My Garden - Spring 2012

Last year I lost the war with the Bermuda grass - *sigh*.  So...this year we built boxes, lined the bottoms with really heavy landscaping fabric and filled them with compost.  I planted lots of veggies in January and then sadly watched them die - another *sigh*.  Evidently the compost available here in Arizona has ZERO nutrients (my guess is that it either decomposes too fast with our high temperatures or more likely - the high temperatures KILL everything in the compost.)

Since I never give up...I planted AGAIN in March.  This time I went to a gardening class specific for the desert.  Aha!  The secret is fertilizing EVERY week and way MORE water than I ever thought a plant would need.  (Thus why the need to fertilize every week - with all that water the nutrients get washed out quickly - but without ALL that water - the extreme temperatures here quickly fry the poor plants.)

So here is my garden - ta da!!!

A few of the goodies we have harvested - yum!!

I have canned 30 quarts of tomatoes; 31 quarts pickles; 7 pints pickled peppers; 7 pints carrots; 14 pints of grape jelly.  I have harvested 40 pounds of potatoes, 20 pounds of beets and made 6 apple pies.

And as an additional experiment I planted watermelon in June.  It is doing great!  Now the trick is figuring out when they are ripe ;-).