Lessons Learned and the Usual Tradeoffs

The Garden To Be

I've been thinking about the garden-to-be almost constantly.  Seed catalogues have been arriving and my imagination is in full swing.  So far, I think I've done really well in not giving in to my impulses to buy all the seeds or collect them all from the local seed bank.  I know reserve is necessary since this is the first year I'll be growing outdoors here and there will be a lot of learning and a fair amount of failure, given the challenging growing conditions.  I grew a garden a few years ago when we lived in Embudo, NM but conditions here on the mesa are different.  The elevation is over 1,000 feet higher, the land is much more exposed to the wind, our water isn't drawn from a well, and there's not already a fertile growing area and a drip system installed.

Loot from Maine garden

I did learn a few things at growing in the high desert that year, though, that were different from growing in other climates.  Things that didn't matter in the past suddenly mattered a lot.  The raised beds I'd always relied in other in other climates may not be the best way to grow in arid conditions.  The greater surface area means more exposure for dehydration by the sun and wind.  Trenches are a better option.  I'd always mulched, but scarcity of water made it more critical.  This scarcity also made it important to conserve water: no watering during the hot times of the day, no big, sudden infusions of water or planting in ways that allowed water to run off.
Some plants I had no trouble growing in the past didn't germinate or failed to thrive.  In the spring, without proper protection, the soil gets too hot too fast and the sun too intense, so some things failed to germinate and other things just sat there and shriveled up.  Seedlings that I set outside to harden off were destroyed by the strong spring winds and, again, the intense sunlight.

I learned that rattlesnakes like to hang out by the compost bins because rodents hang out there, too.

Well camouflaged rattler by the compost

My husband and I had a miserable learning experience when several harmless snakes got inextricably caught in the netting our landlady had draped over her fruit trees to protect them from squirrels and birds.  I battled rabbits and found that the general garden fencing wasn't enough to keep them out.  I had to individually cage the cucurbits.  So then they ate my tomatoes.

Squash from Embudo, NM garden

Nevertheless, I was really happy with what I was able to produce: tons of tomatillos, peppers, and tomatoes, hill and pole beans, summer squash and zucchini, sunflowers, and morning glories.


I've learned, though, that I have a challenge ahead of me in this even tougher growing environment.  Neighbors have warned that thing like tomatoes will need protection from the sun, the wind, and huge the swings in day-to-night temperature.  Plus the existing soil I'm working with is highly alkaline, is very compacted and not very permeable to plant roots or rain, has no worms, little decomposition of organic matter likely few beneficial microorganisms due to the aridity, and lacks in the essential elements needed for plants to grow.  I'm starting from less than zero.

The Options and the Trade Offs

I know I have to build soil.  That's a given.  So is the fact that I have to build fencing to keep out the varmints. The big problem I'm wrestling with is how to provide shelter from the wind and the sun this first growing season  Several approaches are possible.

Flowers in Embudo, NM garden

One: Use shade cloth on the perimeter fencing to provide some shading and wind block.  Use pallets to set up some growing box areas to provide additional protection.  Cover these as necessary.  This would be pretty cheap. 

Two: Do one, plus build some simple, smallish hoop houses to cover areas of the garden.  Use cattle panels, pvc pipe, rebar to hold them to the ground, and cover with shade cloth.  When the weather is cooler, I might be able to swap out the shade cloth and cover with something to extend the growing season a bit in the fall and spring.  This is more expensive than the first option, but it would provide more protection.  It has its own draw backs;  the shelter wouldn't be very weather hardy; I worry that the hoops would just get torn apart by the wind.

Three:  Build a more substantial and larger single hoop house using metal tubing; cover with plastic and use shade cloth over that.  Anchor permanently to the ground and use wood to provide rigidity and stability.  This option is much more expensive but also will likely be more durable.  Combined with row covering inside the hoop house, I could extend the growing season.   I could also install a gutter water catchment system and a solar powered fan and pump for a drip system, something not possible with option 2.

Four:  Build a walipini or a greenhouse with rigid plastic panels.  I don't have a sense for the cost of this compared to option 3, which makes me wary.  I'd need to pay for help with the excavation and/or building.  The plastic panels are pricey.  And ultimately the square footage would be smaller than option two and three, due to the expense of the materials per square foot of garden space.  But this would be the most durable design, and it would provide the best protection to extend the growing season.

That's where I am, waffling about my choices.  Currently, my preference is to do a combination of choice 1 and 2 for this year and see how thing go.  Hope that things grow and don't get torn apart by the wind.  Hold options 3 and 4 as future possibilities.

One More Thing I'm Pondering 

I'm growing only for our household.  Investing several thousand dollars to grow some vegetables will never pay off if I only consider how much vegetables cost in the grocery store.  But there are a few other considerations.

One: If shit hits the fan, whether it be through job loss, war, emp, epidemic, collapse of the dollar, collapse of the delivery system, whatever, we'll be able to grow some of our own food.

Two:  I find it personally fulfilling to try to grow things.  It's one of those activities that makes me feel the most alive.

Three: It also makes me feel really good to be more autonomous and less reliant on a non-sustainable, exploitative system.  It's a moral/ethical choice.  I don't want to depend on a system whose workings are beyond my control, and whose practices I believe to be destructive of the planet and many forms of life.

Caveat with respect to number 3: There is no excellent choice here.  Growing vegetables is not a happy-happy joy to the world thing.  That metal fencing I bought the other day to keep out the rabbits implicates me in the destruction of the environment; it was manufactured in some huge factory hundreds or thousands of miles away and brought to my door by FedEx, and more than likely the people involved were not making a living wage.    Plastic sheeting, pvc and cattle panels, screws, solar panels and a battery and inverter to operate a pump for a rain catchment system, these things implicate me, too.  It could be that buying vegetables from the grocery store is the most efficient use of natural resources, the choice that is least destructive.  I don't know and I don't know how to know.