After years of growing a few veggies and herbs in small hardware cloth cages in the Joshua Tree desert between Grand Canyon West (Skywalk) and Lake Mead, we finally got serious last year.

We fenced in a garden (rabbit fence) and planted fruit trees.  We also planted California Peppers and African Sumacs along the southern property line to get a wind break.  The spring and summer winds are ferocious.

We have two raised beds at the house for salads and we’re growing grapes and garlic.

We built two swales on our hill to catch run-off and for easy watering and we will be planting berries and herbs.  We almost finished our grey water system to reuse our shower and laundry water for landscape irrigation.

Our 24 x 5 ft adobe addition to the south side of the house serves as mini greenhouse and we have been growing herbs and tomatoes through the winter WITHOUT heating.  Our local dirt doesn’t have enough clay, but we used the adobe blocks only as filler (not structural) and due to its excellent thermal properties, the LOW was 42 degrees last winter.  It also stayed surprisingly COOL (compared to outdoors) last summer.

Our new LARGE greenhouse should be finished in a few months and we hope to grow veggies through the winter.

Some of our neighbors also started gardens in recent years and in Kingman, John and Dea opened Grandma’s Best (Farmers Market) earlier this year.  They used to sell veggies at a roadside stand and now offer a wide variety of produce.

Most of their veggies come from the Phoenix are, but they hope to sell LOCALLY grown food.  I love the pecans from the pecan orchard on 66 and a few weeks ago they had delicious locally grown baby cucumbers.  Their prices are often lower than the supermarkets and we always try to stop there first when we get to Kingman every few weeks.

The purpose of our new site is to keep track of what we’re growing, our problems and solutions and to share our research and gardening experiences.

The other night I spent hours reading up on Sweet Annie (wormwood) and yesterday I posted all the TOMATOES we’re growing. [Somehow lost those posts.]

Of course we’re extremely busy transplanting, fencing (those darn COWS!) and finishing up the last growing areas, but we’ll try to post some pictures ASAP and list the many melons, squash, peppers …

We trying to keep track of what grows best in our harsh climate and we mostly grow organics and heirlooms.  No chemical fertilizers and no pesticides.

We might also have some plants and maybe even veggies for sale and other gardeners in the area are welcome to offer their surplus too.

More and more people realize that factory food is designed to slowly kill us.  Almost every packaged food contains high fructose corn syrup and most corn is genetically engineered – potentially turning your intestines into pesticide factories.

Almost all processed food contains MSG. The totally corrupt FDA allows corporations to hide MSG not only under numerous names, but it can be included with “natural flavors.”

Almost everything advertised as low calorie contains Aspartame.

Another toxin very difficult to avoid.  I can’t even find any gum or mints without it.

We started reading the labels on packaged food last year and there’s very little left to buy if you want to avoid known carcinogens and toxins.  While I’ve been eating crap for many years, I enjoy gardening and there’s really no reason to buy toxic food.

I even finally gave up ice cream, my FAVORITE supermarket food.   The current replacement is blended vanilla almond milk with bananas.

Please feel free to comment and locals are welcome to start their own blogs too.