Gardening in the Desert

Monday, September 1, 1997

My target date for planting was August 30th. I did not manage to get the seeds planted that night, which would have been two days before the new moon. I had the soil prepared and ready, though. An online friend of mine who moved away from AZ, Stefani Angstadt-Leto, left behind a lot of gardening stuff!! Bags and bags of composted steer manure. And a pickaxe!! I have needed one of those for a LONG time! A stiff tined rake, needed one of those, too! A friend of mine and Stefani's is hoping to coop garden with me. Allison helped me dig and remove bermuda grass from a fairly large area. Then her husband, Kevin came over to help once and we got a lot done that time, too. So I did plant tonight, two days later than I'd planned. I planted gold beets, red beets, Pinetree lettuce mix (a mix of sweet lettuces), Swiss Chard, spinach, radishes, carrots, snap peas, and marigolds. It was lightly sprinkling as I re-aerated the soil and laid the soaker hose. It continued to sprinkle as I planted the seeds by the light of the trouble light. I meant to get out before dark, but it was cloudy and got dark before I knew it.

My next target date for planting is September 29th. I will be doing successive plantings, so I will most likely be planting the same things. OH, we will be planting Sweet Pea flowers around that next date as well! In the meantime, I've got to get an order in to Pinetree. I need more of their lettuce mix seeds, and gold beets.

Sunday, September 7th, 1997
I must have planted closely enough to the new moon that many of my seeds are germinating. Yesterday we observed some red beet babies, lettuce babies and of course, those extremely fast germinating radishes.

I've been reading over Pinetree's Seed Catalog. I have compiled a list of the seeds I want to buy and plan to plant in the future. I have a page with those seeds listed here.

October 19th, 1997
My next target date for planting was September 29th. The day neared and I did not have the next area prepared for planting, so I decided to skip the planting altogether. My next target date is Wednesday, October 29th. I have been working in the garden every couple days, preparing the next area and weeding. I thought Bermuda grass was tough to eradicate.... I have another type of grass in my garden, in addition to the Bermuda, that is amazingly hardy and seemingly impossible to get rid of!! In reading the Arizona Cooperative Extension Services Publication #Q95 "Ten Steps to a Successful Vegetable Garden" they warn "...Avoid areas that are crusted with alkali salts or infested with Bermuda, nutgrass or Johnson grass." YIKES!! *sigh* This grass has popped up throughout the current vegetable bed and when I try to pull the grass out by the root, it breaks off. In the area next to the current bed, I have discovered that this grass has a garlic bulb shaped rhizome which is connected to the plant by one thin root. It looks similar to Bermuda, but is a very different grass than Bermuda. One bulb is connected to another to another to another, all over the bed!!

I did order my seeds from Pinetree today. I am so enchanted with the climbing vine descriptions. I decided to try a new vine that I've never tried before.
Pinetree Seed #810. BALLOON VINE-CARDIOSPERMUM HALICACABUM (Description quoted from Pinetree's catalog. 20 seeds .70 " Also called "Love-in-a-Puff". A fun and interesting annual climber, good for children to try. The tiny, white single-petaled flowers turn into 1" pale green, 3-sided "balloons." These puffy globes are actually the seed pods, and can be "popped" between your hands (yes, Liz demonstrated this for us). Tightly curling tendrils can climb anything, and the lacey green foliage makes a nice screen, covering up to 12 feet."
Doesn't that sound gorgeous?

Hopefully, I'll be able to plant this month on the target date with the new seeds I ordered today!

A couple of days ago, I picked beet leaves and Swiss Chard to add to a salad! Then today, we weeded out the extra beets (each seed produces 2 to 3 plants) and picked a couple dozen Swiss Chard leaves for steamed greens. Mmmmmm!

It is so grand to have my garden growing again!!

The lettuce was slow to germinate and is much smaller than the beets and chard. Only two radish seeds germinated. I do not see any peas growing. We have a lot of carrots. Oh, and hardly any of the golden beets germinated. The seeds I planted were probably too old. Pinetree recommends planting extra golden beets, as they sometimes don't all germinate as readily as the red beets do. A few spinach did come up and are doing well. About five plants. Only *ONE* marigold germinated. It's now about 3 inches tall.

Tuesday, October 28th, 1997
Wow, what a successful day in my garden! I have been working for the past few days every day, trying to prepare my garden for the October two days before the new moon planting which was to be October 29th. Only I wasn't going to be home all day long on the 29th. So I started out today thinking I'd plant this evening, one day early for a change. :) I cannot believe how prolific this nutgrass is. It is horrible, horrible stuff. I'd much rather have bermuda grass to deal with any time over nutgrass. I spent time sifting through the soil today, soil I'd already gone through... and today I kept finding more and more and more nutgrass roots. Awful stuff. I ended up working 3 or 4 hours in my garden.

Anyway, I got the soil all dug up and sifted through as best as I could do. If I had the energy and time I might have tried sifting the soil through 1/4" mesh! The area I prepared is 3 feet wide by 6 feet long. I discovered in my first garden that 4 feet across is really too wide for me to work comfortably in. I had planned to have wide paths in between beds this time, but the path today ended up being only a foot wide. I can deal with it. I needed the space more for the bed. I worked in blood meal, bone meal and 3 bags of composted steer manure. (Thanks, Stefani!!) I put 6 foot boards on each side and for the short ends I used these concrete things that I've had laying around in my way. That worked out real well. I'm glad I didn't get rid of those. I laid the soaker hose and used these great u shaped pieces of steel that Michelle let me have. So much easier to keep the hose in the position I want it to stay in. Speaking of soaker hose, I set up a Y-joint connector so that I could control the flow of water to the beds. The first bed is established and does not to be constantly moist, as the seeds do now in the second bed. I had enough extra end pieces that I'd bought last season that I was able to set up the soaker hose correctly. I'm excited about this, as last year I never did get the hoses in properly, or at least to my satisfaction.

I did get my seeds from Pinetree on Saturday and was pretty excited about planting some new kinds of seeds. I was thinking it might be a wise investment to set aside $10 a month to order new seeds. It's such incentive getting to plant new kinds of things! So this is what I planted this afternoon; Three kinds of spinach; Melody(H), Space(H) and the kind I normally plant, Bloomsdale Longstanding. (H=Hybrid) I planted three kinds of radishes and two kinds of carrots. I planted Cherry Belle radishes and intercropped Little Finger carrots, Easter Egg(H) radishes and intercropped Mokum(H) carrots, Pinetree assorted radishes alone. I planted broccoli and intercropped bunching onions in 3 sq.ft. I planted Tom Thumb lettuce, Pinetree assorted lettuces, gold beets, red beets, rhubarb swiss chard. I did also plant some marigolds along the edges of the bed.

Hopefully on Thursday I will have time to redig up one of my old beds along the fence and plant my Sweet Pea flower seeds that are soaking as I type this.

Thursday, October 30, 1997
I got out there this afternoon and dug up a bed that I'd already planted in last year. The soil was a little dry on one side and another spot had a black ant bed, but I dug and turned and mixed in the composted steer manure. I laid a section of soaker hose and planted two types of Sweet Pea flowers. I planted one package of the Mammoth, which climbs to about five feet tall and two packages of Perfume Delight. I also planted Crackerjack Marigold. These are the variety that grow to be 2 to 3 feet tall.
Next planting date is November 28th. I have one spot left to plant in that has been pre-dug back when Allison and Kevin had helped. I think after planting in this next area, I will dig an area south of the 1st bed.

Friday, November 7th, 1997
Wow, as usual, I'm stunned at the quick germination! I went out there to look around Saturday, having planted on Monday and already baby plants of everything I'd planted were poking their little leaves above the ground. Sweet little babies! I do have a teensy bit of disaster to report. Last year, some sort of flowers, similar to dandelions, but different were all over the exact spot where I just planted seeds. Oh, my. It looks as if I have a million of those babies growing up all over, too. I am waiting until I can identify everything, then I'm going on a major weeding session! It has *finally* cooled down here, but I'm still wearing shorts and short sleeved shirts during the day. So far, I do not see any Sweet Peas up yet, but I have spotted some Marigolds. The dog tromped in that area chasing after a frisbee (margarine lid). I have this very big piece of black plastic and around one edge of Bed #1, I dug up the dirt, took out all the bermuda and nutgrass, then laid the plastic and put the clean dirt on top of that. Maybe that will help keep the pesky grasses from moving into the good soil area.

November 15, 1997

BAD NEWS!! I noticed today that birds are eating up my baby Sweet Pea flowers! :( I put a net over the area. I spotted a small sized beet in Bed #1 today! Very exciting! The beet greens are growing very large, and last time I checked, the beet root was quite small. This one I saw today was about an inch and a half in diameter. Bed #2 is doing very well. I planted some old Tom Thumb lettuce seeds, and don't see anything coming up in the area that I planted them. I also worked for an hour in the garden today, on Bed #3 (B3). I am still finding lots of nutgrass... seeds? Or maybe they are called rhizomes, or what? Nuts?! I would really LOVE to get B3 prepared far enough ahead of time that I could water it and dig out the nutgrass before I plant the seeds. I have been going out daily and pulling out nutgrass from B2. All of the spinach coming up looks great. It will be interesting to see if I have a favorite amongst the types that I planted. Mmmm, all this talk of vegetables has got me craving a fresh salad! See you next time!