8 Secrets to Gardening in the Southwest

Gardening in the Southwest is very much different from gardening in other parts of the country. So I am here to give you the 8 gardening secrets of how to succeed in gardening successfully in the Southwest. In order to succeed at gardening here, you really have to work at it. Although the results are well worth the efforts. There are weather and soil conditions to deal with. Wildlife can even be a factor.

Soil preparation in the high desert is a must. Our soil here is very sandy and there is a little bit of cleachy. So, the first step after you have determined where your garden is going to be is to hose the area down every morning for about 3 days. This little secret works wonders to help loosen the soil and makes digging a lot easier. Next you line out where each bed will be and start digging. If you can't get it deep enough, fill your hole with more water and soak it again. If you hit cleachy and the soaking isn't cutting through the cleachy, there are products you can buy from your local garden center to attack that stubborn stuff.

Because the desert has such sandy soil you'll need to add some compost. You can buy compost from your garden center, but it's kind of expensive. We got out the phone book and found a company that would come over and deliver a nice sized pile of compost. If you have an old 5 gallon bucket left over from a painting project, this is ideal for filling with compost and dumping it in each gardening area. Once your garden is established you'll be making your own compost pile for free from all your garden leaves after the garden season is over.

If your house is located in open grazing land like ours, then you really need an outer fence on your property. Some posts and barbed wire do just fine for fencing off your property from cattle and horses. When we had just moved in a neighbor of ours tried to convince us that the cattle would bust through this fence to get at the tasty morsels in our garden! It never happened. But he thought it was a funny joke to tease the new people in the area.

Fencing for the garden is a must. We made the mistake of using 2X2 chicken wire fencing. But, at that time we had not seen any cottontail bunnies or coyotes. After 2 years of gardening the bunnies arrived! Bunnies are much like mice, in that if they can get their head through something, they can generally get into your garden. We resolved the problem of bunnies getting into the garden by two methods. We purchased some 1X1 chicken wire fencing material and wired it onto the existing fence, about 1 1/2 feet high from the bottom up. Then I kept reading about spreading fox urine, which we were plumb out of around the garden. Well, every week I have to clean up the yard after our dogs. So we placed this about every 7 feet next to the outside of the garden fence. Wonders of wonders, the rabbits have not been in the garden again.

If your living in the Southwest there is wind and more wind from about March through May. We usually put our garden plants in the first week of April. Then the very strong winds would come along and rip them to shreds. Costing us many weeks of valuable growing time. This year we declared war on the winds, feeling there must be some way to keep our plants from getting torn up. We had some old fence posts that weren't being used and some left over cardboard in the garage. So we soaked the area around each garden where we wanted to sink a fence post to soften the soil. Drove the posts in with a hammer and attached the cardboard to the posts using glue guns and bailing wire. Now folks this does not work forever if you get too much wind and rain it will destroy this cardboard protection. But it did last long enough to get us into June, when our winds subside to a point.

Rodents abound in the deserts. Yes, no doubt about it. Little mice and rats and they will get through 1X1 fencing. So lay out some mice traps if it's in an area that your pets cannot get into. We walked the garden areas 3 or 4 times a day with a pellet gun. It worked great. I bet a sling shot would be as equally effective.

A nice gardening secret. Don't throw your tin cans away. Gather them up and put them in a sink full of water to soak and remove the labels from them. Use your can opener to remove the bottom of the can. Now you should have a can that you can see all the way through. Place these cans over each area in your garden on top of where the seeds were put in. This little can does two things. It's a great little wind protector when the plants are young and it seems to stop birds and rodents from eating your tender shoots as they come up. Once the plants out grow the size of the can, gently twist the can to remove the soil that has become attached. Save your cans for next years garden.

Common sense would tell you to move a stick in and around your vegetable plants before putting your hands in to harvest. Our desert has whip snakes, which are harmless to you, but they will try and bite you if you make them mad. And yes, we do have the rattle snakes out here, so be careful. One day I was in the back yard watering my tomatoes and thinking how this evening I would come out and pick them. When out of the corner of my eye, I thought my tomato bush moved. It was a rattler!

Now that it's the end of the gardening season, take all your dying vegetable plants and start your compost pile so it will be ready for next years gardening. Hopefully these 8 secrets to gardening in the Southwest will make your gardening more enjoyable and successful.