Just add water

I decided that today was the day to clean out the garden some more (the zucchini, melons, cucumbers and green beans were pulled up earlier). I am still harvesting tomatoes, but the arugula and some of the carrots had gone to seed, and the asparagus forest was a real mess. Some bugs had gotten into the asparagus fronds this summer; these bugs were the reason a huge amount of ladybugs moved there and set up their nursery, but with the ladybugs gone and just the dead stalks left, it was time for clean up.

It is amazing to me how well a garden does here in the desert. Our soil is heavy in clay; perhaps because we live on the bajada of the Dragoon mountains we benefit from the flash flooding that has taken place over the many years. When I started the garden we tilled, added 30 tractor buckets of horse manure (never a shortage of that), and the soil amendments recommended by the local garden expert, George Brookbank. These amendments make the soil less alkaline. Then, it is "just add water".

Our watering scheme works well here, though we developed it while we still lived in Oregon: every bed can be individually watered with drip irrigation through perforated "spaghetti" that is attached to a valve. I run 4 lines down each bed and that waters the plants adequately. No wasted water, and no weeds in the walkways.

The cleanup took longer than I had expected as the carrot harvest was enormous. I had not picked sufficiently during the summer, and gathered 3 buckets full: one for us and 2 for the horses. The carrot tops went to the chickens with the overflow (lots of it) to the "boys". Emma helped harvest of course, and snatched a carrot. Surprisingly the dog that eats anything from any kind of poop to grasshoppers turned her nose up at a carrot. Go figure.

One side of the garden looks great now, and there is still lots of lettuce, chard, endive, escarole, spinach and kale to be harvested this winter. Next I will have to tackle the tomato forest and the peppers. I think I will wait until a good frost so we can enjoy fresh tomatoes as long as possible.