Posted: 4/20/2026 9:31:08 AM EDT
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My wife and I bought a 1 acre parcel with 3bd, 2ba manu, 20x40 shop, 10x20 outbuilding, septic, well, and co-op electricity. Zone 8a/b near Mojave desert. The interior of the home is undergoing some self renovation (masterbath and br). Im now carpenter, drywaller, plumber, painter, electrician, and flooring guy. Considering solar to get off grid. We failed miserably at the garden last year. Turned the 10x20 shed into a coop with a 10x10 run. 9 hens laying eggs, culled the rooster 2 weeks ago. 4 more banty chicks in the brooder. Wife desperately wants to add goats. Small garden boxes aroung chicken run as we practice growing stuff. Planted Granny Smith and Ana Apple trees, 2 pomegranate bushes in an area designated to become the orchard. Area 30x20 out front used to be a lawn, now sprouting buckwheat for chicken fodder. Jerusalem artichokes sprouting in pots to be planted along front edge of property as emergency food stuff. What's the point of this post? I dunno. Just sharing what we are doing. |
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Congratulations. OP Sounds like a very good start, collect some of that chicken shit, for fertilizer, It will help any garden out. If you haven't already a compost pile will help as well. |
“In my defense, I was left unsupervised and when left unsupervised I make whisky decisions”
| There is another member around here who lives in the Nevada desert as well but I can’t remember his screen name at the moment. He posts in this forum occasionally so maybe he’ll see the post and respond. |
"It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things."
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
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Originally Posted By gunmonkey: We have a well. I seem to recall hearing that the water table is surprisingly shallow out in the desert. How deep is your well? |
"It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things."
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
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Originally Posted By Badlatitude: "We failed miserably at the garden last year" What happened? Gardening is tough in the desert. You really have to cater to the environment. There is such a wide spread of temps that you have to deal with. 20 degree up to over 110 degrees is what you deal with. If you can develope micro climates, that will help. Trees or shade sails can provide afternoon shade and warmth in the winter/spring. Recessed garden beds can also help keep pockets of cooler air, trap rainfall, and hold moisture longer than raised beds. The dry air can really suck the water away from plants and having a limited well supplied water doesn't help. I know a guy that is actually growing bananas here in Phoenix. He has a 20x40' patch. He is on a flood irrigation lot, so he has water covered. Every 2 weeks he gets his lot flooded for a day. The bananas are at the very lowest point of his lot, so it keeps the moisture there the longest. It is also shaded from afternoon sun by his neighbor's tree. The bananas have created a micro climate where they grow, so other plants around it benefit from each other. They keep each other warm in the winter and cooler in the summer. My small suburban garden on the other hand, it's rough to find the proper space. I got a nice garden growing a few years back. I left town for a long weekend and the white flies sucked the life out of the entire garden. By the time I got to it, it was pretty hammered and I gave up. At my dad's house in Hawaii, he could grow anything in his yard. They had banana's, fig trees, mountain apple, etc. My nephew has a farm and he ask everyone to not spit out the seeds from fresh fruit at it will sprout wherever you spit it out at. Farming in Hilo is mainly killing what you don't want to grow, everything else blooms without much intervention. What's sad is that farming isn't very profitable, so he actually works a job and allows his kids to sell fruit at the farmer's market for pocket money. |
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Originally Posted By ColtRifle: I seem to recall hearing that the water table is surprisingly shallow out in the desert. How deep is your well? Originally Posted By ColtRifle: Originally Posted By gunmonkey: We have a well. I seem to recall hearing that the water table is surprisingly shallow out in the desert. How deep is your well? |
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Very interested in the goings-on at your new place! Post pics as you can. It encourages other folks. Plus we are a nosy bunch of homesteaders. 
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Nobody ever wakes me at 2 in the morning telling me that my grass is out on the highway.~~Radiopat
Wine is sunlight held together by water~~Galileo Galilei
Well-behaved women rarely make history~~Marilyn Monroe
Wine is sunlight held together by water~~Galileo Galilei
Well-behaved women rarely make history~~Marilyn Monroe
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Originally Posted By gunmonkey: Im actually not sure. Its one of the questions Im trying to answer and one of the areas I want to shore up for emercency/self-reliance preps. Originally Posted By gunmonkey: Originally Posted By ColtRifle: Originally Posted By gunmonkey: We have a well. I seem to recall hearing that the water table is surprisingly shallow out in the desert. How deep is your well? gunmonkey, this should help you find out your well information.https://tools.water.nv.gov/WellLogQuery.aspx Gunsap |
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Congrats! Good on you for trying. It’s often trial and error and learn as you go until you figure it out. Big sense of accomplishment when you do! I went from midwestern ex farmland (suburban Minneapolis lot) to the mountains of western Montana on acreage and boy howdy it’s been a learning curve. Finally have orchards and berries dialed in. Next will be greenhouse, 20 (or so) large raised beds and a 50x80 in ground garden area. All that’ll probably take me a couple more years.
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