Garden experiment

Part of this blog will include my musings about garden plantings that have a whiff of the experimental about them. This year, more or less accidentally, we have three separate vegetable garden plots going. One is the conventional "raised bed",  which is located high up on our hill, in an area constructed into the hillside,.  The bedrock is a clayey-limey shale.  About three years ago I did some sheet composting, and gleaned about six inches of improved soil from that effort.  here's what that area looked like in May or thereabouts.

This upper garden is watered through a  drip system every day.  It gets a lot of direct sun, and we've had a hot summer, so these plants need every drop.  WE've had great success up here with onion family plantings, and have some success with strawberries and also some raspberries (pretty new planting). You can probably see the cold frame (there are two, both made by Juwel), and we have had lovely success with spring and winter gardening there, lots of nice lettuce, arugula, kale, and so on.

We also tried some straw bale gardening this year... a NYT article got me quite excited about this idea, especially since I just happened to have a couple of bales.  here's what that looked like in May:

It's planted with a couple of tomatoes in this picture, and also what I think is a cucumber (so I was told)

And, finally, we purchased a garden table last year, and planted it for the first time this spring.  It has only potting soil in it, which was lightly fertilized in the bag:

here it is in May.  The two things planted are a cucumber (towards the middle), and a basil plant (at the near end).

It wasn't my intention to compare each of these... I fully expected them all to be successful. But we do have a clear winner..... more to follow...

Catching up.....

First, some wildlife that has visited our yard recently..... we keep a large patch of milkweed around, only in the hopes of seeing the occasional monarch butterfly.  We've been rarely rewarded for this, but this summer has been different, and I managed to catch a  few photos....

 There's a monarch in each of these pictures, sometimes a little hard to see, but the orange will jump out at you eventually.  In the second picture, you can see her kind of edge-on; she is laying eggs in this photo.

and here we have a lovely Western Tanager visiting our "pond" (an inverted garbage can lid).  They like the water source being close to the ground... it's easy to see from our windows also.  Other creatures seen here include Sharp-shinned Hawks, quail, the list is endless....

My introduction and gardening interests

My first post as a blogger!  Please forgive me if I am not very polished, I hope and intend to hone my skills as time goes by.

First, since this blog is meant to be about my backyard and gardening intersts, a little background. I live on the east bench in Salt Lake City, Utah.  The climate here is pretty dry, and during the summer months it is also pretty hot.  It's early June, and we've already had our first day at 100 degrees F.  That's already challenging for plants, but to add to the challenge, we are on a  fairly steep hillside, and the soil is quite clayey.  In reality, it's more of a shale bedrock.  So water (or the lack) is a challenge, as is soil composition, and heat. What I plan to do in this blag is explore some of those challenges, and techniques and/or plants I've found to be helpful in surmounting those challenges.  And, I promise ot to leave out the failures.

The steepness of the slope provides a particular challenge for vegetable gardening.  And, with the many trees, it's also pretty shady, and that does nothing for most vegetables.  There are a few ways around that, some of which are new to me this year, so we'll explore how those work out over the summer.

First, our old and established beds. Here's a picture:

This is a bed high on our hill, carved out of the hillside by a previous owner.  The castle block wall on the left gives you an idea of the steepness. Here we have six raised beds, four that are four ft sq, two that are three feet by 18 inches.  I put some effort a few years ago into sheet composting this area, basically on top of the bedrock, and it's showing a big improvement in plant growth.  Shallots are in the foreground, and further back are strawberries, garlic, a raspberry plant, and a few other things. I use drip irrigation here and supplement with hand watering.

This is an experiment back down the hill a  little closer to the house.  I bought this garden table last fall, and we set it up this spring.

It's mulched with a product used for establishing seeds on slopes (which I am also playing around with), this was an extra piece.  This pic is from a bout a month ago, and I'll update it soon.  the plants are getting quite large now, and include basil, eggplant, two peppers, broccoli, a volunteer tomato (no idea where that came from), and a mystery plant that someone gave me.  This I already count as a success, and it's also kind of cool. Watering this by hand so far.

Finally, we have my straw bale experiment.  Theoretically, you can plant directly into these with great results.  They need a lot of fertilizer.  I am watering these by hand so far.  Have two tomatoes here, and also a  cucumber.  they are making it, but not thriving.

I also love the more decorative parts of the garden, here are a few examples:

 can't remember the name of the first flower, honeysuckle, a path in te garden, and a tropical visitor from a few weeks ago, a Western Tanager.

Thanks for stopping by, I'll be back all summer posting my garden's progress!