My fall garden

For those of you who don't know me, I live in the desert. It can be really hard to grow things here because of the extreme heat, lack of water and high alkaline levels.
About three Earth days ago (we try to do something every year)we started trying our hand at gardening.
Needless to say it's been hit and miss! But we are learning quite a bit with each thing we plant!
The first year was full of misses. We planted a bunch of starters indoors, went through the process of "hardening them off", fertilized them and cared for them, only to have them die off a few weeks later.
Over the past few years we've managed to get lucky with a few things, but this year has been our most successful so far.

I think the raised beds help!


Here's what we've started:

The tomato plant on the left is a larger tomato variety. The one on the right is a cherry tomato plant left over from the spring/summer garden. I was told to trim it way back and keep it watered so it will come back and it did! It is enormous!
Here are a couple new tomatoes growing on the larger variety plant!

Here we have jalapenos

and cayenne

As you can see, they are taking over the whole garden!

I think I need to thin them out soon!

Also in this large bed I planted some cauliflower.

If you think they look a little rough then you should have seen them a week ago! They were attacked by lovely little fuzzy caterpillars! I had my first experience using "pesticide". I found an organic one that doesn't kill the pests but repels them instead. Now the plants are looking much better!

This gardens "honorable mention" is this sole surviving pea plant. There were six, but I think the sun was too much for them. This one made it though, and she's quite a hardy little thing!


I raised all but one of the side garden beds to make them deeper. I had my first success in these but I think things would have done better had they been deeper. Underneath all the good stuff is a rock solid ground! This is not easy for the plants to take root, however, the weeds seem to do it!

Here we have sweet potatoes.


Here is some butternut squash


I really hope these survive!

If they do, it will be my first surviving squash!

Here are some white potatoes.


And some cabbage.

In the shallow bed we have some herbs.
They don't do too hot in the winter so we only have a few.

Chives

and Parsley


I have a few buckets & pots with stuff too.

I'm trying out some raspberries.

And some grape vines.

Neither will be ready for another year or two though!

Oh, and some Oregano! I just trans-planted it in a larger pot and it's already time to transplant again!

Since we lack bees I planted some flowers. I thought they were dead and past their season but more are growing!


I didn't get pictures of the asparagus. They are still in the fern-looking stage as they need another year or two to mature.
And I forgot to take pictures of the few strawberry plants and some other potted flowers.

I sure hope I have lots to post when it comes time to harvest!

If you have a garden, what do you have growing right now?