How to Deep Mulch Your Garden with Hay | The Prairie Homestead

How to Deep Mulch Your Garden with Hay | The Prairie Homestead

OK, maybe not today

I've been searching for an answer to our gardening problems. A good fence has helped a lot, but I really think our biggest problem is that this is the desert. Our land is 1 1/3 acres of rocks held together by sagebrush and clay, watered by and "average" of 10" or rain a year ("average" meaning every ten years we get 30"; the rest of the time we get less than 10"). I am beginning to think that every property needs it's own method and you just have to experiment until you find the best for your land.

If I had unlimited money to put into our garden/orchard (both enclosed by the same fence):

• I would build a wall of either straw bales or rock around the perimeter and plant a producing vine of some sort all along it (grapes? berries?) Such a structure is supposed to alter the micro climate for the length of its height x 4 (a 4' wall will reduce wind and our intense sun for 16' inside the garden.) This should drastically reduce the need for watering and the just plain loss from our blow-dryer winds (honestly, in August you can stand out watering the plants and watch them wilt as the wind dries them faster than we can water them). 
• I would build better beds throughout the whole area, including one that goes around the whole perimeter. 
• I would fill all the beds (new and old) with high quality potting soil. Not the organic way, I know, But it would give us a jumpstart we desperately need.
• I would probably mulch all the planting areas with straw and the paths with pine needles, except the one area with a table and chairs which I would plant in a nice grass. This area also needs more chairs.
• I would install automatic waterers on timers for the whole area, plus add a storage shed.
• I would need some sort of compost scheme. The one that attracts me the most is a run around the garden with chickens in it (which would require us moving the chicken coop). Then garden waste would just be dumped over the main garden fence into the run, kitchen scraps added, and the chickens do the rest. Once a year we rake up all the compost and add it to the garden.
• Lets add miniature greenhouse covers to each bed to extend the growing season (Our last frost is in June, first is in September, and I've seen it snow in July here). I would also make it so these could be covered with screens to keep the sparrows and quail out. The trees need nets over them too, as we are already losing our cherry crop to the sparrows this year and they aren't even ripe yet!

This is a lot of work and though some of it can be done without money, too much of it needs some investment, which I just don't have. So, the modified (more realistic) version:

• Pick up some sort of cloth/plastic to toss over the fence to cut the wind down. It would have to be replaced more often, but a wall is out of the question right now.
• Work on the perimeter beds and plant something drought resistant that can cover the fence, even if it doesn't provide food.  
• Keep simply adding kitchen scraps directly to the garden beds that don't currently have anything in them and just keep tilling them under. We aren't moving the chickens. 
• One small greenhouse over several of the garden beds. Less total space "under roof," but cheaper and easier to manage if I can find a way to keep it from blowing away. This would eliminate pests with 4-6 legs, cut the wind, and maybe retain more of the water. We will have to open up a window in the worst of the summer or the plants inside will cook. So, less space planted, but likely more space successfully growing food. 

How about you? will you have a garden this year? What pests and weather do you have to deal with?

Gardens

One thing I looked forward to when we bought 1 1/3 acres 18 years ago was growing a garden. Well it didn't quite work out.

Our land is rocks held together with clay and sagebrush, so just throwing seeds in the ground is absolutely out of the question. Raised beds it is...

Except I always have better financial priorities than wood for gardens.

And dirt. I have trouble buying dirt when I own more than an acre of land. But our dirt isn't exactly "bread basket" material. Pot-making maybe. Plant growing, nope.

Then there are the critters. Our gardens have been eaten over the years by quail, jack rabbits, cows, mustangs (!), and our own dog (Bear, who passed away several years ago, ate all my roses. I even wrapped them in barbed wire to keep him off and it didn't slow him down. I gave up.)

Add to all that the moisture-zapping wind and 100 degree heat we get every August and :-P

Despite all this we keep trying.

A few years ago the kids and I tried our hands at building beds out of rocks. It worked fairly well, though not as well as wood. But rocks we have in plenty (I keep threatening to paint eyes on all of them and put up a sign that says "Pet Rock Ranch." I'd have made a fortune at the height of the pet rock craze.)

Last year I got the idea to move the beds we do have up the hill to the "orchard" (a whole 7 trees, none of which produce anything worth mentioning.) and fence them all in together. It worked! only the quails, mice, squirrels, bugs, and jack rabbits got in:-)

(Now, if I were planning the property today, I would plant the trees downhill from the house instead of uphill. I put them uphill because I thought the back door would be our main entrance, and that put all the growing things real handy to our main path. But it turns out we never use the back door. In fact I gave up and put my freezer in front of it, we used it so seldom. So downhill from the house would actually have been more convenient, as well as easier to water.)

This year, I plan to buy a small greenhouse, tie it down to the ground, and do all my food planting in it. This should reduce or eliminate the mammals getting into the garden. Flowers will be planted around the trees and in the old beds, and I will plant tomatoes in the lovely big red planters Hubby bought me for mother's day last year (where they do very good last year.)

I wish I was better at gardening and surrounding us with more of God's beauty, but it's especially hard here in the Alpine Deserts of Nevada. I will accept any suggestions :-)