sunlight.  The zucchini are growing great plants, but are failing to produce any female blossoms.  Pumpkins seem to be battling with the leaf mold as well...

However, we did have this tasty garden medley for lunch.  Sliced cucumbers, onions, and tomatoes.  The only thing store bought was the Italian dressing.  Yum!

Of course all the peelings and such are headed back out to the compost bin.

A couple of take-away lessons that we have learned so far about desert gardening:

1. Can't say enough about soil preparation.  There is a lot of nutrient material in the desert, most of it was sea-floor at one time.  The problem is alkalinity.  Lots of fertilizer and mulch can neutralize the ph, or you can treat the ground with muriatic acid.  Be very careful when using the latter method, as it can be very dangerous.  The former method is better and more rewarding in the long run.

2. Irrigation:  It's dry in the desert, fact of life.  A once or twice a day watering with the hose just doesn't get that moisture down to the roots where it needs to go.  Water evaporates right out of the upper layers of soil too fast.  Deep watering is critical.  We put in a drip irrigation system with soaker lines for about 40 bucks,  and the plant life has simply exploded!  Also it's a bit easier on the wallet when the water bill comes due, unless you have a well.

Well, that's about it for now.  Stay tuned for further updates.

Free Food!

Well, free of charge, but I've worked for it.   For the record, I've loved every minute!  I loved all except for the failures of a beginner, the decimation of my lettuce by some kind of a critter, and the withering away of my squash and some of my cucumbers due to, best I can figure, lack of pollinating bees.  I learned too late for the spaghetti squash that I could go out and pollinate them myself with a small paint brush or something.  They had already quit producing anything and withered away.  I'll know next time and head it off at the pass.  I  love it.  Love my garden. :-)


The green beans have been a disappointment.  They looked fairly nice but they didn't give us too much to eat.    The melons are suddenly growing like crazy.  They must be heat lovers. The gourds, too. They are climbing and beautiful.  The potatoes are still just sitting there, pretty, green and growing.  We'll see how they do one of these days, I guess.  They are taking longer than I realized they were going to take. I'm getting impatient!  The blackberry is beautiful.  It should produce something for us by next season.  The  onions are great, the chard is great. The whole thing is beautiful!


I think planting our tomatoes in the "mass" turned out to be a blessing.  The greenery and the fact that they all grew together is actually protecting the fruit from the harsh sun.  We have been getting anywhere between three and maybe eight tomatoes a day out of there.  In the past they would  burst on the vine before they had a chance to ripen, but this year we've had some wonderful, red tomatoes.  I'd say only about a third have split, and not too badly.  They are ripe and delicious!


The mass is getting really big, so I went out with some tomato tape to raise up some of the heavy, sprawling branches. I picked up this tape at the hardware store and it's a bit like velcro, for lack of anything better to compare it to.  It sticks to itself, and it's reusable.  It's also very handy, I might add.  Anyway,  when I raised them all up and taped them to the supports I could see bunches and bunches of green tomatoes!  Lots!  Dozens!  Maybe a hundred or more!  That's so exciting!  We are all huge tomato lovers here.  I doubt any will go to waste.


My corn is getting big.   Some of the ones that came up volunteer early on are probably as high as my shoulders.  I planted two more rows,  both on the same day, and for some reason one row is about hip high, the other only to my knees. It could be that one row gets just a bit more shade than the other.  I'm not sure.  I think I  have a cat coming over the fence at night and getting into them, too, because I wake up many mornings to some of the stalks leaning heavily to one side or the other.  I just prop them back up with dirt and so far it seems to be okay.


I'd say we have a 'trickle' garden. I get a little of this and a little of that trickling in every day.  It makes for a wonderful snack or addition to our dinner, and something fresh to eat every day!  It is absolutely wonderful, but I am beginning to wonder if there will ever be a big 'harvest day' for canning and drying and freezing.  It's probably just as well until we move, because I have such limited space here, and no really good place to process anything.  If I actually do get a sudden burst of produce you can bet I'll figure out how to handle it, though.  I have a couple of small dehydrators and quite a few jars; more than I'll use for a garden this size even if it all comes in at once.  I have a water bath type canner. I will need to get a big pressure canner, but I was just hunting an excuse to go get one of those anyway.


So, on that note, I'll leave you with a little funny I heard once:   


"My grandma used to can a lot when I was growing up.  I never could understand why she did it during the hottest part of the summer, though."


Be blessed!

Live It!

When asked recently if I would attempt the skywalk at the Grand Canyon, my answer was an emphatic NO.  Well, today I had ample opportunity to eat my words.  Right up until the time we were to enter, I was still somewhat reticent to go.  I have always had problems with heights.  I would not claim to be acrophobic per se, but vertigo can be a problem.  I see it this way:  Most of your life is spent with a fairly fixed field of depth perception.  The land, the sky, the horizon is fairly constant.  Your brain gets used to it, and you suffer little discomfort.  To ascend to a great height and look down, challenges this fixed perception, and things tend to get a little weird. Realizing this however, does not help much when faced with it.

All that to say this:  After debating with myself, I reasoned that I may never pass this way again.  So I went for it.  Fear might be a little bit of an extreme way of relating what I went through, but beyond that, it's difficult to describe.  Mentally, I was able to catalog the facts.  This thing is built stouter than most bridges that we drive across.  It's capable of supporting 71 million pounds.  The glass (that you walk on) is laminated 5 layers, several inches thick, and is capable of stopping bullets.  Still, there is something very surreal about looking straight down between your feet- for 4007 feet!

Would I do it again?  Hard to say.  On the surface, I'd have to say no.  But Having already conquered the beast, maybe.  Of course this little day-vacation is typically a bit on the cost prohibitive side, at about 75 clams or so, per person.  But today, being the 10th anniversary of it's opening, the local Hualapai Tribe (on whose reservation it is located) opened the attraction up to the public for free.  Many thanks to those friendly native Americans for sharing this once in a life time experience.  Also in the mix, they put on quite a spread for lunch.  So we spent our midday meal perched at a picnic table on the cliff edge near Guano Point.

All in all, it was a pleasant day out with the family and our church group.  It's about 75 miles north of Kingman AZ on the western edge of the Hualapai Indian reservation, near Meadview.  All but about 15 miles or so of the trip is paved.  Helicopter tours are also available.  So if you are looking  for a day trip and have a bit of cash to invest,  get ready for an adrenaline rush, and GO!