@34 Allen: I’m in the desert SW also. would love to share experience – what’s working for you, etc. Anybody else veggie gardening in the desert SW? my email is kcornman@yahoo.com

You can see what I am doing with my system at: http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4592&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

It isn’t costing me very much as most of the components is stuff I had laying around, and its all pretty much automated so you don’t have to do much more than pick the vegies once you get it going.

We had mint in our garden for years in total shade and it took over the whole bed it was in! Some things will just grow, no matter what you throw at them.

We have leeks, perpetual spinach, chard, kale, scallions, mache, winter lettuce, radicchio, brussels sprouts, cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli all producing well outside without protection throughout the winter months. Most of these don’t mind a frost, in fact, they need it to bring out the full flavour or colour.

Plus the garlic, onions and broad (fava) beans are in and growing happily and will be ready for springtime harvest.

I know some people prefer to have a downtime from gardening in the winter, but I think there’s nothing more satisfying than having freshly picked salad and greens in February!

Great site, by the way.

I also grow maywine in the shade, but that’s super-invasive, so you have to pen it in with a serious barrier or just love it so much that you’re willing to have it take over.

For actual fruits that produce in shade, there are very few, but huckleberries do okay (not great) in the shade, as do mulberries, and so does Oregon grape, though I personally think that Oregon grape is more of a novelty jam crop than a serious fruit crop. It’s just too darned sour to be really fun.

We are starting our seeds within the next two weeks. We have a weird microclimate here; we’ve estimated over the past couple of years that we run about six weeks behind everyone immediately north and south of us. It must be something with the way the wind funnels down between the mountains.

As for deer, I worked on a farm in Northern California that swore by bottled mountain lion pee (I swear I’m not making this up). We’d put a few drops on rags and tie them to the low lying tree branches and to the fences near where they came into the yard (it takes 8-foot fencing to keep out deer and nobody wanted the expense or the prison feeling from it). Refresh as needed. I can’t swear by the results but they’d been using it for years.

Cardboard, newspaper, leaves or any organic material, soil, compost, manure…layer all on top of the sod adn have at it. you’ll be surprised! NO DIGGING.

… and green and growing things beyond that. I’m going crazy for plants. Garden planning is good. Houseplants are good. Repotting my violet… well, that has to happen and then it’ll bloom again. Even the smell of the garden shop makes me happy because someday this winter will end.

We live in the southwest, so our best growing season is actually right now. we have already harvested some tomatoes, and are growing broccoli and salad greens, which do very well here in the winter. We expect a large harvest of both throughout the spring.

We get our seed catalogs this time of year also, but it’s usually the wrong time for us! So I’ll get some seeds and usually save them for the fall.

Like you, we have chosen the crops that produce best for us, that we enjoy eating.

I am going to try melons this spring/summer, though we usually leave most of our garden fallow under compost during the hot months.

Try growing garlic next year. Plant in the fall and they are more than happy to over winter for a summer harvest!

We also decided to go ahead and take out some of our lawn. At first, I did this by hand, but I have made the executive decision to do the rest with the aid of a sod cutter. Rented, of course. We hate mowing, and lawns are such a waste of resources. Of course, we can only take out so much lawn because we don’t want our neighbors to have a heart attack. We can only garden in the front, because we have two large silver maples in the back, making it all shade.