ARIZONA DESERT GARDENINGI love gardening. We bought 10 acres of land and I thought at least 2 acres can be cultivated. I bought all the organic seeds and the starting pods. I bought organic soil. I bought pots to start the hundreds of seedlings I was sure I was going to have to nurture these beautiful plants; plants that we were going to eat.
Okay, this did not work. So, I thought it needs to be under cover from the birds. I do not have the time or energy to build a greenhouse.
After about a week of mourning my loss, I had another great idea. I will put the garden in front of the house so I can watch it. I will put down soaker hoses to conserve water and insure my seedlings will thrive. I will put fencing around it so that the jack rabbits and the pack rats (desert rats) cannot get to it.
My house plants are doing wonderful too. I need to build a greenhouse that has a concrete block base and concrete floor. This will unfortunately be way in the future.
 Update March, 2009: This is a new year and renewed hope. This is the beginning of my new offgrid garden. The land will be cleared in stages and may not be finished this year. The creosote and sage bushes have very long thick roots that are relatively on the surface, about 6 to 8 inches deep. They will steal water from any source. Our Arizona Ash that was planted last year has not been doing well. It survived the winter only to encounter a late frost and all the leaves turned brown. The bushes near it have been removed and it seems to be doing pretty well.
We did borrow a post hole digger but the ground is just too hard to use.
We will do the top railing and put chicken wire on the bottom and bury about 4 to 6 inches to try to keep out the rabbits and rats. I didn't know that a Kangaroo rat can jump 9 feet in the air. Pretty impressive.
I went to the farmers market on Earth Day to see if any of the vendors had ideas on how to keep out the rats. All seemed to grow everything in greenhouses. I was a bit disappointed that there were no solid leads on how to eliminate this problem.
We got the hardware to hang the gate. It is a little off but it seems to be holding up well. Then an L bracket and some washers were used to hold the latch shut. It works out very nicely for a garden gate. It was not repainted as we liked the old look.
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This is my first attempt minus the fencing which I took down. The birds pulled out every seed and every seedling in two days.
Now I was going to be able to have my fresh vegetables. It would be a container garden with some raised beds, but that was alright. I would be able to live off of the land. Make my own fresh dishes that actually had vitamins and minerals in them. It was working pretty good. I'm feeling quite smug at this point. I have my garden.
Well, this is what is left of my second brilliant idea for a garden in the Arizona desert. We have a windmill attached to our house for a reason. We get wind.
The jack rabbits had other ideas. They can make themselves so thin. They got through the fence every night until there was nothing left. They did not however eat any of the natural desert plants that I left thinking any vegetation was better than none.
Update: July 25, 2007-My trees are doing quite well. I have two ash trees, two flowering pear trees, two cherry trees, one apple tree and one peach tree. The rabbits cannot reach these so I do actually have a green thumb, but I am no match for all of the critters.
This is one of the flowering pear trees. When I first planted them I did not think that they were going to make it. There was some sort of bug that was eating the leaves. But after about 6 weeks they were doing better. Now they are thriving. All of the non fruit trees receive their water from the washing machine.
We are digging holes and putting in 4 x 4 treated posts. We got 10 footers and cut them in half. Digging holes here is an all day job. You have to soak the ground with water and dig as much as you can, then soak again. When there are several posts it can wear you out quickly. 
Ron was nailing up the first boards to help keep the posts stable. We did not put the posts in concrete. After a couple of rains this dirt is as hard as any concrete. Luckily it was a beautiful day. The wind and dust were down.
The posts were laid 10 ft. apart. We put 150 ft. of chicken wire on the lower part of the fence to keep out the rabbits. The chicken wire is going to do nothing to keep out the desert and pack rats. 
This is an old iron gate that was given to me. It is relatively heavy and keeps our dogs out of the garden much to their dismay. 
