It's June in the desert but that doesn't mean that gardening has to be suspended until the temperatures cool off again. By choosing the right varieties and growing conditions, it is entirely possible to garden through the heat without leaving the hose running 24/7 on the plants. In fact, we found out through a garden seminar at a local nursery last month that it is likely that we've actually been overwatering - and weakening - our plants. We've cruelly cut back on their allowed drinking and the plants seem to be doing fine.
Ok, not all the plants are doing fine. The chard got cooked by the hot sun. If we'd kept it shaded, it would still be going strong, as evidenced by the lovely rainbow chard still available at
the organic mini-farm where I volunteer. Theirs is covered with shade cloth and looks just as bright and green now as mine did several months ago.
Speaking of the garden there, I kept some of the sunflower seedlings I helped thin months ago. Last month, they had grown up to about half the height of my ultra-dwarf Fuji apple.
They kept growing and just started blooming this week. The apple tree in the middle is no longer visible, even though it still has about half an inch on the tallest flower. Note the pretty red poppy down in the right corner.
Note also the ugly piece of plywood behind the fence. We had to wire this up to protect the Brassicas in the 5 gallon buckets from the fierce hot winds we've been having lately.
This is a two week old photo of the herb bed in a half-barrel. My sweetie planted them low in the barrel to get a little extra shade. All these plants have about doubled in size by now. I really must make more recipes with basil and dill!
I can't wait for these tomatoes to ripen.
Does anyone else like to see their tomatoes in bondage? It seems to be working as the little yellow plums off this baby are tasty!
I'm excited about the peppers, too, but I have got to convince my sweetie to plant more of them. How can I call myself "Chile" with this few peppers?!
Remember the
hugerkultur beds I showed you a while back? This is a picture from May. The plant in the back is an Amish pie pumpkin. There are a couple of other small plants in the foreground but they are not thriving like the pumpkin.
This is the same bed in June. You can see the pumpkin has grown. It's put out a few male blooms recently, too. The other plants never did well.
In the second bed, there are three main plants. Watermelon on the front right, another melon in the back, and a black Futsu winter squash on the left. None did as well as the Amish pie pumpkin, but the watermelon in the other bed didn't grow much at all compared to this one.
Here is the bed in June. As you can see, these plants aren't doing much. I think the melon in the back has put out a couple of blooms.
Will we do the hugerkultur again? Probably. The beds do stay moist longer thanks to the wood underneath, although I think the old horse manure holds a lot of moisture as well. The woody brush layer has also prevented pocket gophers from burrowing up under the plants and eating the tender roots.
I think we just need to find which plants thrive in this kind of bed. Blackberries are supposed to like it; we hope to get some cane prunings this winter and we may fill one of these beds with berries. I think it would look really nice to have a blackberry plant totally covering the bed and growing over the chickenwire hoop.
No new pictures of the fruit trees but most are doing pretty well. One of the figs has never looked good since our last freeze and we're not sure it's going to make it. The fierce winds we've been having have also taken their toll on our future harvest. An apple and a plum were blown off their trees this past week. Birds already pecked one of our few early peaches, too.
We did harvest a strawberry already. Sadly, the picture on your screen is just about lifesize since this is an Alpine Strawberry, which surprisingly does well in the heat here. The strawberry, however, was smaller than the fingernail on my pinky and didn't have spectacular flavor. The other disadvantage of this variety is that it does not send out runners like regular strawberries. What you see is what we've got.
We hope to expand the garden this winter and keep getting better and better at making it work.
8 comments:
Oh Chile - send us some of your heat, please. This was the first day I haven't had to light the woodstove - I went out to rake up drills and got attacked by black flies due to all the rain we have had this spring.
All I got planted were onions and spinach before I was driven inside by the little critters.
You are so far ahead of us in the north!
I would worry about planting so many sunflowers with the apple tree - they are quite greedy.
I'd be happy to send you both some of our heat. Our mosquito season will be starting soon, on top of the usual scorpions.
Are sunflowers greedy for water or nutrients? This tree hole has LOTS of nutrients so I'm not too worried about that. It gets watered deep about every 10 days and lighter waterings every 3-4 days depending on temperature and wind.
None of my pumpkins are doing much of anything either but dang, look at your peppers!! I'm officially jealous.
Interesting about your Hugelbeets, in our shade one, we are growing greens and the onions are crazy about them, in the big full sun one, the melons, squash and cucs are in love with it..
I am on a working holiday out west but DH told me that the onions liked it so much that they were up and 3 inches tall within a week.
I will post photos and drop you a note when I get home and can see things for myself. If you do find some things are better then others, I would be quite interested in hear's about it.
We are really hot an humid on the farm with the typical rain storms that move in on the evenings.
Sounds like your winds would be very drying, along with the heat.
We had over 2 inches of quarter sized hail last night so you can imagine the state of our garden. It's off to the nursery I go!
I'm trying alpine strawberries for the first time this year. It's true, they don't send out runners, but they can be grown from seed. I believe they need a freezing period in order to germinate, so you might not get any volunteers in your climate, but if you save some of the seeds, you could grow more with some effort. They are supposed to be difficult to grow from seed, but I didn't have too much trouble. I froze the seeds for 2 weeks first, then soaked them in a shot glass filled with water overnight. Then I planted them in starting mix in small pots, covered the pots with clear plastic to keep moisture in, and put them in a sunny place until they sprouted. I took the plastic covers off when they sprouted, which was usually within a week. I got about 80% germination doing it that way.
As for the flavour, maybe it's because it was the first strawberry? So far I've found the first strawberry from a plant doesn't taste so awesome, but it seems to improve as the plant grows.
I chopped up the first pepper for an Indian potatoes & peas dish last night. It was just right - not too hot.
So far, only one zucchini has set among the various squashes. The pumpkins are blooming like crazy but not both males and females at the same time. Harrumph.
From what I've read about hugerkultur, the beds get better and better over time, so I'm not giving up yet.
We sometimes get hail, which really tears up the plants!
Jess, thanks for the info on the alpine strawberry germination. We'll try it if they set any more berries. Right now the plants are looking very, very stressed with the heat so we're just hoping they'll survive.
By the way, the next couple of berries were tastier than the first.
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