One Hundred Dollars a Month

Christina, a freelance graphic designer from Nevada sent in a boatload of pictures of her garden recently and I thought they were super cool. So I asked her to give us a virtual tour:

The Live Long and Prosper garden is about 15 by 25 feet and is located in a large area behind my five-acre family home in the high desert of Nevada. We are right next to a wilderness area and bird sanctuary, so we have to fence the garden off from rabbits and quail. Before the garden, the area was just a weedy, sagebrush area that took several years to clear.

It is located next to a barn, a wood shed and a small guesthouse. We did not fill in the entire area with veggies since we have to keep an open area to protect the house from wildfires.

Before we built this garden, I had a small garden (about four beds) in another part of the garden where I just had salad greens, chard, tomatoes and some herbs. Our neighbors and good friends also had a small garden in their backyard and we all came up with the idea to use our spacious backyard (their backyard is lower and floods in the winter and spring) for a community garden. Nearly everything in the garden was re-used, found on Craigslist or given to us. The windows came from a friend who had been working on Leonard Nimoy’s house and the garden gate came from one of the barn stalls.

Since the beds were built with old wood from the barn, they are different sizes. I think we tried to get them around the same size as the Leonard Nimoy windows, so they are either 4×6 or 4×8 in size.

All the manure for the garden came from my family barn (we had cows, sheep, goats and poultry when I was a kid) and it took us some very long weekends and many wheelbarrows to drag it all out into the garden.

It also took several tools (shovel, snow shovel, pickaxe, rake and a pulaski) to get the 20-year manure out. It was one of the hardest jobs I’ve EVER done. 🙂

This year we grew corn, tomatoes, zucchini, pattypan squash, carrots, kale, cauliflower, green beans, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, fingerling potatoes, red potatoes, artichokes (they are in their first year), cantaloupe, watermelons, cucumbers and lemon cucumbers, green peppers and jalepeños. We got some stray pumpkins that came up too from some compost, so those are coming along now.

Everything grew like crazy, but we did get some aphid problems on the brassica plants and some strange black beetles on some of the squash. We also picked the corn too late (newbies!), so it was a little chewy. We also got an early fall and some really cold nights, which is rare for this area so we had to cover up the melons with the windows. We also use a straw bale cold frame for the artichokes and they seem to love it. We did have to pick a lot of the tomatoes green.

For next year, we will rotate the crops and I’m building a pallet composter to amend our soil over the winter. I would love to also put in some raspberry canes, amaranth, garlic, rainbow chard and more lemon cucumbers ( I LOVE them).

We have some wild, erratic weather here so we will try to start as many seeds as we can in cold frames or under grow lights. We’ve never done artichokes before, so I have no idea what will happen with those plants. I will continue to use my smaller garden for lettuce, arugula, spinach and herbs like chives, oregano, cilantro and some strawberry plants. For some reason, peas, beets and onions don’t do well here.

I’ve only been gardening for about 3-4 years. The same for our neighbors. We are all still learning and make some silly mistakes, but it’s such a fun hobby. I love looking at seed catalogs and building things out of found wood or free objects. For other gardening tips, I’m a big fan of your site, GardenFork.tv, and the Edible Garden videos by Alys Fowler.

The barn project was really just a lark. We were just going to use the manure and then I really wanted to light a match to the place. 🙂 Then a co-worker of mine showed me some photos of a nearby barn she was going to be married in. It (the project) turned out really nice and we had a barn dance to celebrate the end of the project.

A big THANK YOU to everyone who has sent in their photographs and stories. I hope by sharing other peoples pictures and stories here on One Hundred Dollars a Month we can all have a rock star garden this summer. Keep them coming!

~Mavis

If you would like to have your garden, chicken coop or something you’ve made featured on One Hundred Dollars a Month, here’s what I’m looking for:

• Your Garden Pictures and Tips – I’d especially like to see your garden set ups, growing areas, and know if you are starting seeds indoors this year. If so,  show me some picture of how you are going about it.
• Your Chicken and Chicken Related Stories – Coops, Chicks, Hen’s, Roosters, Eggs, you name it. If it clucks, send us some pictures to share with the world.
• Cool Arts & Crafts – Made from your very own hands with detailed {and well photographed} pictures and instructions.
• Your pictures and stories about your pets. The more pictures and details the better.
• Garage Sale, Thrift Store and Dumpster Diving pictures and the stories behind the treasures you found including how much you paid for them.

If I feature your pictures and the stories behind them on One Hundred Dollars a Month, I will send you a $20.00 gift card to the greatest store in the world: Amazon.com.

Go  HERE for the official rules.