If you've followed CocinaCaldo from the beginning then you know the story of the boxes. A recap for newbies just because I'm a giver. I used a design from Sunset magazine which is my favorite magazine for gardening and cooking. Sunset has regional editions and their Southwest edition features Arizona and in particular Tucson on a very regular basis. April's edition has a nice article on Tohono Chul Park. Back to the garden box design, one of the reasons I liked this design is the simplicity and ease of building. Sunset's design uses 8 foot long 2"x6" boards and 4"x4" posts. Some clear stain/sealer and a bunch of lag screws and washers and you're done. The magazines design is for a 1 foot deep box but I double the height to two feet to make it easier to work in by minimizing the length you need to bend down to get to the bed. I just doubled everything: the number of 2"x6" boards, the length of the 4"x4" posts and the number of lag screws.
For the soil I purchased bulk potting soil from a local building materials supply store. Each box took 2 cubic yards of soil at $35/yard. I can haul one yard in my Nissan Frontier pickup so each box took two trips. Tommy and I enjoyed to time together back and forth in addition to the wheelbarrowing of the soil from the truck to the boxes in the backyard. I built a ramp up to the lip of the boxes and we got real good at maneuvering the wheelbarrow on a 2"x6" board with a full load of soil and tipping it in.
I used a poor man's approach to irrigation. I don't have a water connection in close proximity to the beds so I attached a split valve to the bib with one half devoted to the beds and ran a garden hose to the beds where a 4 valve manifold distributes to each bed. I have four sprinklers called Noodleheads that we bought a couple of years ago at the L.A. County Fair. I like them because they don't just soak but also spray the leaves for cooling which is helpful here in So. Arizona.
So that's the setup of the boxes and irrigation. Things were pretty simple the first couple of winters and last summer but got complicated this winter when the squirrel population discovered our gardens. Our winter lettuce and spinach plants were getting eaten by something that we thought were rabbits but in fact were squirrels. So our nice clean and simple garden boxes had to have enclosures built to keep out the friggin' squirrels. I've got two different designs as you'll see from the pictures. One design used Sunset's original box designs use of 1/2 inch PVC for an arching shade cover which we never found the need to use for shade anyway. So I adapted the 1/2 inch PVC to a chicken wire cover that opens from both sides while being anchored at the peak of the arch. 1"x2" boards are used as the outside anchors. You unhook the 1"x2" boards and flip them up on top of the arch and you've got access. The second design is more complicated and expensive but it looks cool when you open it up like a clam shell. The clam shell design uses 1.5" PVC and chicken wire. The two halves are anchored at the 4 foot ends of the boxes and you lift from the middle and rest each half on the ground for full access from both sides.
Now for the contents of the garden itself. In the winter we have lettuce, spinach and chard along with a year long supply of herbs like rosemary, thyme, peppermint and dill. Summertime brings as many warm weather lettuces as we can find along with tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, basil, zucchini, yellow squash, summer squash, watermelons and Bertie's absolute favorite, tomatillos. We found last summer that you get to know your neighbors really quickly when you visit them with baskets of homegrown veggies on a regular basis. We also found that we don't like eggplant all that much but the plants are prolific producers.
This year we've got four different tomatoes including an heirloom one called Tlacolula Ribbed we picked up from the Oro Valley Farmer's Market to day from Aravaipa Heirlooms, check out their website for great local stuff. In addition to the tomatoes we have summer lettuces that are still hanging in there along with spinach and green chard. We planted a stevia plant this spring and it seems to be doing well, not sure what we're gonna do with it since we don't own a processing plant to use to get sweetener but what the heck. I've got two fennel plants and one dill going strong having survived the extended freeze we had here in January. Our herbs are rosemary, thyme, peppermint, basil and cilantro. My experience with cilantro here in the desert has not yielded much because it is just too hot even in full shade. This summer we have dedicated the new third box to nothing but tomatillos. Last summer not knowing how large the plants get we made the mistake of planting two in close proximity to each other and they took over the whole box and we had to machete' our way to the eggplant and pepper plants. So we've got an entire box for tomatillostomatillos because she is convinced she's channeling her Mom and feels closer to her when she's doing it. Personally I love the secret salsa we have in abundance all summer and the smiles of the folks at work that get jars of the stuff because I'm a giver.
So here are some pictures of this summer's garden boxes which are just about fully planted at this point.
The first picture is garden #1 with fennel and thyme in the front, dill just behind the fennel on the left. Lettuce is mid-left with spinach mid-right. The two taller plants in the back are green chard.
The second picture is garden #2 with rosemary and peppermint on the right, a new tomato on the left, two purple lettuces in the middle and two tomato plant on the mid and back right.
This is garden #3, the tomatillos.
This corner is where we'll be planting the squash and melons. Tommy is in the middle of re-stacking the firewood so it will be a day or two before we plant the three plants we picked up today the the Farmer's Market from our favorite plant purveyor, Victory Gardens and Brian Catts. Our challenge for this corner will be an enclosure to keep the squirrels out and still have easy access for maintenance. Friggin' squirrels.
Here's a broader view of the corner of our backyard we are using for our gardens. This view is looking to the northeast and you can see it gets a full day's worth of sun. We water a couple of times a day during the summer and have had good luck so far. More to come soon from Patterson's Veggies.
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