Reflections on Gardening in the Southwest
by Emily Gatch

Rain! It's the middle of August and finally the New Mexican "monsoon" season that locals talk about has arrived. This little storm I hear as night falls over the Rio Grande valley has lingered for a few hours now. Part of me is thrilled to think of all our trial gardens at the Research Farm getting a break from their diet of river water, the arroyos running full, and little high-desert creatures venturing out from their dark holes for a frolic in the rain.

And then again, part of me stopped caring back in June: it seemed as if we were trying to garden on the surface of one of those sun-leaning planets where we like to send spacecraft. At about four o'clock each afternoon, a hot horizontal wind blew through the farm, flattening little seedlings with its dusty gusts. By normal midwestern standards, this would have been a four-alarm drought, complete with climbing grain futures and nervous crop insurance agents. I realized that my knowledge base and skill set (two terms I learned interviewing for jobs) were not going to serve me well in this new environment, so I started over by looking around.

1. Annual rainfall: 13 inches, arriving mostly in the form of torrential midsummer toad-stranglers.
2. Altitude: 6000 feet. Wide day/night temperature fluctuations and tricky late spring and early fall frosts.
3. Strong sunlight, a consequence of the altitude. DNA-scrambling UV rays, which make transitions tough for transplants out in the field.
4. Rocky soils low in organic matter, often alkaline.
5. Los vientos de Marzo: strong winds, particularly in the spring and in the fall.
6. A proliferation of insects due to the arid climate: biblical plagues of grasshoppers, leafhoppers, and flea beetles.

Now that the difficulties are catalogued, I would like to say this: I am completely enchanted by this land. Edward Abbey describes life in the desert as "scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity," words that come to mind at the sight of this Santa Fe adobe, with white heat reflecting off a brilliant blue window, framed by near-wilting Maximillian sunflowers. I think it's just great, and so will happily revisit and revise everything I thought I knew for sure (to paraphrase Oprah) to join in this ancient experiment in dryland gardening. Let the deconstruction begin....

Gardening in the Trenches: raised beds are a hard habit to lose, but what do they gain you on a desert farm— improved drainage? The challenge is to retain moisture as long as possible, not to hurry it on its way. The answer is to dig down, not build up. There are many variations on the concept of sunken bed planting, some ancient and some modern. The Zuni pueblo of western New Mexico perfected a water-harvesting technique known as waffle gardening, which involves creating berms several inches high around two-foot square beds that are connected in a grid-like formation. The bermed ridges help to hold moisture in the square beds, protect from drying winds, and release warmth to counter the high-altitude chills.

In the vegetable garden of Jim Romero, a neighbor of Seeds of Change, a compromise between recessed planting and raised beds can be found in the corn patch. The seedbed is lowered, with a lip of soil around the edge to hold in water, but the plants themselves are on slight ridges within the sunken bed. These ridges provide slightly warmer soil temperatures than the rest of the bed, a warmth that germinating corn seedlings appreciate in the spring. This strategy can be particularly useful if a hard layer of calcium carbonate, known as caliche, is located near the soil surface. Planting on slight ridges in this case allows roots more room to develop before hitting the impenetrable caliche.

River Politics: Farming in the Rio Grande valley depends entirely on the mercies of a river whose waters are steeped in blood. The history of the Spanish/Anglo/Native American encounter in this part of the world is a topic for another time, but when I stand on the bank of the irrigation ditch (acequia) that feeds the Seeds of Change farm, I can't help but feel a little solemn, as if I should make some sort of offering to its waters. This energy would be better directed toward the "mayordomo," an elected local official who oversees the cleaning and maintenance of the ditches, as well as the somewhat mysterious date upon which the water gates are opened in the spring.

A New Take on Rocks: Each year on the farm, a fresh crop of round river rock surfaces and is dutifully removed to piles. The supply seems inexhaustible, and I feel like a crabby New England row-cropper when my hoe hits yet another small boulder. Scott, our editor and Maine trial gardener of the noncrabby sort, suggested using some of the smaller stones as a "gravel mulch," at least for small-scale projects such as our demonstration kitchen garden. It was a great idea, and apparently one that occurred to prehistoric waffle gardeners, who piled stones in the sunken squares to serve as both mulch and radiant heaters on cold desert nights. Rock mulches allow more water to pass through to the soil, in contrast to straw or bark mulch, and are thus an obvious choice in a dry garden.

There are also ornamental possibilities awaiting our farm rock piles: some of these rocks from below now pay tribute atop the grave of Wiley, the beloved Seeds of Change wolf who rests in the kitchen garden and nourishes a crop of lettuce.

A New Take On Weeds: Gardening in the high desert tends to make one look with wonder upon the various weeds that somehow thrive in the glaring sun, blasting wind, and swinging temperatures. When you've pulled the hundredth lambsquarter seedling from your grasshopper-ridden lettuce patch, you figure it's time to determine if this weed really is, in fact, tasty—you've heard this over the years but have never, until now, felt driven to see for yourself. Traditional southwestern cooking has long recognized the merits of two common weeds, lambsquarters and purslane. The following recipes are from Historical Cookery, by Fabiola Gilbert, published in 1970 by La Galeria de los Artesanos.

Quelites (Lambsquarters)
2 T. fat
2 T. chopped onion
2 c. finely chopped, cooked lambsquarter greens
1 T. chile seed
1 t. salt
½ c. cooked pinto or bolito beans

Place fat in skillet, fry chopped onion, add chopped greens, season with chile seeds, add cooked beans (cooked whole) and salt. Salt pork, cut fine, may be used for frying; leave it in for flavor.

Verdolagas (Purslane)
3 c. purslane
4 T. fat or ½ c. diced salt pork
2 T. chopped onion
1 c. shredded cooked meat (jerky preferred)
1 t. ground coriander seed
Salt to taste

Wash purslane, leaving stems. Fry onion in fat; add purslane and meat. Season. Cover and cook until tender.