Desert Victory Gardens

Inspired by empty grocery shelves and too much free time from sheltering in place, people rushed off to Home Depot to empty the shelves of gardening supplies. Many started their own "victory gardens." 

For you young'uns out there…Victory Gardens were made popular during WWII when people planted vegetable gardens to supplement their meager rations. The government promoted victory gardens as a way to support the war effort. They even offered a booklet to help first time gardeners. 

A peek at that booklet might be helpful.

1. Don’t start what you can’t finish. Before you start a garden, count the work involved even before seedtime and through to harvest. Abandoned gardens are a waste of seed, fertilizer, tools, insecticides and labor. 

Great advice. Wait! No mention of water? The writers obviously weren’t living in the desert during a 20 year drought and record heat wave!

When I think of Victory Gardens I think of my nana’s garden with perfect rows of vegetables. But nana lived on a farm in the Midwest where there was plenty of water. The gardeners of that age weren’t concerned about pollinators going extinct due to insecticides. They were blissfully unaware of the impact of climate change or fertilizer made out of fossil fuels. 

Check out number 7. Don’t let the pole beans block out the beets. In fact, don’t let any of the tall crops shade short ones whatever they are. Growing things must get sun. 

What!? They obviously haven’t watched their veggies wither and die in the scorching June sun. But I’m afraid many first time desert gardeners might.

There are lessons to be learned in the desert all around us.

Baby saguaros survive the harsh summer by sheltering in the shade of native trees like a mesquite or palo verde. They don’t call these trees “nurse plants” for nothin’. Our garden is shaded by two palo verde trees. Veggies grown under mesquite and palo verde trees also benefit from the nitrogen those trees fix in the soil. As far as those pole beans go, the Tohono O'odham demonstrate how the three sisters (beans, squash and corn) benefit from being grown together. The beans climb the corn and fix nitrogen in the ground, and squash leaves cover the ground to protect the soil and keep down weeds. After soaking beans for dinner, I'll plant a few under my young fruit trees for a nitrogen boost.   

Unfortunately, the giant eucalyptus tree that used to shade our entire backyard died this year. Now our baby fig trees suffer from direct sunlight. Taking advice from experienced Tucson gardeners, I've concocted shade contraptions out of tomato cages and some recycled shade mesh. No need to shade or water our native trees. Our desert hackberry, acacia, mesquite, and palo verde are thriving this summer with no additional city water. Yeah! The lesson from this is to plant native trees or heritage fruit trees that can take the summer heat!

One of our most helpful low-water gardening methods was inspired by early inhabitants in tune with their desert surroundings.

Back when the Santa Cruz River flowed year around, the Tohono O’odham practiced ak chin irrigation. When the monsoon rains came, the river would overflow washing nourishing silt over the flood plain. The silt would retain the moisture and replenish the soil. It would nourish the durable native seed crops they would plant in the floodplain. In a similar fashion we keep fallen leaves and apply organic wood chip mulch to nourish the soil and retain moisture in our garden and desert landscape. This traditional T.O. method also inspired the rainwater harvesting earthworks method of slow, spread and sink.

During the hottest month of June, before the monsoon season starts, I take my old fashion watering can out early every morning before it gets too hot and saturate the mulch around my young fig trees. If water rolls off the top of the mulch, I mix the water into the mulch with my hand and then pour more water into it. Using the watering can helps me keep track of how much water I use. 

NOTE: It’s even better to water them after it cools off in the evening so the water won't evaporate in the heat of the day. 

Pioneers survived droughts by treating each drop of water as precious. You may have seen westerns where the whole family used the same bath water. Gross! But we can use the same water twice. Dan and I carry our kitchen rinse water out to our hummingbird trumpets. A friend has an outdoor shower that waters his landscape. We use the greywater from our washing machine to irrigate our heritage fruit trees. 

We gleaned a great water conservation method from the Mexicans who built Tucson. They buried round ollas (unglazed terra cotta clay pots) in the ground and planted veggies around them. Water is poured into the opening on the top. That water slowly seeps through the pot into the soil. The roots of the plants wrap around the olla taking just the amount of water they needed. This saves a lot of water!

Nourishing the soil with compost, covering it with a thin layer of mulch and watering it with rainwater are desert gardening basics. To save water and have a healthy plant or tree, it's important to know how much water they require. Likewise, it's important to sow the right plant in the right season. Another tried and true technique is to plant short-season crops after the monsoons and use added rainwater to grow fast-growing favorites.

Sadly, it’s been a while since it’s rained in our yard. And the rainwater we collected in our water barrels is long gone. So I’ve had to resort to using more city water than I want to this summer. To offset that extra water use, I look for other ways to conserve water. Instead of a full shower, I often take what nana called a “spit bath” or sponge bath and then pour that water onto plants!

Nana would be proud.

VICTORY GARDEN RESOURCES:

Planting calendar for Tucson

Building Healthy Soil Using Cover Crops

Companion planting

Desert Composting

Worm Composting

Backyard Chickens 

Resources for Soil Amendments, Compost, and Fertilizers

Wildlife gardening

Rainwater Harvesting

ARIZONA VEGETABLE PLANTING GUIDE: A VISUAL GUIDE FOR LOW DESERT VEGETABLES

Get free seeds from Seed Library

Save on your water bill while gardening

Heritage Gardens (Healthy Traditions in the Making)

As Thanksgiving approaches, I reminisce about how, as a child, I was intrigued by the idea of living off the land like Native Americans. I loved climbing on the boulders in Apple Valley, California, (near Hesperia, where I grew up) to find holes worn in the rocks from grinding grains. On a recent visit to Tucson Botanical Garden, my boyfriend, Dan, and I were drawn to the Tohono O'odham heritage garden and the corn grinders.

(What fun! You can pay 25 cents for a handful of seeds to grind. Of course, being accustomed to modern conveniences, I opted for the corn that had been partially ground by the kid before me...)

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Dan took pictures of their irrigation system as a guide for the heritage garden we will be growing as research for his humanitarian farming project, The Pineapple Project.

We cleared out backyard for a test garden...

I love this project! Aside from assisting subsistence farmers in third world countries, it gives Dan's endless curiosity free range to research sustainability and returning to local heritage plants. Yes, we have attended plenty of food lectures and documentaries. Our idea of a good time is perusing the Tohono O'odham heritage cook book, From I'itoi's Garden. This all suits Dan's life style of eating organic foods and baking his own bread. (Lucky me!) We enjoy experimenting with all kinds of indigenous grains - much healthier than processed white flour.

Amaranth: Weed or Food?

Dan is also interested in using local plants (we call weeds or pests) as sources of food. In his research, he found out that the Amaranth, that is growing wild in the utility road behind our house, is a heritage food and more healthy than quinoa! Unfortunately, it was too late in the season to be edible. Prior to that, Dan waited patiently for our huge prickly pear cactus to bear fruit, but it never did. He is looking forward to the Mesquite bean to be in season for picking. It's tough being a programmer/gatherer.

We are excited about the new restaurants inspired by Tohono O'odham ingredients. These restaurants represent more than just a culinary trend. The Desert Rain Cafe is educating this generation about the health benefits of eating traditional foods. (Chiolin, the cholla cactus flower buds that their ancestors harvested, balance the blood sugar which is good for diabetes, a growing concern of the tribe.) We plan to make a pilgrimage to Mission Gardens at the base of A Mountain in Tucson. (It's by the Mercado - if you wanna grab a bite while there.) We already made the trek to Native Seeds where we bought Tohono O'odham staples: tepary beans and mesquite flour.

Last night we finally ate tepary bean stew with mesquite flour tortillas. (I say finally because it took 24 hours for these tiny beans to cook in the crock pot - even though we soaked the beans overnight.) But the stew was delicious. We found adding chipotle chilis gave it a nice smoked flavor. The homemade tortillas resembled Flintstone Frisbees. (Sorry, Dan. Your bread is yummy though! lol) To redeem himself, Dan just came in with a fresh, soft batch - thanks to the wonder of baking powder! Great with butter and prickly pear syrup!

UPDATE: Dan and I are excited to announce our new blog:

http://raglooms-heirlooms.blogspot.com/2016/02/starting-where-we-live.html