The Adventures of Familia Bajaboy

Most mornings, I walk through the garden and inevitably find myself pulling weeds or doing some other task.  I figured it's been awhile since I've shared any progress so here we go. Our garden seems to be happy and thriving.  We had a good summer crop of tomatoes, peppers, and squash but the dirt still needs a lot of work.  I keep adding spent grains from our home brews, torn up cardboard, compostable food, and yard waste, too.  Slowly but surely, the dirt is getting better.  We also break up peanut shells and thrown them around, too. In this bed, we have orange butternut squash, tomatoes, two types of lettuce, assorted bell peppers, arugula, and beets. Here is our tomato invasion.  These are all volunteer tomatoes. We planted a second round of spaghetti squash because it does great here. Super excited to see so many flowers on our mango tree.  Our blood orange and sapote have a lot of flowers as well Here we have butternut squash, a few varieties of tomatoes, basil, arugula, s

 Instead of writing about our garden, I thought I'd take you on a walk through it.  Enjoy!

Just a quick tour through the garden this morning.  Everything is so happy!  To date, we have the following items growing:  ·          Multiple varieties of tomatoes ·          Potatoes ·          Strawberries ·          Cucumbers ·          Orange and red butternut squash ·          Peruvian peppers ·          Bell peppers ·          Spaghetti squash ·          Brussel sprouts ·          Cantaloupe ·          Lemon drop melons ·          Beets ·          Pumpkin ·          Grapes           Dragon fruit           Chard As for trees, we have ·          Lime ·          Sapote ·          Mango ·          Blood orange           Peach ·          Mandarin ·          Pomegranate We are in the early stages of building a new planter box.   We intend to plant ·          Broccoli ·          Cauliflower ·          Banana peppers ·          Basil ·          Kale Tracy and I are having fun repurposing scraps from our neighbor's building proje

 Yesterday we went to a neighbor’s birthday party.  It was a fun afternoon of laughter, food, and of course lots of cold beer.  My neighbor, Tarraya, was busy cleaning a crate of radishes, or rábanos in Spanish.  I asked him where he got them and why would anyone want a crate of them.  He began to tell me a story that only seems normal for here. He said he got a call from a ship’s captain.   The ship was headed for Hawaii but was sidelined due to a hurricane or poor weather, I don’t exactly recall which.   The ship was full of produce that was spoiling and the captain asked Tarraya if they wanted to make a trade.   I’m not exactly sure of the details but it involved cases of beer in exchange for the produce and diesel fuel.   I guess late at night the exchange was made.   I noticed about five crates of produce in the back of Tarraya’s truck.   It was spoiled and he was going to take it to the dump.   I suggested I would take it off his hands.   He agreed in disbelief.   This morni

In the 14+ years of owning our casa, we have longed to have a thriving garden.  We have had mixed success, though, primarily due to inconsistent watering and harsh, windy weather.  Now that we live here full time, we are up the challenge. Good dirt is really difficult to come by and is definitely one of our biggest challenges here.    In order to get decent dirt, we drive out to the desert and up an arroyo looking for a mesquite tree.   Normally, the dirt underneath has nutrients although the dirt can still be sandy or full of clay.   We bring the dirt back and place it in our “dirt” planter.   We mix in seaweed, pieces of torn up paper, compost, spent grains and hops, and worm tea from our worm composter.   We water and mix up the dirt a few times per week.   Trust me, this is very time consuming but so far is paying off. This morning, I planted some seedlings into one of our new planters.     We have a variety of tomatoes, orange butternut squash, and lemon drop melons.   We also