Adventures in Gardening in the High Desert: Part 2
The last time I wrote about gardening this season , May had just begun. Most of my plant starts were still growing safely under grow lights inside the house, while the garden outside was barren but for young garlic, asparagus, and strawberries. Now it's mid-July, and things are looking quite different. For starters, the garden at home is flourishing. As I write this, two of the three raised beds are full of sugar snap peas, peppers of different varieties, a scattering of sunflowers, and lettuce. Just this week, we harvested armfuls of garlic and shallots from those beds, clearing up room for the aforementioned crops as well as upcoming summer squash, beets, kohlrabi, and carrots. The garlic and shallots had been growing since last October (laying dormant for the winter months) and started sending up scapes around early- to mid-June, announcing their imminent readiness. The heat of the past few weeks sped this along, I think, as some of the soft-necked garlic began to fall over. Th
