Summer Gardening in the Desert
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Our raised planter… just big enough for city farmers
We planted a winter garden in our raised backyard planter in late October/early November last year… artichokes, Brussels sprouts, peas, peppers, and tomatoes. The outstanding winner for the most productive plants was the peas. We harvested them until early May. The largest plant with the least production was the artichoke. Though the artichoke plants were huge and dominated the garden, the chokes we harvested were small and fibrous. We got a few green peppers and lots of green tomatoes, which never quite ripened. The sprouts were so-so, nothing to write home about. The harvest wasn’t spectacular by any means.
Beyond purchasing plants and seeds, the experiment also involved additional expenses, including the purchase and installation of grow lights and tenting the planter to keep the plants warm on nights when the temperature dipped below freezing. Yes, it sometimes gets below freezing on winter nights in the desert. In retrospect, we’re not sure it was worth the dollars or effort, or perhaps we just chose the wrong crops to plant.
In our topsy-turvy Las Vegas growing seasons, we planted our spring/summer crops in February and March, and the plants have mostly been doing okay, even with the triple-digit heat we’ve been experiencing. Cherry tomatoes, cantaloupes, watermelons, pepperoncini, some herbs including basil, chive, and oregano, and several annuals for color and to keep unwanted critters away.
The flowers helped to keep pests away… except for the hornworms!
The flowers worked to keep away most pests, except for the spotted tomato hornworms, which appeared one afternoon out of the blue and completely defoliated our pepper and tomato plants in just a day. They were big green suckers. David picked them off, squished them (much to my chagrin… yuck!), monitored for worms for the next week (squishing as he went) and surprisingly, the tomato plants survived. RIP pepper plants!
Most every morning we head out to the planter, cup of coffee in hand, and check on our ‘kids’. David ‘feeds’ them all once a week. After the worm infestation, we’re quite intent on keeping careful watch over our meager crops. It’s nearing the end of the season now and some of the plants are out of hand, the melon plants and the basil, for instance.
The basil is out of hand, but that’s another story!
The cherry tomatoes have recovered from hornworms and are producing again. We’ve gotten one excellent cantaloupe and a couple of losers, and there are a couple more on the vine. The watermelons were a bust. We think we waited too long to pick and they were overripe. The bees have been busy and there’s still a chance that the end-of-season fruit will be great. We’re hopeful.
Farmers, we ain’t. I remember fondly my Aunt Bette’s garden. Now THAT was a garden!
Still, we enjoy the seeding, planting, and growing processes and celebrate every little new seedling that sprouts and every flower that appears, especially when they become melons or peppers or tomatoes. In a recent conversation with a master gardener at Springs Preserve, we learned that many fruit trees do well in Las Vegas. Maybe we’ll try one of them next season.
In the meantime, it’s time to think about winter gardening again. We’ll plant in October and hope to harvest in January/February/March. If nothing else, we know the peas will flourish.