Waffle Garden Update

I had to leave the state for about 6 weeks, and was not able to garden for another 2 weeks once I got home.

I had a friend water the garden, when the monsoon rains didn't reach it, but no weeding was done.  This is what the garden looked like when I got back.

Waffle Gardening tidbits

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Here's some more tidbits I've been learning about the waffle gardening as I go through this process.

The waffle garden - watering, bees, and ants

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Waffle Garden update!

Well, my seedlings are still alive and growing slowly but surely. Take a look!

         

My little baby waffle garden

You'll notice that the sunflowers and squash have come up well, while there are just a couple beans poking up, too. This sunflowers get me all excited because they are a combination of my own saved seeds from two years ago plus purchased seeds from Native Seed Search, and both sprouted! That middle square at the top has a bare patch but that's not due to critters eating seedlings; nothing ever came up! I don't know if the seeds were eaten by birds, if they were buried too deep, or if something else happened, but that spots has remained bare enough that I might plant something else there before too long. 

Planting the Waffle Garden

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The first few days of gardening with this have been a learning experience, that's for sure!

Making the Waffle Garden II

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It took me a few more days to finish the waffle garden, but I finally did it!

Making the Waffle Garden

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It turns out there's a lot more choices then you'd think when putting together something made solely of dirt.

- How wet does the dirt have to be to make the walls? Too dry and it will crumble, too wet and it won't hold its shape.
- Exactly what shape should the wall be? Straight up and down or sloped walls?
- Do you dig out the recessed areas or just build up the walls around it? Or a little of both?
- Do you get dirt from other areas and add it, or scrape soil from the same spot?
- How long do you let it set? How hard should the dirt be? Do you add mulch or not?

Who knew it would take so much fiddling? Well...probably anyone who's done anything by hand while going off of a bit of internet information, that's who. There's always those little details that people leave out, yeah?

No fear, my friends. I'm not leaving any out. I'll pass on every fiddly little detail I come across, whether I have answers or not. Prepare to be either very bored or very enlightened. Or, you know, scoffing at my sad lack of scientific method and planning. ^_^

Preparing for a Waffle Garden

I was digging out a new garden while I was looking up the waffle garden information, so I figured, why not make my own waffle garden this year?

More rock than garden

Waffle Gardens

Desert Gardening Techniques: Waffle Gardens

Okay, here goes my unpopular opinion: I don't like raised garden beds out here in the desert.

Yes, desert soil is a pain in the BUTT to dig. If you hit caliche, it's worse. You're digging in cement, essentially, and it's horrible and hard and sometimes, literally impossible to dig through. And as I have been reminded, raised garden beds are one of the few ways to make gardening handicap accessible, too. I can completely understand why people use raised garden beds.

However, I am relatively mobile, my caliche has not been more than a couple feet thick (crossing fingers here that this remains the case throughout the yard), and so here's my thought process when I was first starting to garden here: how did the people who have lived deserts like this, for thousands of years, garden? Because they didn't have pre-made soil amendments, and neither do I. They probably wanted to use as little water as possible, or with as little effort as possible getting it, and so do I. And they had a loooong time to figure this out, so why don't I check out what they did?