My First Snap Pea!

Every morning I check on the garden to see if anything has changed. I have always heard "a watched pot never boils", and I was starting to believe it.

Imagine my surprise when I walked outside this morning! Growing out of the center of a perfect white flower is a sugar snap pea! An edible gift from the garden! And there are three more sugar snap peas developing on this plant. I am so excited I could burst.

My only regret is that this plant was not grown from a seed I planted. I will keep watching the baby pea plants I started from seed and see if they flower anytime soon. It would be great to make a meal out these yummy little peas.

Vegetable Inventory

Today I bought more transplants. I shouldn't have added to my collection of plants, but the tomatoes at the local nursery were many weeks ahead of my seedlings and I am an impatient girl. I think I need to take inventory to have a realistic idea of how to handle this garden of mine.

In the garden: 9 Sugar Snap Peas (from seed) 9 Pole Beans (from seed) 6 Spinach (transplant) 6 Iceberg lettuce (transplant) 3 Zucchini (from seed) 1 Basil (transplant) 1 Tomatillo (transplant) 1 Roma Tomato (transplant) 1 San Marzano Tomato (transplant) 1 Champion Tomato (transplant) 1 Yellow Bell Pepper (transplant) 6 Marigold Flowers (transplant) 6 Red Leaf Lettuce (transplant) 4 Red Oak Leaf Lettuce (transplant) 6 Romaine Lettuce (transplant)

In containers: 1 Peppermint (transplant) 1 Best Mint (transplant) 1 Cilantro (transplant) 1 Jalepeno Pepper (transplant) 2 Red Potato (from seed) 1 Russet Potato (from seed) 1 Snap Pea (transplant) 1 Dwarf Myer Lemon Tree 1 Dwarf Orange Tree

Look at that list! And I still have many seedlings inside waiting to be transplanted.

9 Cucumber
6 Zucchini
9 Luffah Gourds
7 Basil
5 Bell Pepper
2 Jelly Bean Tomatoes
11 Cherry Tomatoes
5 Better Boy Tomatoes
4 Roma Tomatoes

I might need another raised garden...or a small farm. :(

How many zucchini will one plant produce?

I don't know if it is too early to start thinking about food preservation, but I am. It is only March, and the garden is in its infancy. The lettuce and spinach I transplanted a couple weeks ago are obviously too small to harvest. The pole beans and snap peas I planted are no where near ready to produce. I have 9 zucchini plants started, 3 are in the garden. Last week my father saw all of my seedlings and, with a hearty laugh, said "Do you know how many zucchini one plant will give you??!!" This was another hint that I may have planted too much. I think I should invest in some canning supplies and learn about freezing, dehydrating, and root cellaring. If I plant all of the seedlings I have sprouted and they produce vegetables, I will be knee deep in tomatoes and zucchini!

I found that the folks at Storey Publishing have many, many books on homesteading and self-sustainable living. I have purchased my first book on food preservation called "The Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home" by Janet Chadwick. I spent today studying the information about the equipment I will need to can, and what to do with all of this zucchini.

Some of my options are:

1. Eat them fresh.
2. Slice and freeze on a baking sheet, then bag.
3. Shred and freeze in usable portions for breads.
4. Pickle them bread and butter style.

It will be interesting to see how much success I have with this year's garden. I am optimistic. I can't wait to try all of the preserving methods in my book.

Rain Water Harvesting-Part 1

I have lived in the Sonoran Desert for 30+ years and have never given water conservation any thought. Ironically, I owe my awareness of water as a precious commodity to my godparents who live in the northeast, not the desert southwest. On a recent visit, I was surprised to hear that they are afraid their well will run dry. They live in an area of the country that I consider "wet". Water flows under their bridges and rain falls frequently. How could it be that water is so scarce in an environment like that? And if it is scarce there, why are we using it so freely in the desert where it is even more scarce?

During my visit I learned that they harvest rainwater in barrels and it made me think about trying it at home. I have gotten very serious about it since starting my little garden. So until my husband and I get the gutters on the house, I am using 8 five gallon buckets from Home Depot to collect rain water.  I simply place them under a drip from the roof and watch them fill up.

The results? I had 40 gallons of water in less than an hour during a light steady rain. It blew me away that it was that easy to do and we could collect so much so quickly! I have used this water on all of my plants in the yard and garden for the past 3 weeks and I still have 20 gallons left.

In Part 2 of Rain Water Harvesting, I will show the new gutters and the rain barrels that we are going to install. There are many choices when it comes to rain barrels. There are giant cisterns and smaller rain barrels that are easier to move around. I have read that during a good storm I can collect up to 600 gallons from my roof. My tiny yard can't handle a water barrel that big, but I could harvest a couple hundred gallons comfortably. I expect that we will have a good harvest of water this monsoon season!

How to Build an Easy Drip Irrigation

In an effort to maintain a consistent watering schedule and conserve water, my husband and I created a fairly simple irrigation system that we can set on a timer. Here is a photo of our system...

What you need to build your own:

• 1-6 foot garden hose
• 1-hose end piece that will stop water from coming out the end
• 2-50 foot soaker small irrigation hose
• 1-packet of irrigation hose plugs
• 1-packet of barbed irrigation hose connectors

We also purchased this strange little tool that holds the barbed connectors while you push them into the garden hose. I'm not sure this is necessary. If you talk with people in the plumbing department of your local home improvement store they can help you find what you need.

Here's how we built it:

1. We laid the garden hose over the end of our raised garden to mark the spacing of each soaker hose that will run the length of the garden. We marked it with a pen.
2. We used a nail to puncture the garden hose on each pen mark so we could insert the barbed irrigation connectors.
3. We inserted the barbed irrigation connectors into the garden hose.
4. We measured out lengths of the irrigation soaker hose and cut it using scissors.
5. Then we connected the soaker hose to to garden hose by pushing the barbed connectors in the end of the soaker hose.
6. We then used the irrigation hose plugs to plug up the ends of all the soaker hoses.
7. We connected one end of the garden hose to a long garden hose that ran to the backyard faucet, and connected the other end to the cap that prevents the water from running out the other end.
8. We laid it across the width of the garden and placed the soaker hose where we wanted it.
9. Turned on the water and watch the magic.

 

In the photo above, you can see the end cap we purchased. Its the bronze color metal at the end of the garden hose. I think there is a smaller version that is not as enormous but we couldn't find it. Also you will notice that we attached the garden hose to the garden bed. This keeps the hoses in place since our garden hose is 6 feet long and our garden is only 4 feet across. I should mention that there are a variety of irrigation kits that you can buy online or at a store. These probably have great instructions and are built to fit together. This might be a good option too.

The next step will be to mulch heavily in preparation for our summer heat. I am told that mulching will keep the moisture from evaporating in the summer.

Starting Seeds Indoors

It was mid-February. The temperatures were in the 60's during the day. The usually dry desert was getting rain every week. But we were still getting frost warnings at night. *Sigh* What's a girl to do?

BUY SEEDS!! And start them indoors!

I headed out to my local Lowe's, yet again, with money in hand, to buy seeds and one of those cheap little seed starting greenhouses. It was the most exciting part of this gardening adventure so far. I went wild and purchased three 72 cell greenhouses and about 10 packets of seeds. Is that a lot of seedlings for a 12'x4' garden? Yes. Did that thought ever enter my mind? No. And the craziest part is I have collected MORE seeds since then! I just counted 30 packets of seeds!

I brought my greenhouses home and planted a lot of seeds. Here is a list of what I planted:

• Basil
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Spinach
• Carrots
• Bibb Lettuce
• Romaine Lettuce
• Zucchini
• Luffah
• Sugar Snap Peas
• Pole Beans
• Cucumber
• Bell Peppers
• Roma Tomatoes
• Better Boy Tomatoes

I watered the soil; covered the trays with the plastic greenhouse covers; and set them under my overhead stove lights to germinate. This was my first mistake. While my seeds sprouted very quickly, they had to stretch tall to reach the light because my stove lights were much too weak to provide the light they need — at least that's my theory. The lettuce was the first to bite the dust. It grew so tall that it fell over and died. Then the carrots died. There is a lot to be said for reading the directions. Apparently carrots should not be started inside and transplanted as you can see from the tray below that I have named the "Carrot & Lettuce Graveyard".

I have made a list of changes I will make when I start seeds next time.

1. I will only plant one seed in each cell. I planted several in each cell and it got out of control.
2. I will invest in a table top grow light which will give the seedlings better light.
3. I will READ the directions on the seed packets and follow them.

Lessons learned! The larger seeds like the cucumber, luffah, zucchini, peas, and pole beans have done very well. In fact, I have transplanted the all of them except the cucumber and they are doing well. The tomatoes are starting to get their true leaves but are starting to fall over because they are so tall. And the bell peppers took a long time to sprout.

My grandmother says that all danger of frost should be gone by March 17th in the desert. I plan on transplanting the tomatoes on that day.

2010 Gardening

Welcome to my little garden!

Its March already and I think its the perfect time to transform my small backyard into a food producing oasis in the desert. I have wanted a proper vegetable garden for so long. This year I convinced my husband to participate by introducing the possibility of using POWER TOOLS to build a raised garden. Worked like a charm! I could see his blue eyes sparkle in anticipation.

So, I set off on a journey to my local Lowe's and found a book called "All New Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew. I purchased the book because it had great photos showing the building of a raised garden, but as I read, I realized Mr. Bartholomew has a whole methodology for gardening in small spaces that seems do-able for a novice like myself. It involves a magic mix of compost based soil and a grid system in one square foot increments. Since I am not a seasoned gardener and my closest gardening adviser (and grandmother) lives a couple thousand miles away in Virginia, I am following this book in my first year of gardening. I can't vouch for the gardening techniques in this book yet, but it is a great resource for building a raised garden.

With book in hand, and a husband with an trigger finger itching to power up a drill, we purchased the supplies for our first raised garden. We grabbed the kids, a tarp, a shovel and the POWER TOOLS and set to work. We built the 12'x4' garden and mixed our soil in less than 6 hours. We had the kids helping and dogs getting in the way so it took us a while, but if you are used to building things and have no distractions, it would probably take much less time.


Here's what our small-space garden looks like...

We decided to build it to a height of 12 inches instead of 6 inches to discourage the flower-sniffing Corgi from trampling the crops. She can still jump in, but the increase in height seems to keep her out.

So begins this backyard adventure....Stay tuned!