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Entry Date
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Nick Name
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Location
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Friday, January 25, 2008
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jennynsteve
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Mesa, Arizona
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Entry 9 of 33 |
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Uh oh. I didn't crack the pointy end of the seeds. I hope they aren't dying. I am getting some chicken manure from my neighbor this weekend to start composting.... we are so lacking in nitrogen here. We are fortunate that we have a very large irrigated yard for Arizona. I have one almost 1,000 square foot raised bed that has been totally amended and churned out lots of veggies and flowers for the past year. There is a smaller amended raised bed where I planted 9 bare-root antique roses and the bushes were amazing and gorgeous. Our soil is really rock hard here but the raised beds were scraped and then dug down about 12 inches and then the caliche was broken up with a sort of spike thing. The beds are raised almost two feet and filled with compost, manure, mason sand, top soil, etc. so the dirt is pretty prime - at least for growing other things. I did really well this past year with heirloom tomatoes, glads, cucumbers, sweet corn, indian corn, peas and lots of flower varieties. It has taken me a lot of years to even figure out how to grow those things in the low desert. I usually grow birdhouse gourds to paint in another raised bed that is in a cooler spot of the yard - well nothing is truly cooler when it is 110 degrees to be honest but it produces well. I use masonry ladders as support for my gourds and it works well. This year, however, one of my sons is going to help me build a tall trellis so we can plant some long gourds, which will be interesting. OK, enough of the garden tales ...
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