7 Comments
User's avatar
Hudson E Baldwin lll's avatar

I forgot a really big one. Tomatoes in black nursery pots only. If you do succeed in creating any fruit in the native soil, not worth the effort. Anyway, you won’t. Unless you have a privacy fence or somesuch to train an indeterminate on as a single line, I like cherry tomatoes and determinates. Not a summer long, helping that enough for canning , freezing and homemade tomato juice.

Expand full comment
Hudson E Baldwin lll's avatar

Nary a soil on earth has an excess of calcium or phosphorous.

Coffee grounds and egg shells refined it to dust is the ultimate desert soil food. Immediately available. Calcium and soil. Chemistry correction.

Bio char and Endo mycorrhizal fungi inoculation is a great thing is done correctly.

Compost, compost, compost, Did I mention compost?

If only available at a retail level, cotton burger or mushroom matrix are awesome. Both a significant chance of being somewhat likely available. Tons of soil, killing cotton in the worst and used mushroom matrix is an indoor thing.

As much kelp as you can afford.

Avoid lime. Agriculture, or any other labeled products.

6.2. -6.35 what is the ideal soil pH for peak soil chemistry. Obviously, certain crops might like it a tiny different.

Expand full comment
Johanna DeBiase's avatar

Thanks for all the tips! I still have much to learn.

Expand full comment
Hudson E Baldwin lll's avatar

It’s covered with the spun, white fabric, such as “Remay” with heavy, Strom mulch, overwintered, spinach is a product I don’t have words for. It stops growing bigger during the Persephone. (days with 10 hours of sunlight or less” but the leaves become thicker. The crunch of a carrot, the sweetest, leafy green you’ve ever tasted.

Elliot Coleman’s methods are workable in any desert environment of North America.

If I was serious about growing my own vegetables, especially greens year-round, I would buy all five of his books at once. The first is a pamphlet he’s growing salad greens all winter in Maine with no supplemental heat.

Expand full comment
Hudson E Baldwin lll's avatar

Me too!! I’m gonna get good at it before I take a trip. 😉

Expand full comment
Hudson E Baldwin lll's avatar

Cotton burr*

Expand full comment
Hudson E Baldwin lll's avatar

Hard to learn lessons from nearly a decade in New Mexico,

Rainwater collection in an enclosed container is an absolute must.

The addition of local

high carbon composting organic matter would definitely be number two.

Lowering the pH on a home garden scale is doable by coffee grounds. Especially if you work in collaboration with a local barista.

Expand full comment