This ought to be a good one.....who is from BYC??

[desertwillow]

I just realized that I'm known by baustin over at BYC. I like this website for gardening info. I have a garden, even in the desert. Besides my love of roses and bearded iris I have all kinds of plants that are drought tolerant and grow in this region. We get cold winters, below freezing and hot, hot dry summers. Our humidity gets as low as 5% sometimes and the hottest it's been here since moving here four years ago is 117F. We're only about 130 miles from Death Valley. We put in a veggie garden and it does well. We're already eating small red potatoes and peas and we have onions, pole beans and three kinds of squash and cukes and cantaloupe.
My tomatoes are grown in a raised bed that I can protect from the wind and late frosts.

 

[deeszoo]

I am from BYC. Poultry and gardens are my two favorite hobbies, even though they don't mix too well! LOL!!!

 

[desertwillow]

oultry and gardens are my favorite hobbies also but I must add quilting, crocheting and knitting to the list also. I do things in the summer that I can't do in the winter and vice versa. My chickens have to be in a pen so they don't bother my garden. It's the bunnies and ground squirrels that do that. I have to keep my chickens in pens to keep out the coyotes and bobcats and hawks.

 

[elf]

Started there. Haven't checked in in a while. Chickened out.

 

[BarkerChickens]

Hi DesertWillow!! If you hadn't mentioned your Baustin on BYC, I wouldn't have realized it was you!! I finally signed up over here after a long while of wanting to get around to it! We're looking at building a lattice style shade structure over our garden this year. Our poor veggies get baked in the desert sun. We experimented by covering a portion of the garden with an EZ-up. The covered plants did SO much better!! Everything else just struggles in 100+ weather with 15+ hours of direct sun a day.

 

[citychickinthecountry]

I'm a BYC'er too. I'm hoping this site has as much useful information and as many knowledgable members as BYC.

 

[desertwillow]

Hi barkerchickens! hi to citychicken also! That sun is tough on plants for sure. I use shade cloth over mine and it helps a lot. I have it over my chicken pen and aviary also. The birds and chickens appreciate it I'm sure. What do you have planted in Hesperia? We picked the last of the peas yesterday and pulled some carrots and turnip and mustard greens. I cooked carrots and also greens last night and had them with a steak fresh from the grill. Yum! I have little yellow squash on the plants now and the zucchini is blooming. My tomatoes are loaded this year. We'll be gone from the 14th thru the 22nd. We're flying back to NC to visit my children back there and their children. My grandchildren range in age from early 20's down to a 5 year old so I should have fun. My daughter back there is going to take me to the quilt shops that are around there. More Fun!

citychickeninthe country, you should learn a lot on TEG. If you have a question or more just ask away. There's always someone that has an answer. In fact you'll get more than one.

 

[BarkerChickens]

Hi barkerchickens! hi to citychicken also! That sun is tough on plants for sure. I use shade cloth over mine and it helps a lot. I have it over my chicken pen and aviary also. The birds and chickens appreciate it I'm sure. What do you have planted in Hesperia? We picked the last of the peas yesterday and pulled some carrots and turnip and mustard greens. I cooked carrots and also greens last night and had them with a steak fresh from the grill. Yum! I have little yellow squash on the plants now and the zucchini is blooming. My tomatoes are loaded this year. We'll be gone from the 14th thru the 22nd. We're flying back to NC to visit my children back there and their children. My grandchildren range in age from early 20's down to a 5 year old so I should have fun. My daughter back there is going to take me to the quilt shops that are around there. More Fun!

citychickeninthe country, you should learn a lot on TEG. If you have a question or more just ask away. There's always someone that has an answer. In fact you'll get more than one.

We just pulled the last of our onions and garlic. Over the winter we had cabbage, spinach, mesclun lettuce mix, swiss and rainbow chard, carrots (didn't do as well), broccoli, and several other in the brassica family.

Our summer garden is being started late as we had some late frosts this spring (~3,700 ft elevation), but we have something like 9 varieties of tomatoes, zucchini, crookneck squash, couple types of potatoes (Yukon, Red, etc), cayenne peppers, serranos, 5-color chinese peppers (never grown these before, but their suppose to be spicy), thai peppers, bell peppers (2 types), Black-seeded Taiwan long bean, red-seeded asparagus bean, blue lake green bean, kentucky wonder bean, purple-podded pole bean, Dragon-tongue bean, 6 or 8 types of melons (watermelon, banana melon, casaba, etc), cucumbers, 4 types of corn, and a bunch of various herbs. We also have huckleberries (just started this year), blackberries, grapes, and fruit trees (cherry, peach, apple, and nectarine). ....I think that's it. My husband loves gardening, so between the two of us, it seems to grow exponentially as the years pass.

MMM...veggies on the grill...I can't wait until our garden is in full bloom! While our climate is difficult to grow in, we get to grow year-round, which is nice. I hadn't thought about growing turnips. Maybe I will add those this fall/winter.

A quilting class?? That sounds like fun! I've been wanting to learn to quilt, but have been to busy to take a class. You'll have to let me know how it goes!

City Chick!!

 

[SweetMissDaisy]

me!

 

[desertwillow]

Hi barkerchickens, your garden sounds fabulous. We'll have to get together sometime and compare gardens. We're not much into the hot peppers but we did grow radishes and we have green bell peppers. Do you have chickens too? I have nine hens and get about 6-8 eggs a day. I also have a rooster named Daddy"O. We just added an extension off the back of the chicken house for more chickens and an additional section for another aviary. I have finches in one cage and English parakeets and canaries in the other. I have a friend that is going to give me one of each of her pullets so I'll have five more varieties. I'm not putting a rooster in with them.