01 – This title was changed because I found it obnoxious – garden update

It’s wintertime in The Sonoran Desert, as well as the rest of the northern hemisphere (represent!). I haven’t covered a single thing this winter and most things have died, but my wicking bed is still overflowing with greens, however the tomato and amaranth plants did die (I believe because they were the tall plants that were more exposed to the elements than the thick bed of greens). I chopped down about half of my sorghum plants to be used in the 55/30 tin man retort I am so close to being ready to use! To my surprise, the sorghum was still green and alive in the middle of the stems even though it has looked dead for quite a few weeks now.I was asked a question a few days ago by a friend of mine, which was “why do you think wicking beds are better than a drip system”? I didn’t have a good answer, because I don’t have any hard numbers or even much personal experience to use to determine the answer to that question. It certainly got me thinking, however. A different friend sent me an advertisement from Costco for a “self-watering” system which may have some wicking going on, but it is a more simple design than mine. I was already thinking of an experimental set of garden beds using wicking beds (my design), Costco self-watering beds, a raised bed with drip irrigation, and an in-ground bed. I am so grateful to the people who gave me their Costco self watering beds to use in my experiment. Other than that, the idea is that every other variable would be the same, such as soil depth, type, water volume, sunlight etc.

Maybe I am taking on more than I can do for this season, as we are still working on getting our beds prepared for the spring, which is coming up on us fast. I am not even starting any tomatoes, peppers and eggplant indoors this year like I usually would. We are going to just go with some 6 packs of small plants from the store and I may keep them inside under grow lights to get them bigger and wait until the danger of frost has passed. Honestly I have so many seeds, we are going to pretty much scatter a lot of seed around the hugelkultur as this will be the first year for it and I don’t expect it to be as great as it can be on the first season. Which reminds me, this experimental garden set will have to run for 2 or more years before we get really useful results. I will need to record everything I can: size, color, fruit, insects, etc and hopefully it will be informative as to what type of system is most appropriate in my climate.