Arizona Gardening - Hard as Rock

In the central highlands of Arizona, nestled into the mountains of Prescott, gardening is not as easy as it is say in...the temperate climates of Southern California.  The ground is hard as a rock!  In fact sometimes it is rock!  So how on earth do you have a garden in this mountain desert terrain. 

Well what we have learned from the years of being here is that the soil is terrible.  You have to import a ton of soil if you want to garden in a raised bed. Even then you are gambling with what kind of soil you might get from the local nurseries.  

So we have taken to a low budget approach.  You can see from the picture below that we have adapted to the soil here.  The soil is clay and rock.  So we use a digging bar to bang out some clay pots right into the soil.  About 1 foot deep, by about 1 foot wide holes are dug into the ground.  

Our next step is to actually prepare the soil we will be using in the clay pots in the ground.  For this we mix together about %50 composted mulch, %50 locally imported dirt from the area.  To this mix we add a big double handful of grass cuttings for nitrogen, a 1/2 cup of 16-16-16 fertilizer, and we coat the bottom of each whole with gypsum to break up the tightly packed clay and rock for the roots to have a place to go.  

Once the holes are filled with this great mixture we soak it down so that the entire soil mixture is totally staturated.  To that we add a mixture of fish emulsion to kickstart the nutrients the seedlign plants will need to survive.

After we have the garden planted.  We rotate the watering schedule to include every two weeks a boosting shot of Miracle Grow and then next time we use more fish emulsion mixture.  Once the plants begin to set flowers and fruiting is about to start we side dress the plants with an extra dose of 16-16-16 fertilizer.  That simply means we dig a little crescent about 6 to 8 inches from the stem of the plant about 2 inches deep and about 12 inches long.  Sprinkle in a 1/2 cup of the fertilizer and cover it back up.  After that we water as normal...and the extra nutrients soak into the earth slowly...feeding the plants an extra boost of nutrients to create healthy fruit setting.

After that it's time to enjoy the literal fruits of your labors.  We had a pretty good supply of zucchini, yellow squash, patty pan squash, tomatoes of various varieties, jalapenos, green beans, peas, poblano peppers, green chile peppers, habaneros, cucumbers, cilantro, radishes, lettuce, beets, bell peppers...and some other goodies that we are still enjoying today because we canned them for later use.

Happt gardening to you!

The Strong Watchman