Life got too busy

I intended to start blogging more this past spring. Russ and I planned and carried out some new gardening and poultry projects. Just as the academic year was ending, I took on project at a work that kept me from blogging, so I'll try and give a brief update.

For the first time in several years, the garden is living through the summer. In the past, I've had great luck with peas, which come early in the summer, and then everything else dies as soon as it gets hot. Life in the desert is extraordinarily hot. In previous years, we watered the garden by hand, and this proved insufficient. We simply couldn't get enough water into our plants and they withered and died without producing much of anything to eat. Over the winter, we came to the conclusion that we needed to put a drip irrigation system into our raised beds. We installed this as we planted the garden and buried the hoses to reduce evaporation and it has worked wonderfully well. The vegetable plants are thriving and nothing has died. I might actually be able to call myself a gardener now.