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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.