ARIZONA DESERT GARDENING





I love gardening. We bought 10 acres of land and I thought at least 2 acres can be culivated.

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.

I had my shovels, hoes, seed spreader, netting, fencing, fencing poles. I collected cow manure from the free range cattle for fertilizer. I had my dehydrator, canning jars and freezer ready to go. I could taste the wonderful green peppers, egg plant, roma tomatoes with all my freshly grown herbs. I was going to make stews and tomato sauce from the vegetables.

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Gardening

This is my first attempt minus the fencing which I took down. The birds pulled out every seed and every seedling in two days.

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.

Hey, a tent that has netting on top surely would work. It even has a plastic bottom to keep out the critters.

garden tent working 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.


Container gardening and raised bed gardening 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.

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.

Alas, this is my garden. It has water, protection, organic soil, shade cloth for my tomatoes. I planted the seeds that I had left. Waiting for the succulant watermelon to grow. About a week later they popped out of the ground. They are now one inch high. I even had two roma tomatoes. I was so proud. I will have the garden I dreamed of. It will not be a couple of acres, but it will be the fruit of my labor.



Gardening2 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.



I did have a outdoor gold fish pond for 9 years.......

ash tree 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.

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.

flowering pear tree 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.

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