I've been very blessed and lucky with my garden in its first full year. Many people seem totally envious with my luck, which is interesting because I opted against paying someone $9000 to do it for me and did it myself and only have time each evening to care for it. Nothing is automated for its care, and the plants must rely on my visits morning and evening to augment their genetics and physiology. Sometimes, it's a headache to have to come home from class late at night and force myself into the garden to water and tend to the plants. However, I like seeing the fruits, the growth, the synergy, and I love the fact that it's peaceful, pleasant, and inviting even if it looks like a complete mess. It's alive for the first time since I moved in, and I love my little oasis in the desert to which I retreat at the end of a difficult or hot day. I like the variety of plants I am able to grow, eat, and watch, and the chance to see the leaves grow and flowers bloom and fruits mature until they are ready for my table. I appreciate the blessing to take care of a garden and the fact that I can have one in the desert. Since I studied in a plant physiology laboratory in graduate school, I feel like I must have a garden in order to legitimate myself in my field, and so everything that grows and thrives is progress and pleasing, and I feel like God is pleased with my work as well with the great bounty of my garden. I think it pleases Him to see me smile.
Although sometimes the fruit or yield is meager, I get a steady supply of supple and tasty fruits. By the time I notice a Strawberry, they need to be eaten within 24 hours or they shrivel and die. Both of my Meier lemon trees have only about a dozen fruit, but for dwarf citris, that's a good yield. I only get a single serving of broccoli or cauliflower every week which, if I wait too long to pick, immediately flowers, but the seeds have sprouted, and I now have more than the single plants with which I started, and the carrot I let flower is so prolific, there are carrot starts in almost every planter. My grapes are tiny but explosive with taste. The garlic is strong, the basil is tall, and the mint is flowering. Most of my fruits are much smaller than you see in stores, but I get two crops per year, and I have about 50 figs, which the birds haven't noticed yet, so I don't have to buy produce anymore except for lettuce since it bolted and flowered and went to seed last week. When I want asparagus, there's basically a handful ready, but there's a handful in both pots, so I can have it periodically no matter what the store price and without having to pay for the stringy portions you throw away anyway. Aside from beets, carrots, tomatoes, and basil, my garden provides only enough for me per day, but I haven't used about 33% of the space, so there is room for growth, and the perennials should increase in yield each year, particularly once the shade trees actually provide shade.
Despite environmental challenges, many things do better here than in other parts of the world. My broccoli and cauliflower survived the "winter" and gave me subsequent crops. My peas reseeded themselves and are growing. My grapevines, two of which come from Vitis riparia seeds I harvested from the Nevada wilderness, shade the berries enough and provide nutrients via michorrizal fungi so that I have new growth on RASPBERRIES in the desert. My house is situated perfectly for a garden- back yard faces east, meaning that the plants get sunlight before 10AM, after which plants stop photosynthesizing in the desert, and then they get shade in the afternoon. My tomatoes are so laden with fruit that they fell over (I didnt' use cages), and my vine crops are spreading everywhere with wispy tendrils. The pumpkins have flowers, the beans are growing up trees, and my artichoke flower was beautiful. I even planted some coffee to see if it would grow, and despite being a Peruvian blend, I have a coffee plant growing in a pot near the Aloe; time will tell if it gives me beans. Don't ask me why my peas are still growing or the broccoli or the cauliflower, and don't ask me what magic trick I used to have so many tomatoes (many coworkers can't grow them to save their lives). I don't know how pumpkins are supposed to grow, but I already have two, and it's only June. I have so many figs, they're falling off the tree before I can eat them. My carrots are thick and clumping and so are the beets.
Starting from the ground up and keeping the big picture in mind helped my garden be better than others. Rather than build my garden in native soil, I decided to build raised beds. This was particularly necessary in my neighborhood since they brought in a meter of dirt to put on top, so I don't know if it's actually soil or if it's just worthless fill. At the bottom of the beds, I lined them with gravel for water percolation, and I spread weed control fabric under the entire yard to prevent establishment of weeds from the soil below. I filled it with good soil- peat moss + horse manure + sand + coffee grounds + organic compost material + Gibeaut's fertilizer, and although it's not as pretty as the loam I saw in UC Davis or in Indiana, it's pretty good soil for the Great Basin. I know that the sun, in addition to dehydrating the plants, damages them, so I found a solution and strung up camoflage netting to filter the sunlight; other options might be better or more visually appealing, but it worked. Planning to put plants in the shade to protect them, in deeper soil to drive root growth, in pots to contain their spread, next to other plants with similar water demands, and in places where they could spread allowed me to maximize my space and minimize loss. The flower garden is the worst part, but I should have grown everything close together, which I will rectify in the fall by planting everything closer together so that the plants can keep each other cool.
My garden looks like a chaotic mess. Partly, I designed that on purpose to offset the fact that all of the planters are square or rectangular boxes, so the plants will soften the edges and make it look less like a male designed and built it. Partly, I'm letting the plants grow and go where they like. Yes, I'm the gardener here, but the plants know far better about how to use the soil than I do. As chaotic as it is, it's also fruitful. My garden is like my life, my house, and my mind. I spent a great deal of time planning, preparing, and planting good seeds, and now it's all coming together but in ways I didn't expect and with fruits I didn't know would come in that season. Some things haven't worked as I liked. The tobacco and wheat and corn and potatoes all died. What remains is reliable and high quality albeit not enough to feed a family let alone the neighborhood. It makes me glad it's in the back so people can't tell that I have a produce section behind the house. Some things have surprised me in positive ways, but I'm glad to see that the sweat equity and intellectual effort hit pay dirt in the outcome. This is one place, and perhaps the only one on earth, where I reliably reap what I sow. Some of the plants that died did so because I was too lazy to water them. Perhaps you think I talk about my garden too much, but it is the one thing where I seem to have consistently positive news. I rejoice over the harvest, and I brought in tomatoes today to work to share with my coworkers because I have in excess. I am richly blessed in things I control, and I look forward to the evenings this summer working in my tiny corner of the Master's Garden tending to things that please the eye, gladden the heart, nourish the body, and replenish the soul.
Updated video to follow this weekend after I compile more pictures and set it to music.
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