Sunday, December 15, 2013

New Winter Garden
It's been about 4 years since we last felt inspired to plant a garden, since the intense summer heat pretty much burned up a lot of our last garden.
This year we decided to try it a lot earlier and I'll be covering the garden before the summer heat wipes things out. We will still have a few nights of frost to contend with, but since there are walls on 3 sides and we can cover the plants, I think it will be easier than fighting the heat.
This years planting includes tomatoes, peas, cucumbers, cabbage, radishes & turnips.
Here are a few shots of our efforts, so far.


Freshly tilled
 Completing the tilling
 +marit runyon
Raking the furrows
 +marit runyon
Planting our 4 tomato plants with a little help from Molly digging behind her.


Tuesday, February 9, 2010

A New Crop

It's been awhile since we last posted for our garden. Basically the summer heat pretty well wiped things out. Our corn, which was close to harvest, burned up and about the only thing that survived were several pepper plants.
This is a photo of our latest crop with some broccoli and several tomatoes of various sizes. We have also quite a bit of Swiss chard.
Be keeping posted as we get additional crops in.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

First Green Bean


Now we are going on 2 & 1/2 months since our finished planting of April 10th and we have our first green bean harvested. Won't make much of a side course with only one bean, but it's a start and there are more on the way. The corn is starting to come along really well and we should have edible corn on the cob sometime before the middle of July, if we're lucky! The stalks are already taller than we are!
There are several beef steak tomatoes in varying stages of ripening as well as a regular harvest of the cherry tomatoes. I think next year we'll plant another cherry tomato plant and double our production there.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Corn & Tomato Plants

Another week has passed and, as you can see the corn & tomato plants are coming along quite nicely. This morning we harvested 2 cherry tomatoes and our first beef steak tomato as well as some more cucumber and some Swiss chard. It looks like we'll have some corn within less than a month and the beef steak tomatoes are starting to really sprout as well.

Below: Explaining to Yoda that we don't need help watering the garden!
Below: Checking out the corn and tomato plants.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Harvest Basket




Here is one of our first harvest baskets at aproximately 6 weeks out from our planting. We are now starting to get at least a small harvest every week and it seems to taste appreciably better since we've grown it ourselves!


Thursday, May 14, 2009

Almost 5 Weeks Growth

Here we are at almost five weeks growth and things are really starting to happen. Our helpers are out inspecting the garden almost every day and Molly has grown fond of sniffing on one of the squash plants every chance she gets!
It almost seems as though you can see a difference in the growth from day to day. Pretty amazing for all of us. As you can see from the pictures we have had several cherry tomatoes and a few radishes as well. We now have a beefsteak tomato or two that are slowly starting to ripen.
I have had to increase the watering by double to 30 minutes, twice a day, as the heat and lack of humidity were starting to wilt some of the tomatoes a bit. The extra watering seems to have helped. (Click Pictures to Enlarge)

Below Right: Molly with Tomatoes & Peppers

Below Right: Cherry Tomato Plant.
Below Right: Yoda & Molly check out the corn.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

One Month's Growth

Our Desert Garden is now at a little less than one month's growth and today we harvested our first cherry tomato. It looks as though we should have a green bell pepper within another week or so. We also have the start of our first beef steak tomato. The corn is a good 16 inches tall as well! We can also see the beginnings of our squash and the peas are starting to really come along. I feel it won't be too long before we are eating something from the garden almost every day! (click pictures to enlarge)

Below Right:
Garden 05/06/2009
Below Right:
Our first cherry tomato!

Monday, April 27, 2009

Strawberry Shortcake on the Way!

It's starting to look like it's almost time to break out the shortcake and cream! Looking pretty yummy! I think about another week and the strawberries will be ready for harvest. I can hardly wait!
Below:
Here is the result of our first harvest!






Saturday, April 25, 2009

The First Bell Pepper

Here is the first of the peppers we planted, a green bell pepper. While it's just a small pepper now, we expect it will continue to flourish in our desert garden as well as be joined by it's cousins, the red, yellow & jalapeno peppers.
It seems every day now there is something new happening in the garden and it is truely exciting to watch Mother Nature do her work! Each morning we look forward to checking what new has been happening there!

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Comparison of Twelve Days

Above: Just Planted
Below: 12 Days Growth (Click Pictures to Enlarge)

This is what has changed in the 12 days since we planted Our Desert Garden with labels on what we've planted this time around. I think the next season we'll add one more row, as there were so many things we wanted to plant but didn't have the watering set up to do it.

Coming on Strong!

Above: Cherry Tomatoes
Below: Corn


Above: Green Beans
Below: Peas

It has been around a week since last posting on the Desert Garden blog and things are really starting to grow! I can almost taste the coming harvest!
Since the heat has been increasing to close to 100 degrees and the humidity around 10% we have increased our watering from 15 minutes, twice a day to 1/2 hour, twice a day. We may have to cut back on that a bit to get it just right, but we will watch it for a few days to determine the right times.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

New Crops Sprouting

Above: Radish
Below: Lettuce

Below: Broccoli

We already have some of our crops starting to sprout from seed! Right now it's lettuce, broccoli & radishes, but at least it looks as though something is going to grow! The radishes are in a pot for the moment till we get them started. We have a space reserved for them once they do grow a bit more.
Still looking for the corn, peas and beans to show their heads above ground, but that shouldn't be all that much longer.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Our 1st Crop




Here is our first tomato as well as our first strawberries in our garden! However we really can't take credit for these tiny crops as they were already showing on the plants when we purchased and planted them!
In all we have planted tomato, corn, squash, strawberries, dill, peas, green beans, radish, lettuce, turnip, broccoli, cucumber, parsley, leeks, red & yellow pepper, red chili, garlic, zuccini and habanero pepper. Out of all this, something should grow if we're lucky!

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Finished and Planted


Now we are finally finished with the plant selection, the layout, the planting and the irrigation setup. It remains to see what ends up growing. The initial expenditures have been quite a bit more than originally planned and, depending on the size of the crop, could end up costing about $2.00 a bite! Ha!
We had .4 inches of rain in the past 24 hours on our freshly planted garden and are really hoping it didn't sustain any substantial damage from the soaking!

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Starting to Plant

Getting plants readyGardening makes me tired!
Planting tomato plants
More preperations

Now we finally have our garden ready and can begin planting! The irrigation system seems to work as it is supposed to and we have decided what we want to plant in our desert garden.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Installing the irrigation system



Since after a bit of research
it was decided a drip
system would be more
effective, I'm doing a bit of reading up on the installation for same. We initially set it to water twice a day.





Below:
My helpers and I testing the drip irrigation system!
















Below:
Watering the vegetable plants.




Bottom:
Creating a path!

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Almost Ready!

Below: Our helpers checking out the fertilizer!


Below Right: Setting up the fence to keep our helpers from digging
up the garden!





Below right: Clearing out some more of the rocks we encountered.























Below right: Taking stock of all the various fertilizers and garden supplements








Below: Some of the plantings for our first crop!










We are almost ready to plant now. We still need to install the drip watering system we've decided on and a layer of growth supplement and then we'll pretty much be set. It's been a bit of work, but so far we're having fun with it. I really think it's going to be at least a year before it will pay for itself, but it seems the taste of home grown can't be beat!

Monday, April 6, 2009

Preparing The Ground

Right: Electric tiller in action!
Below: Removing some buried debris from garden area.















Well. it's been a few days since we have gotten started with our little project. After removing a few small objects from the ground, such as the buried concrete block you can see in the picture and with a bit of encouragement from my 2 fury buddies, we have gotten started. I purchased a small electric tiller for this task. I was initially worried that a small electric would not be up to the task, but it has performed admirably so far! I wouldn't want to use it in a much larger area, but for our situation it's great. Tomorrow we till in the fertilizer and purchase the various plants.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Starting our garden


It would seem that today is the start day for our new desert garden. I have more than a little apprehension for this undertaking since, being a from the Midwest, Indiana to be exact, I haven't much of any idea how gardening works in the Sonoran desert.

We have decided on the spot for our little garden and selected an area of approximately 15 by 25 feet. Our house shades it from the hot, late afternoon sun and it would seem to get about 6-7 hours of direct sunlight.

Today we are going to purchase a garden tiller. We have decided on an electric model as our area is small and I don't really like having to deal with the noise and mess of a gasoline model either. Hopefully it will be powerful enough to turn our somewhat sandy soil and mix in the fertilizer we will pick up at the same time.

Still have to decide on watering system and narrow down what crops we're going to try at the same time. More on that later.