Comments on: BCC Gardening Challenge

By: colleeeen

colleeeen — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:26:37 +0000

i’m ahead of your game! my indoor seeds are already started – goodness, peas are really primeval and they just seem to want to live so much more than any other seedlings do. i really should already have crops in the ground but this is our first year as adults when we have had a real yard that we could DO anything with. the previous tenants let everything go wild for 8 years and we are still clearing out the old growth and amending the soil.

we’re doing tomatoes, carrots, onions, lettuce, melons, gourds (for the kids), peas, beans, artichokes, cucumbers and herbs.

By: Lynne

Lynne — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:18:46 +0000

Oh, and one last bit of advice. Do not plant using furrows and hills-they work best in heavy rainfall areas or if you are using heavy machinery-but they are murder on desert gardens. Instead use flat beds (the garden bed is flat with no high or low spots and surrounded by a berm to keep the water in) or use raised beds (ie square foot garden).

By: Lynne

Lynne — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:52:17 +0000

Meems
This may be way more than you asked for, but here some advice from a desert rat.
I’m not exactly sure where you are, but the key to gardening in the desert is lots and lots of compost and mulch and you need to reorient your seasons a bit. You have to think of mid-summer as a type of winter-a lot of plants just can’t hack 117F and 0% humidity. Those that can should be as mature as possible before the furnace starts to blast. So you really have to think of desert gardening as having two short main growing seasons-fall and spring with two “dead times” (the height of summer before the summer rains and the depth of winter when temps fall below freezing) when only a few plants can survive (at least not without a lot of extra effort). The best thing about low desert gardening is that you can grow stuff year-round if you plan carefully by keeping those “dead times” into mind. You should always choose plants that mature quickly, since the ideal growing seasons are so short. Spring also starts much earlier, so be sure to find out the last average frost day in your area. You want to get your frost tender plants in as soon as possible in the spring or you should wait until early fall. Since your soil is sandy, you will have to water more frequently (lots of compost and mulch reduces water frequency), just be careful that you do not water so much that you turn your garden into a salt pan or drown your plants.
Depending where you are, you may be able to plant some cool season plants now, but it is mostly just too late for lettuce, peas etc, but you probably can get in a crop of radishes, and maybe carrots. Instead, you want to plant your cool season plants in the fall and winter (fresh salad from the garden all winter is a great desert-living perk). Right now is the time to plant tomatoes, but do it soon. Tomatoes will not produce in the heat of the summer, so plant tomatoes with the shortest days to harvest as possible (ie cherry tomatoes). It is really hard to grow beefsteak type tomatoes in the desert, so I would not even try. If you plant your tomatoes too late, they may not produce until fall, if they survive summer. The heat is just way too hard on them. When it gets really hot, tomatoes could also use a little shade. You can erect a shade cloth in the summer to give them a break from the afternoon sun, or plant them in tubs and move in them into light shade in the summer. The light shade of most desert trees is a great place for potted plants in the summer. Now is also a good time to plant corn, squash, melons, pumpkins and sunflowers. It’s best to plant your garden so that tall plants (sunflowers and corn) are able to provide late afternoon shade to the other plants. As a final word of advice, get books specific to gardening in the desert or you can look up your local Master Gardener. Gardening books geared to temperate climates are mostly useless.

By: sam

sam — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:10:26 +0000

Sand is perfect for carrots. You can get 2 crops in a year if you plant them early in warm places. You’ll probaby have to add a little soild and nutrients to the sand, depending on the sandiness. But the sand lets the carrots dig deep! I have to buy sand to plant my carrots in…

By: sam

sam — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:09:21 +0000

I have a 20ft by 15ft garden. We grow corn, watermellon, red pepers, jalepenos, tomatoes (3 types), onion, carrots, snow peas, green beans, lettuce, potatoes, and various herbs. We also have a a bunch of fruit producing trees, but so far all we’ve gotten are plumbs.. oh and a pumpkin patch for halloween. But I live in rural Utah (moved from the cities back east) so its practically required of me! People come by with their tractors and till your backyard in the spring for free, so its pretty much assumed you’ll plant one…hah.

By: meems

meems — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:38:26 +0000

We have a small yard with plenty of room to grow something, but we live in the desert and our soil is super sandy. In the summer it gets well into the 100s. Any suggestions of how to grow anything in this climate? We're new to it.

By: jose

jose — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:13:28 +0000

No problem Ronan. I’ve got a fine English garden. I mow it once a week in the summer. Is this what SWK meant?

By: Chad Too

Chad Too — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:12:30 +0000

Oh, and for those who don’t have land of their own, check with your local stake president. Many times the Church buys land in advance if they anticipate an area will need a building in the future and the land just sits there. Your SP might give permission to plant a garden as long as there are no immediate plans to build.

By: Chad Too

Chad Too — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:08:07 +0000

Funny this should come up today. I spent the entire morning tilling the backyard under (the grass seeds planted the day before a July closing in the middle of the Great SouthEastern Drought never stood a chance). The blueberry, blackberry, and lingonberry bushes, along with the flowering cherry, fruiting nectarine, and fruiting nashi all arrive on Thursday in anticipation of a Friday planting.

Last Saturday was spent building a planter-box for my 11-year-old son to fill with ever-bearing strawberry plants. He named the plants after the classes he takes at school right now. We’re expecting a lot of yield from the plant named “Sex Ed.”

By: Steve Evans

Steve Evans — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:04:27 +0000

mmiles: yes.