Attempting The High Desert Garden
When my husband and I bought our beautiful home in the high desert we were so excited to put our acreage to work! We both grew up in Northern California, so having an abundant garden was a breeze. We soon found out that we also had taken if for granted.
Attempt #1
We moved in June, so by California standards, our garden was late already. Our first order of business (after unloading the trailer) was getting plants in the ground. I found out later that in our gardening zone the soil temperature isn’t high enough to plant until June. Turns out we were actually on track.
There was a perfect raised bed in the back part of our yard. We went down to the department store in town and bought every plant possible. At home, I watered the soil in the garden bed to get it prepped for planting. I went back to the truck to get all our plants. As I come around the barn blissfully admiring my vegetable starts I see my husband frowning at the planter box.
All the water was pooled on top of the soil! Not one drop had soak in. What was this stuff? Because it wasn’t soil!
We called the teenage boys out to start shoveling the “stuff” out of the raised bed. My husband and I rushed back to town to buy a truck load of bagged soil. Which isn’t cheap by the way. Once everything was planted it looked wonderful!
About 6 weeks later we were just starting to see tomatoes and bell peppers plumping up. I was so excited for them to be ready. My favorite thing ever is to eat warm tomatoes right off the vine.
I woke up the morning of August 3rd. I don’t know where you’re from, but August as I’ve always known it, is sweltering hot. So when I woke up, I quickly threw on some shoes and boogied out to the garden. I had to make sure it got watered early. I would’ve never believed what I saw! My entire garden had frozen that night…
Attempt #2
The next summer I was not going to make the same mistake twice! So throughout our first year of living in the high desert I picked peoples brains. I was unanimously told that I needed a greenhouse. Early the next spring we found a brand new greenhouse for sale on Facebook. My family and I were out on one of ur regular drives. Meaning we were hours from civilization. So we hauled butt all the way back to town to get this greenhouse.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get it set up right away, so my garden was already off to a late start. I’m lucky enough that my husband and boys set it for me on Mother’s Day. At the time I was about 7 months pregnant, so I waddled myself strait to the truck to go get plants. When I got home, the girl child and I got all the plants transplanted into large pots. After that her and I took turns watering the plants. We also opened up the greenhouse on warm days until I got too pregnant to make the trek. After that she handled it pretty good.
That was until I went into labor 3 weeks early and spent over a week in the hospital during the week of (guess the date) August 3rd.
I’ll give you a hint though. Nothing froze! Instead, with family members watching the kids, no one watered the plants or opened up the greenhouse. Everything was fried!
Attempt (Hopefully Success Story) #3
About the time I was planning on getting ready to plant spring starts in the greenhouse a wind storm came in and leveled my greenhouse! Not a great start to our success story. Back to the drawing board.
We came up with was a combination between our original two attempts. What we did was a raised bed with a removable hoop house (mini greenhouse). This must be the key to gardening in the high desert.
We picked a great spot in our yard that got great morning sun and only minimal direct afternoon sun. Next, we tore down our raised bed. Ours was made out of railroad ties, but really any large pieces of wood that are attached securely would work. My husband used our tractor to dig down about 6-12 inches to loosen the dirt. This can be done with a shovel or rake too. Then we lined the level ground with chicken wire to protect the plants against gofers. I’m kicking myself for not getting pictures of this step. All we had to do next was arrange the railroad ties to the size raised bed we wanted and fill with soil. We opted to also attach the railroad ties with brackets.
Out next step was building our hoop house. I’ll be posting how we accomplished this one soon. But let’s just say our measurements were a little off and we are now the proud owners of a beautiful full-sized greenhouse.
Our plan at this point is to cover the garden with the “hoop house” every evening to avoid freezing. During the day we will either uncover the garden completely or open the sides of the hoop house to allow for ventilation. This should avoid any burning.
Subscribe to stay tuned for August 3rd to find out if we can get past the destruction day and have a producing garden this year!
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