Karla's Blog

June 24, 2024

Well, we pretty much know nothing about gardening/farming, but recently some people we know who live just outside the Ranch, began The Rancho Garden Club. We, along with several others, were invited to be part of the club to plant gardens on their property. They provided raised beds and we planted and maintain them. This is our bed, which we share with a friend. It is about a block away so we can walk or take the golf cart up to tend to it. Since we’re pretty “green” (pun intended) at this, we’ve watched many, many YouTube videos to learn what we can.

I don’t know how long that netting will last. We put it there to keep the many critters such as birds and squirrels out, but there’s evidence that the birds are picking at it for nesting material. Those little opportunists!

After we got that set up we decided to do a couple of smaller beds on our lot. Here’s Larry getting them set up and ready to plant. 

We planted three kinds of lettuce, swiss chard and cilantro. We’ve been enjoying the lettuce and chard but the cilantro hasn’t done well. I guess we’ll just keep buying it at the store ;-/. 

Because of irrigation issues, the garden up the street was struggling a bit. However, after shutting off the water for a few days, and changing from sprinklers to misters, the moisture level is more acceptable and the veggies are starting to grow better. We’ve gotten some really nice radishes and chard and we’re about ready to harvest some green onions and carrots. Yippee!

We also planted potatoes in grow bags nearby. Critters ate the greens so we covered them with netting. They take a while to reach maturity so we’re still waiting. More recently we planted watermelon, cantaloupe and pumpkin. Critters keep eating the greens on those as well, so we put a cage around  the watermelon. We still need to do the same with the others.

It’s so great to enjoy a salad with greens straight from the garden. 

We’ve found that ettuce makes a great “leafy green” substitute for chard or spinach. I was inspired to make a saute’ with spaghetti squash, spicy sausage and lettuce, which turned out really, really good paired with some garlic Naan.

As the weather warms up, we’ll need to get our butts up and out much earlier. In fact, this week it has reached 100 … ugh. We took Max out for his walk about 6:30 this morning. l guess we’ll get used to that because, for the foreseeable future, it’s gonna be HOT here! Welcome to Summer in the desert.