Gardening roundtable

About a week ago, I got a phone call from one of my neighbors and friends out here, it was time to do another gardening roundtable. That’s where a bunch of us gets together to discuss our gardening experiences. Living in the high desert mountains in far western Texas, we have a unique growing area, and within this area, there are even microclimates to deal with, so my garden may have different qualities (temperature, moisture, wind, soil conditions…) than someone who lives at the same altitude as I do but just around the corner from me…

So today after church and our second Sunday church potluck lunch, we just had enough time to get over to the community center just up the road. There were about a dozen of us there, most are experienced gardeners, a few were very new to gardening, a few had gardened out here for many years.

We took turns going around the table introducing ourselves (there was only one real new person there, the rest of us all knew each other), then we discussed our gardening experiences, our successes and failures in gardening out here. We asked questions of each other. One of the group brought in lamb’s quarter plants to share with the group, I got 2 pots, apparently they reseed prolifically, that is something I don’t mind, anything that wants to grow out here and doesn’t need my help doing it is fine with me. :)

I have been to several of these gardening roundtable discussions now, I learn something new from each one. After the meeting was over, the group split into 2 and one group went to visit one of the prolific gardener’s garden, my friend and I went to another gardener’s garden.

The one I visited was a very small but hugely prolific garden. Her property is mostly rock, not just rocky but ROCK, she has tried several different kinds of container gardening with little luck, this time she tried straw bale gardening. She prepared 4 straw bales, she planted 2 tomatoes, some green beans and a few other things. We were not prepared for what we saw. The tomatoes had gone crazy, you couldn’t hardly see anything else, they had covered nearly everything in that little space and were spilling out the sides and top. I was impressed, as was my friend.

The nice thing about getting together with LOCAL gardeners, especially if you live in a challenging place to grow gardens, you can learn from other people’s experiences, you can learn what you can and can’t do in your area, you just might make a new friend or two as well. :)

I look forward to our next get together.

This is the book my friend had and learned about straw bale gardening, Amazon has a program if you buy the print version of this book, you can get the digital ebook for just a few dollars more.