Grow Vegetables in the Desert With a Waffle Garden
If you are an ordinary gardener, you might think that growing vegetables in the desert is a fool’s business, but you just need to learn a few environment-specific methods.This video shows you how to design a waffle garden for growing vegetables in heavy clay soil.
Like its namesake, a waffle garden is essentially a series of square cells in which you will plant vegetables, separated by ledges of compacted clay soil. The shape helps any water to flow directly to the plants, and since the clay itself can be too tough for the roots, the indentations also give you a “container” into which to pour and mix your soil with the hard clay. In the video, landscaping contractor Roger Cook shows how he designs his garden in New Mexico. He starts by compacting the clay soil around the individual wafer cells, then breaks up the native clay with a pickaxe and mixes it with sand and compost. When each cell is ready, Cook plants the vegetables 1.5 times the seed diameter and water them lightly.
If you learn a few environmentally specific methods, even beginners can grow healthy vegetables in the desert. Unfortunately, you cannot grow waffles.
How to grow vegetables in the desert. This old house via YouTube