Gardeners, on your marks
A new month-to-month guide for growing in the challenging conditions of Taos ‘A MONTHLY GUIDE TO GROWING A SENSATIONAL GARDEN IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO AND THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS’
Moving from temperate northern New England to semi-arid Taos in 1988, the author had to modify her gardening methods. In fact, she writes, “I had to forget everything I knew about gardening and start over.”
“For more than 30 years,” Nan Fischer writes in her allsuffering, welcome new guide, “I can say I’ve adapted. I water my trees in winter, acidify my soil with compost and stay prepared for frost all summer.”
Seeds, weeds, pests, water, pollinators, compost: how to keep it all organized and become the maestro of a flourishing garden? And how to manage climate change in a place of challenging growing conditions like Taos, where frosts can arrive as late as June 1 and as early as mid-September?
Keep a journal, writes our intrepid local gardening guru, and be adaptable and flexible. Her new month-by-month gardening guide specifically tailored to our climate and growing zone will be an invaluable companion on this coming endeavor.
Did you think gardening in Taos was going to be fun? As she prepares to get us out toiling in the soil over the next weeks, Fischer offers a telling epigraph by Rudyard Kipling: “Gardens are not made by singing, ‘Oh, how beautiful!’ and sitting in the shade.” And just in case you didn’t get the message, she adds: “You might be exhausted and exasperated come fall, but you will have been successful.”
It’s March, almost planting time, and while the weather is changing and we’re all itching to get started, we’ll probably be dodging a snowstorm or two, she cautions, and the soil might still be
too frozen or wet. Not to mention the whipping wind that will terrorize new plantlings. Be patient, gardeners!
It’s all in the soil, she writes: “Healthy soil captures and stores carbon. Build up your soil with compost to create a resilient garden needing fewer pesticides and less fertilizer.”
True to her trial-and-error method, she writes that over the seasons she has experimented with no-till planting by covering a bed with a heavy layer of compost and probing with a pitchfork (later broadfork) before planting lettuce and spinach. She has found that the plants grew as well without turning over the soil, and without the labor. Moreover, she asserts that using a broadfork keeps from disturbing the beneficial microorganisms that reside in the soil, and results in less weeding.
Fischer includes journalism pieces she has written over the last decade about the best variety of tomatoes, how to plant a Three Sisters garden (corn, beans, squash) and a hummingbird garden, the wonders of the chickpea (with a recipe for Egyptian Chickpea Hummus), and a superb history of lettuce, including the varieties grown and eaten aboard the International Space Station. She explains how plants actually communicate with each other in times of stress and need.
“I’m always surprised at how many gardeners are unaware of their surroundings, as though their gardens are separate from their yards and wild spaces,” laments Fischer. “Although agriculture is the opposite of a natural ecosystem, they are entirely connected.”
One wise thought: “Climate chaos equals garden chaos.”
Each month carries its own tasks, such as those for March: transforming dirt into soil. In the fall you have to save seeds and take care of the wild birds for the winter. And the winter months? Plenty to do. Fischer has a section on cutting and digging a Christmas tree — or better, buy a living tree and replant it in the spring. And choose gifts for gardeners like tool sets or a gift certificate to their favorite nursery. She offers tips on winter container growing, and hydroponic and aquaponic systems.