Garden Talk

Learning by Trial and Error

By Ramona Borkman, Magazine Editor

My husband and I recently moved from northern Utah to southern Utah. This was our first year gardening in Zone 8. Since we enjoy growing organic vegetables and fruits, we knew we needed to design areas in our yard so we could provide them with more ideal growing conditions. We had our work cut out for us, considering most of our yard was rock. The soil was extremely rocky, and then the previous owners brought more rock on the lot. Because of our sandy, rocky, alkaline soil, we knew we had to address these challenges with solutions so we could have the best chance of success. One of the solutions was to build raised beds and fill with a mix of soil better suited to growing vegetables. We used a combination of compost, vermiculite, and peat moss.

Another challenge we had to address was the need for shade and humidity. Because this is an extremely hot dry climate, we learned that we need to provide shade as the temperatures rise and the humidity decreases. Desert plants love heat and low humidity, but vegetable’s needs are different. To add more stress to the vegetable garden, this summer was one of the hottest on record. The areas of the garden that had filtered light with shade cloth and mulch performed better than the areas that did not. Even though these weren ’t the ideal growing conditions for a garden, through trial and error, we are learning ways to address these obstacles.

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