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Growing Peas in Tucson
A New England gardener is in for a shock in Tucson. There's nothing wrong with the sentiment of growing your own food, or the concepts of composting and building organic matter in the soil. And a call to the Extension Service yielded the information that the soil in Tucson is full of minerals of just about every kind, except possibly available iron: just add sulphur and the iron will be ready for the plants to use. So a year or so after buying a house at the edge of the Tucson Mountains, we decided to plant a garden. The urge hit me in the middle of winter, which is actually not a bad time to start the early-season crops. I raked the rocks off the firm, sandy ground - not yet something that could be called soil - and tried a little digging. I was able to scratch down several inches, and felt it was enough for planting peas. Peas are a favorite, especially the edible-pod kind: they grow early and fast, and I could think ahead only a couple of months to a March crop of fresh vegetables we grew ourselves. So I planted the seeds, watered them (rather more vigorously than I might have in New England, but this IS the desert) and waited for the moment when they would emerge from the ground. One night just as dusk was settling into dark, I thought I saw some spikes pushing up. The next morning I looked out from the window and saw the brilliant greenness, not exactly in a row as I expected, but still... I ran out to see our baby pea plants. And there they were, little shoots scattered all over the ground, attached to the half-spent pea seeds. Every one had been pulled up by birds, and dropped nearby - the whole row's worth. The color of the peas looked foreign there in the subtle grays of Tucson desert foliage. Whether they offended the sensibilities of the birds or just aroused their curiosity, the pea sprouts were now just scattered corpses. I had a few things to learn about gardening in Tucson. |
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