Raised Beds!

So it all started with a hole dug with no real plan....

 Then my dad visited and soon after, I got this in my inbox. It came after a lengthy trip to Lowe's to show me what bags of manure, peat, etc. to buy, and where the wood is, what wood to buy, etc. The Lowe's trip came with a $100 Lowe's Gift Card, which we just used up yesterday.

I also got a box of screws and brackets from the diagram. Awesome!

M and I got to work in the evening building the frame. (Actually, M did the work. I just held stuff together and listened to him cuss when he bloodied his hands. Whoever says gardening isn't hard hasn't tried to build a raised bed....) We got the frame laid out as the sun went down.

It seems that we were overzealous in our digging and only really needed half of the plot we dug up. Que sera, sera...

Luckily, we were working in the yard that day and noticed a pool of water in the corner by a faucet. A pool in the desert is always cause for concern so M went under the house to check for leaks. Yes, UNDER the HOUSE!

There was no leak in the house and we discovered it was a hole in the pipe beneath the ground. So good news is we got it fixed. Bad news is there's a freaky crawl space beneath my house! This has the making of a great scary movie. (no worries though, my boobs aren't big enough to star in a scary movie so we're gonna be ok)

Last Tuesday morning I woke up to very cold weather, which in my mind was perfect for filling the bed in with all the displaced earth.

Bring it on, Cold Weather!

Raised bed with a dad-approved ratio of soil-to-manure-to-peat moss mixture

Oh! and the container herbs are doing good too!

From bottom to Top - Scallions, Garlic, Spinach, and Spinach... there's also a tiny
wild cilantro in there somewhere

Kristi's Organic Garden

Sometimes inspiration comes from the strangest of places... This was a drawing my dad posted last spring on Facebook. (note the hiking boots)

Slightly political, slightly sarcastic, totally awesome!

Although I do wonder what a 'non-vegan' garden would look like? Leatherface's backyard?

Ground Has Been Broken....

So an update on moving in with M....

I've given my apartment complex notice and will officially be a non-El Paso resident as of the end of March! Yay!

Also - I've broken ground on our new in-the-ground garden. We will still use containers in winter and for big stuff like potatoes and tomatoes. But! The in-the-ground garden signifies me being in Carlsbad permanently as I've promised M he won't have to do any weeding.

Now - in my mind, I'd like my garden to be something similar to the White House Kitchen Garden and reading "American Grown" isn't helping.

Caution! Contents cause serious garden envy

Our Fall Garden

I've learned a few lessons from gardening this summer... Apparently, summers in southern New Mexico are just too damned hot and sunny for most of the plants.

1. Potatoes won't grow if its above 85 degrees.... shocking for a crop that notoriously grows in Ireland (and of course, down here it doesn't go below 85 until mid-September) 
2. Tomatoes also don't like the heat and won't flower - now that the temps have dropped, they're flowering like crazy and hopefully we'll get some tomatoes before the first frost
3. My shade structure is NO MATCH for the monsoon winds that whip across the Guadalupes
4. All of our herbs prefer the shady area beneath the overhanging vines on the fence... Less sun means cooler, happier herbs
5. Apparently, starting seeds in the spring around here means January/February...
6. People who plant their gardens in the front yard are just showing off
7. Mint spreads and can eventually take over the earth....
8. Cilantro loves to be neglected and left alone... possibly an introvert plant?
9. If you plant a container garden, you MUST make sure there are holes for drainage. Things die and get stinky quick!

So far this fall I've planted scallions, which are coming up quickly, and broccoli, which will need some sort of cover to protect it from the evil white cutworm moth.

I've also been testing a few different gardening apps -

web-based Sprout It wins... It keeps track of my garden, when I plant things, when they pass a growing phase, when to harvest, and the daily weather. It only gives you garden options that "should" grow in your climate so if you're growing something else, it won't show up.

iphone-based Garden Tracker is ok - you make your own plots, plant whatever you want, and keep track of when you water, feed, etc. Its cool for help when something is sick or dying, but that's about it. If it would send you reminders of what to do and when, like Sprout It, it would rule!

Will They Survive the Heat? no! the Cold!

My newest package of seeds came in the mail yesterday!

I want to get a jump start on my spring planting so I went ahead and ordered now. Basil, roma-esque tomatoes, mark twain heirloom tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos for M, and we will again attempt green beans.  This year I'll start the seeds in January/February. Stay tuned for more adventurous gardening attempts.

But have no fear, I am also attempting winter gardening. Carlsbad is in the southern half of the US, but gets some good snow and cold, so I'll try some quick growing stuff, and some plants that like to overwinter. Scallions, spinach, and broccoli. Yes, I'm attempting broccoli again but this time I'll cover the plants with pantyhose in an attempt to thwart the evil white moth that lays worm eggs all over my crops.

Keep you posted!

Labor Day Weekend - Fort Davis, Davis Mountains, Alpine, and live music!

M and I headed down to Fort Davis and Alpine for a quick overnighter on our 3-day weekend. We had planned to camp out in the aspens near Ruidoso but then we found out that Labor Day weekend was a favorite of the 3-wheeling ATV crowd. yuck! Soooo we headed south instead.

We drove through some fantastic mountains (yes, Texas has multiple mountains....).

highway running through Davis Mountains State Park

Looking down onto Fort Davis National Historic Site

First we hit Fort Davis National Historic Site, which was crowded and boiling hot. I was hoping it'd be a bit cooler but what can you expect in west Texas in August!

M and I poured over all of Fort Davis's newly upgraded exhibits. You can take the park ranger out of the park, but you can't take the park out of the ranger! My favorite part of the visit was the porch swing. Its been a very long time since I've relaxed on a porch swing. I spent my childhood on the porch swing of our beach house. The sound of the chains creaking, along with the seagulls and the drone of I-10, always lulled me into bliss. M could make me ultimately blissful if he could manage a porch swing at the house.

Fort Davis's most awesome porch swing

blissfully enjoying the swing

weird repetitive view of the officers quarters

My OTHER favorite part of Fort Davis was the hospital. Getting to view all the horrid torturous medical equipment that was "state of the art" in the mid-1800s is fascinating to me, and nauseating to most other people.

After Fort Davis and a quick scenic drive up to Davis Mountains State Park, we drove down to Alpine to check into the cheapest motel Alpine has to offer. I've stayed in some amazingly cheap places, so my standards are pretty low. (There was the place that advertised "Meat Burgers", with "meat" meaning whatever they found along the road; the place where we barricaded the door at night to sleep because the locks didn't work well; and then there was the I-10 truck stop that dad insisted we could get a good nights' sleep in the van) This motel wasn't too bad. It had the basics... the 'ice machine' was an igloo in the check in area that the owner filled each morning with ice from the gas station across the street, the pool had been filled in with concrete and fenced off years before, etc...

M and I went looking for a place to have dinner before hitting the bar for some live music. We tried 3 places that said they were open only to find them closed... I Yelped them properly. The 4th place didn't have any vegan options and was too expensive to have a sub-par meal. We even tried a diner that Yelp warned was constantly out of regular menu items. And yes, they were out of the only thing I could eat... salad. So we finally found ourselves, hungry and grumpy, at McDonald's ordering salads behind some fairly vicious people who were lamenting the broken soda machine.

After a fantastic dinner of McD's salad, we headed to the Railroad Blues for some live music. Talk about a small town - the first person we saw when we walked in recognized M as "Copperhead Guy". M studied snakes in grad school, and worked closely with locals. The band, the Lonesome Heros, was fantastic and very friendly. We're now Facebook friends. :-)
We had a great time and I had too many apricot beers (Shout-out to Corree!).

The next morning we tried our hand with eating in Alpine one last time and hit the no-salad diner. Their waffles completely make up for the lack of any type of vegetable.

We took a different scenic route back up to Carlsbad....

Border Patrol Blimp... who knew?! M says they keep it tethered to the ground. It floats a few hundred feet up in the
air, light up at night for all the illegals and smugs to see.... yay for tax dollars!

Of course we had to hit the Marfa Prada! It was actually crowded with
motorcyclists and other on-lookers

All in all, it was a fun quick getaway.... we'll hit the aspen slopes of Ruidoso next time.



ps - Fort Davis's gardener must be amazing...

I have Rosemary envy... look at the size of this monster!!!

Summer Gardening is Ending... But Have No Fear, Fall Gardening is Underway!

The last time we talked it was the end of April (officially the beginning of the summer in the Southwest), and my garden was gearing up to survive the heat... (To Recap).

Sadly, the broccoli didn't survive the cabbage worm infestation and the heat. Next time I'll try a cover - maybe pantyhose cut and stretched out across the top of the contained will stop the evil cabbage moths from propagating all over my broccoli greens.

We harvested both bins of potatoes, and learned a harsh lesson. When page 173 of your Moosewood Gardening bible tells you that potatoes will not grow in temps higher than 85 degrees, it most definitely means they won't grow in 110 degrees!

harvesting potatoes

Look at the mighty growth!

So we did get a few goods sized ones early in the summer

M marveling at our bountiful harvest   j/k

The bell pepper plant finally started to really grow, only to be knocked down by several windstorms. I'll have to work on a windscreen for next year. (The shade structure also didn't do well in the windstorms. shocking, i know, since it was an example of such fine craftsmanship.)

We are managing to get a few bell peppers after I enclosed the thing in a cage. Used a few last night and they were delicious!

Our two tomato plants are either getting too much water, not enough water, or both and don't like the wild watering swings... But, we are getting a few tomatoes! Some of them had blossom-end rot. I found a DIY recipe that calls for salt... Salt! (*Epsom salt to be exact - see note at bottom...) So now our tomatoes are getting salted each week and the rot is happening less frequently.

 We moved the herbs to a more sheltered location, underneath a heavily shaded shrub area. They are doing fantastic!

Thai basil that looks and smells fantastic

Rosemary and mint are doing great - the green bucket has cilantro...

seriously, i just threw cilantro seeds into the potato bin and moved it
out of the way

We cannot stop growing sage! Every other week I harvest half and
take it home, and when I come back... more sage!

In other parts of the backyard, the wild things are going crazy in this mild temperature monsoon season.

lantana comes back year after year and looks great!

This thing, which i honestly thought might be weed
and began googling pictures of weed leaves (shout-out to
NSA!), turns out to be NOT WEED. I can't remember
what it is, M can, but its NOT WEED.

wild and crazy yard

what the hell is this? internet! i need your help.

close-up of the i-have-no-idea plant..
perennial, full sun

Winnie scouts for pecans

She's so freaking cute!

So fall planting is coming up in a month or so... Broccoli (with pantyhose covering), garlic, sweet onions, spinach, and green beans.... The garlic grows best over winter and we can harvest in spring. The spinach loves cool weather. The green beans I'm not sure about but I have seeds!

*Regarding the salting of plants to stop blossom-rot. Turns out I just found out that Epsom salt isn't table salt... So maybe I'm killing my tomatoes with a little NaCl when I should be using MgSO4!

Will They Survive the Heat? A Garden Update

The last week of April gave us triple-digit temperatures in Carlsbad. A great way to begin the summer season... especially for the plants. The herbs are the most expressive, displaying their displeasure with the heat by wilting all the way to the ground. They spring up right after they get some water though! The rest of the garden is a bit quieter, so M and I have been watching for signs of heat stress and general displeasure.

When I got into town on Saturday afternoon, the broccoli was wilting quite a bit. Its had a rough spring fighting off cabbage worms. At this point, I'm not even sure if it'll produce but at least its teaching us about growing broccoli. (the first pancake rule is definitely in effect here).

expressing its hatred of the heat....

much happier... if you don't count the cabbage worm battle scars

We've also seen the arrival of our first few Roma tomatoes!

i can't wait to eat you!

The cilantro that I oh-so frequently kill seems to be doing great in my absence. I'm trying not to take it personally.

The potatoes have grown so much since I last saw them. They're almost 5 feet tall!

potato flowers have no smell....

Our newest addition, the bush beans, seem to be coming up nicely.
I hope they produce! Fresh beans are fantastic!

Oh! and remember the shade cover I was trying to copy? (Gardening: an update)

Well here is my version. A little less pretty but completely useful. Although looking at the early pics of our broccoli is making me sad.... so long sweet broccoli.

The awesome shade cover, that is hopefully wind-resistant and only needs a few
more layers of burlap, should totally help relieve the plants from
the summer afternoon sun.

In other parts of the yard, Mother Nature is doing her own natural thing.

tiger lilies are starting to appear in random areas

another kind of lily... anyone know what it is?

teeny tiny purple and pink flowers

And that's the garden as of Memorial Day... The herbs are chilling in the shade and the veggies are growing! Can't wait to harvest some yumminess.

Gardening: an update

So we've been gardening for about 2 months now and things are finally starting to happen! Our garden isn't as awesome as my dad's but he's been doing this for at least 30 years. Plus he uses chemical fertilizer. I'm trying to NOT do that, but we shall see.

We wanted to get a shade structure... something that we could remove when necessary. Lowe's sells them but they are way above our budget so we searched for a DIY way.

The inspiration...

Making our own shade structure - pvc pipe, pcv pipe corners,
pvc pipe glue, quick ties, and burlap.

Lennox inspected; Lennox approved

M getting the frame together

Burlap across top to allow sun to come in, but reflect some heat

It was too windy outside to get a good completed shot so you'll have to wait until we actually use it. Its for the dog-days of summer, which in southern New Mexico come in May... so you won't have to wait too long.

As for the garden itself....

We bought tomato plants, and I installed a special DIY watering system
Old coke bottles so that we can water the roots without
the evaporation. They seem to like it....

The broccoli is going crazy.

Someone among us LOVES the broccoli. 

We have potatoes!!!

The herbs are doing great, and they taste fantastic

M cleaned out the boys' room and I got a storage area!

The pomegranates are blossoming. These are great for birds.
Keeps their mind off my garden. 

The lavender out front is kinda the same. I'm worried that they aren't growing. They are flowering like crazy though! Every time I rip a flower off, they put another one out.

Soon I'll be sowing sage and green beans. And in the fall we'll try another round of spinach and kale.

Oh! and I haven't killed my cilantro yet! WooHoo!