But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for the ‘gardening’ Category

Plants for the Desert Southwest

This Sunday, June 10, is the Corrales (New Mexico) Garden Tour, which runs from 9 am to 4 pm. Come on out to the historic village for a great opportunity to see what can be grown in our dry desert landscape.

With that in mind, I thought I’d show you a few of the star performers in my little slice of hot, dry hell. Here in the Albuquerque metro area we get less than eight inches of rain a year (much less, lately), the summer temperatures rise into the 90s, with the occasional span of 100s; the winter lows can dip into the single digits (recently going as low as -10), with very little snow. Operative word is “dry.” The added complication in my yard is the soil, which is better described as beach sand.

In my garden, most of the plants below do so well that they are downright invasive, reseeding themselves everywhere. Probably not good plants for fussy gardeners who want crisply maintained beds and well-behaved plants, but great in a more rustic, relaxed setting.

Phlox or sand penstemon (Penstemon ambiguus) is a workhorse in sand. In fact, I’m not (more…)

Murder Most Foul

Today, on the very day that my Cyber Monday purchase–two gopher traps–shipped, I find my nemesis in the yard, D.E.A.D, dead. Yes, ding-dong, the wicked rodent’s dead.

Friends know that as a rule, my garden is a welcoming place to wildlife. Heck, this year I even called off hostilities against the paper wasps. (It turns out they are great allies in the war against tomato worms, which, as a rule, I also don’t kill. I just pluck ’em off the plants and chuck ’em over the fence.)

But my garden is my life, in darkest times the bright spot that keeps me going. (And my dark spots are abysmal, think Laurentian Trench.) There is no coexistence with an animal, no matter how cute, that is laying waste to my organic Prozac.

As this is war, I first dug trenches and (more…)

Baby Quails, Ahoy!

Location, location, location. Perhaps that’s what a quail thought when she decided to make her nest under a rock in the rock garden. Maybe it was the sturdy construction, or the lovely view, but something must have canceled out the negatives for this nest location–first and foremost, the constant presence of a two-legged predator. I don’t eat quail, but many of my brethren do, so I can’t fault her for being a mite suspicious of my motives.

She moved in during the height of my battle with (more…)

Just Add Ranch Dressing

Lettuce.  Not just for salads anymore.

I haven’t done much container gardening until recently.  Possibly because, indoors, I have a brown thumb and consequently, I associate any kind of container gardening with death. In the last couple of years, I’ve been expanding my garden palette beyond just perennials. I don’t, however, want to allocate valuable growing space in the ground to annuals, which leads me back to the dreaded pot.

My previous attempts with potted things, outside, have been limited to the usual, “blah” suspects–petunias, snapdragons, pansies, etc.  Lately, I’ve been working more with leaf color, with less emphasis on flowers.

Last year’s lettuce seeded itself all over the place, including where I wanted to plant tomatoes and peppers.  I hate to waste anything, so I dug up the volunteer lettuce and stuck it in a pot.

The result is a pretty neat container plant.  Next year, I think I’ll seed some darker lettuce right into my pots.

(Click images for larger view.)

Desert Garden in May

Life’s a beach.

Of sorts.  Casa de Kirby sits in the midst of a vast sandy desert. Lots of sand and sagebrush.  No rain. No large body of water, unless you count the Rio Grande, which, nowadays, isn’t so grande.

Provided you can stand the complete absence of moisture–hasn’t rained in months–it’s not a bad place to call home.

Being an avid gardener, when I first moved out here, I was horrified by the soil.  Soil is a generous term.  It really is beach sand.  The funny thing is, it turned out to be a great growing medium, especially for drought tolerant plants that demanded “well-drained soil.”  You don’t get any more (more…)

Step One, Dig a Hole

Gardeners bury their mistakes.

Whenever I talk about gardening, there is always someone who is quick to say, “I can’t grow anything; I have a brown thumb.” Now, I recognize that this may be an attempt to shut me up.  “Dear Lord, don’t let her start blathering about ‘soil’ again.”

But to the small percentage who say this with genuine chagrin, my reply is: “So do I.  All gardeners have brown thumbs.”

Here’s the thing.  Gardening is as much about death as it is life.  As with any hobby (or profession), success is achieved largely through a willingness to learn from your mistakes, and sometimes, to simply ignore them.

I’m a geek.  I love science-y stuff.  In college, I took Botany and Biogeography.  I know how photosynthesis works and understand the C4 pathway. But often, when a plant dies, I have no fucking idea why. And die, they do.

I gave it the perfect conditions: just enough water; well-drained soil; a touch of compost.  And it still got dead. In this way, gardening mirrors publishing.  You can have the perfect story for the perfect market, and it still gets rejected.  The only difference being, that unlike publishing, I don’t torture myself over Mother Nature’s rejection of my attempts to meddle.

I dig up the dead thing, chuck it in the compost pile, and plant something in its stead. Game over, insert quarter, play again.

And if all else fails, water the weeds.

Brother, Can You Spare a Zucchini?

In which the Casa de Kirby is struck by a case of “careful what you wish for.”

Rewind several months, back to March, when a young, uh, youngish, erm, what-ever, gardener’s heart warms after the winter that would not end. Me and husband critter are wandering around Lowe’s. We stop by a display of seeds and gardening supplies.

“What should I try this year?” I say.

“Well, how about squash? And peppers. And tomatoes. We have to have tomatoes.”

I peruse the display and take several seed packets. Frankly, I’m a little unenthusiastic about vegetables. Our official “garden,” the part that is protected from marauding rabbits by an adobe wall, is at least 2500-sq ft of flowering plants and shrubs. If it’s not edible, I can grow it.

Vegetables? Not so much. From seed? Fuggetaboutit.

But every year, I try.

This year I tried something new. Raised beds.

Fast forward to September. We’re drowning in squash. This despite an army of squash bugs who treated my garden like a cheap hotel, spending the hot summer afternoons fornicating in the leafy shade. And spawning a whole new generation of squash bugs.

Husband critter, a.k.a., the family chef, scowls as I come in the house, another load of squash in my arms. “More squash?” he says. He’s run out of squash recipes. We’ve both reached the point where if given the choice between starvation and squash, we’d … well, we’d eat the damn squash, but we wouldn’t be happy about it.

“Maybe we should give them to the homeless or something,” says my beloved.

The notion immediately conjures up the following scene: I’m driving. I stop at an intersection, red light and all that. There’s a homeless man standing by the road, holding the obligatory cardboard signage with “Hungry, please help.”

I roll down the window and he hurries over. He reaches out and I plunk a huge zucchini in his hand.

I drive away, fast, before he can gets a chance to throw it at me.