Gardening in the High Desert with Straw Bale Raised Beds and More...

Straw Bale Raised Bed Garden

Straw Bale Raised Bed Gardening

So many plants grow well here in the High Desert in Southern California and especially in Straw Bale Raised Garden Beds.

We have Haogen Melons, Cantaloupe, Eggplant, Red and Orange Bell Peppers, Jalapeno Peppers, Habenjero Peppers and Aunt Molly's Ground Cherries planted in this Straw Bale Bed.

Squash and Watermelon in Raised Straw Bale Bed Garden

Squash and Cucumbers in Raised Straw Bale Bed Garden in Back

If you want to find out more about making straw bale raised bed gardens, you can take a look at the post I blogged about How to Make a Straw Bale Raised Bed Garden earlier this year.

Patio Garden Potato Planters

Potato Gardening

I planted organic sweet potatoes and yams in these Patio Garden Potato Planters that I blogged about earlier this year and they are doing really well.  We really look forward to harvesting them when they are ready.  I recently got some Korean Purple Sweet Potatoes that I'm preparing to plant as well.  They taste so yummy and I heard that they have a lower glycemic index...always good to watch that sugar intake no matter how healthy you are.

Tomato Gardening

Topsy Turvey Hanging Tomato Planters are a great way to save space and keep some of the creepy crawlers off of your tomatoes.  I made these using 5 gallon buckets left over from some of our horse feed.

My husband John, drilled a hole in the center of the bottom of the bucket for me to insert my seedling tomato into.  I used coffee filters  in the bottom to keep the dirt from coming out the hole and filled the bucket with composted soil and special nutrients like fish emulsion for growing healthy tomatoes and then topped it off with a little mulch and put the lid on it that John had drilled holes in to make it easy to  water them through.

I bought some burlap that I'm going to use to cover these hanging tomato planters with when I get a "Round To It".

Raised Bed Tomato Gardening

Here is another one of our tomato gardens that we made using another kind of a raised bed made with old bleached out telephone poles.  It is a good idea to make sure there is no creosote left in them if you are going to use telephone poles or railroad ties. It is not good to have creosote leaching into your plants.

We double dig the soil first and amend it with organic compost and then place the telephone poles.  Once we have the phone poles in place, we fill the center with all organic composted soil and special amendments that are great for growing the best tomatoes.  We use T bars and concrete wire running down the center of the garden so we can plant tomatoes on each side and tie them up to the concrete wire.  We used to make tomato cages out of the concrete wire but they take up too much space and we get a huge crop of tomatoes doing it this way.

I plant Marigolds among my tomatoes which helps keep some bugs away plus I put crushed egg shells around the bottom of each tomato plant. Most kinds of worms don't like to crawl on egg shells.

We also have carrots and parsnips planted among our tomato plants in this raised bed.

Gardening on  No Climb Fencing

Pumpkins and Runner Beans Growing on No Climb Fencing

We use all sorts of places on our ranch to plant things.  Of course we fence off the chickens, alpacas and horses so they can't eat our precious crops.

Antique Yard Art in the Garden

Antique Yard Art in the Garden Bed

It is always fun for me to add a little "Yard Art" in and around our various gardens.

Here's a few antiques among the black berries and a giant pumpkin plant we planted.  Be sure to visit my blog often for more garden photos and stories.

There is already a giant pumpkin forming on the backside of this fence in a catch pen area of our alpaca pens.  Be sure to check back for photos of this giant pumpkin growing.

I'll be blogging more soon about berries, fruits and other vegetables we've planted that grow well here in the High Desert in Southern California.

Feel free to comment on this post about Gardening in the High Desert.

How to Make Straw Bale Raised Bed Gardens

For those friends of mine that have asked me how we make our Straw Bale Raised Bed Gardens, here are some photos and how we do it:

This raised garden bed is made with 8 straw bales.  Sometimes we use 6 and sometimes we use 10 depending on the space where we are locating them. We line them up so it is easy to reach into the center of the bed from each side.  It makes it easier to pick our vegetables and also maintain weed prevention when it isn't too wide.

This photo shows the straw bales set in position on the shade cloth with the first load of alpaca manure in it.

First we lay weed cloth on the ground and then place the straw bales where we want them.  If we are using a wheel barrow to haul and dump alpaca, chicken and horse manure inside, then we keep one end open to make it easy to wheel into it.  The first load of manure in this garden was a wheel barrow full of alpaca manure.  the next load was a wheel barrow full of chicken manure. We spread it out with a rake and then dumped a few used tea bags, vegetable cuttings and egg shells.  We only use loose tea left overs or tea bags that are made of paper in our composting.  We put left over vegetable cuttings in our garden beds as well.

This shows the alpaca manure and the first load of chicken manure plus tea bags, egg shells and vegetable cuttings

We layer alfalfa hay alternately with horse manure, alpaca, and chicken manure because it gives extra protein in the compost and makes a very rich soil to plant vegetables in.  We make sure to water each layer thoroughly so there is plenty of moisture to help it compost rapidly.

If you are fortunate to have a tractor like we are, then it makes it so much easier to fill the bed with manure

This is layering more manure on top of the layer of alfalfa hay.

Once the raised beds are completely full we use a shovel to dig holes in the garden and bury vegetable cuttings and let them compost making sure that we water the bed periodically to help it compost more rapidly.  We also dig or stir the dirt as it is composting to make sure it gets mixed together and fully composts.  It usually takes about 14 days to compost these beds.

The bed is completely filled with the various layers of manure and alfalfa hay, raked & well watered.

When we were first using llama and alpaca manure we didn't bother to compost it because we could plant directly into it without it burning the plants like un-composted chicken, cow and horse manure does...However we used to feed our llamas, alpacas and horses Orchard Grass Hay - so there was no problem.  Last year we switched to feeding our horses and alpacas Bermuda Grass Hay and it has to be composted now or we end up with our own hay field in our raised beds! ...now we have our own nice hay crop to feed them with and a lot of work to do to re build those gardens once we get the hay out of them!

We cut heavy duty plastic and cover the bed to hold in the moisture and allow it to heat up so it will compost quickly.  We remove the plastic every few days and stir up the soil so it can blend and compost thoroughly.  We have such high winds sometimes here in the High Desert that we need to make sure we keep the plastic secured so some of our wood from our wood pile comes in handy to hold it in place.

  
 The photo below shows a 6 Straw Bale Raised Garden Bed that we made in the early fall of 2011 and composted.  We grew some late squash in it that was quite tasty.  We recently planted some garlic in it which is already beginning to come up.  We also planted sugar peas which are peeking through just barely and a couple of different kinds of squash.  I'll be adding some Nasturtiums to give it a little more color plus Nasturtiums are eatable flowers that are great in salads!

After this planting we will amend the soil so it will stay rich and healthy and provide super healthy veggies!

Sometimes we add earth worms but most of the time they just appear on their own!  We will have quite a few more raised beds this year.  We plan to do some canning and some food dehydration as well as freezing some of our vegetables and fruit this year.  So when it is time to do that, I might blog a little about food preservation.

This is "Stormy" one of our outside "Watch Cats"  I guess he thinks he's doing his job keeping the birds out of the garden!