A green gardener

A few months ago, I bought a house here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The desert. Most houses here have rocks for yards and make strong effort to kill anything which grows in their yard. That's not my idea of a yard. So, when I was house hunting, I looked for a place which had a real yard, where I could grow grass and trees, hang a swing for my daughter and relax.

Now the first thing to know about me is that I am a confirmed nomad. As an adult, I can count 30 places I have lived long enough to change my address. Cannot count how many places I lived in for shorter periods of time. Multiple countries, states and cities. However, my now ex and I came to New Mexico while I was on contract. She liked it here and wanted to stay a while. I agreed, went off contract and signed a lease. Then she decided she wanted to split up. So, my daughter is here and I remain until she grows up. Not the absent father type. 

Got tired of paying ever-increasing rent and, since I know I'm going to be here for quite some time, bought a house. Note that everyone that has ever known me almost passed out at the news. They figured I'd have wheels on my coffin!

The house I bought is older. Kind of a fixer-upper but in good shape. Except the yard. I'll put it simply and say that I have been here for coming on 5 months and just now have the yard looking like a yard. My first thoughts when I saw the yard were that it genuinely looked like a battlefield which had been fairly extensively bombed in the past. Mounds, pits, depressions and one huge pile which is a long story in itself which I have written elsewhere. But I was attracted to the size of the house and yard, certain features and the price. 

Once I started getting the yard in some form of order, I decided to plant a garden. Now, I have never gardened before. Hard to raise a garden when you move frequently. So, I am a beginner at gardening. To add to that, even though this house is near a river, this is still the desert. 

If you live in the desert, most of the advice you find for gardening does not apply. Put plastic on the ground to retain heat for your plants. Um, not advisable.  Don't over-water your plants. Here, it's nearly impossible to water plants too much, as the ground dries almost as fast as you water.

I eliminated an entire field of weeds. I spread plant food, tilled, planted, watered. Many failed seeds and dead plants later, I tested the soil. (I know now, should have done that in the first place.) Turned out the soil was quite alkaline and had absolutely zero Nitrogen. Plus, the soil was nearly all sand which would retain no moisture at all. Hmm, that could be a problem, eh?

I dug a large compost pit. Later, I dug another compost pit. The first has now been turned out three times and the second has been turned out once. The ground is beginning to retain moisture and what grass I have is turning green. Four months ago, I spread grass seed on the bare areas which never sprouted. A couple of weeks ago, I was quite surprised when that grass seed began to grow! It was after I had scattered compost over the entire yard and we had seen a lot of rain.

So, now I have one tomato plant which has produced a few tomatoes, 7 pumpkin plants which are growing tiny pumpkins (my daughter is really happy about that), some cucumber plants which I doubt will yield anything this year but they are growing and some green beans which I planted in pure compost are crowding each other.

This is just a first post, so I'll end it here. I'll just say that I am enjoying turning the desert green!