Gardening update

[PunkRotten]

Hello everyone,

It's been awhile since I've been on these forums. Anyway, I moved to Monterey, California to be closer to my school. I got lucky and found a woman to rent me a private room on her property. The place is about an acre and she has given me full access to grow whatever I want. The whole place has been neglected because her and her husband are too old and sick to deal with it. We have all kinds of edibles planned. We might even do a small orchard too. I already have a banana, mulberry and goji berry tree with me. In addition to this, we've talked about having chickens and possibly a bee hive. There are a few challenges though. First, there are wild turkeys that hang out on the property. I was only seeing two of them for awhile but today I saw about 19 of them hanging out together. I heard there are around 27 or 29 of them total. They've been trying to scare them off but they keep coming back. Additionally, there are gophers. I have not dealt with gophers nor turkeys before and would be interested in knowing about humane ways to control them. I heard the turkeys are protected and cannot be killed or relocated. The other challenge we face is water. This area is huge on conserving water because of the drought. She said she has a well because the place sits on an aquafer. But people are still keeping on eye on things here. The climate here is a little different from what I have grown on. I am about 5-10 mins from the beach so some days we are cloudy or even have fog. From what I hear the temps stay roughly around 50-80F year round.

My plan is to do a few raised beds and grow the usual stuff. Plus we want to do some flowers, herbs etc. Shade tolerant plants would be nice too as there are some shady areas here too. I am looking for ideas on drought tolerant and/or low maintenance plants, edible or ornamental. One cool thing is there are people across the street with horses (free horse manure!).

I joined a gardening club at my school as well as a plant pathology club. I know of a tenured professor who has a lab and I met him at this club's meeting. So I may get a job in his plant pathology lab in the near future. They have some trips lined up. Some are meeting with USDA people, UC extension, and other professionals in the field. They also got contacted by someone in the local government to investigate some die-off of oak trees. They want to know if a pathogen is affecting them or if they are simply stressed from the drought. So anyway, I will be going along and doing volunteer work when this happens. We also plan to go camping at this place called Salt Point State Park about 2 hours north of San Francisco. It is well known as one of the best places in the US or world to forage for mushrooms. So I am super excited about this. This professor in plant pathology tells me plant pathology is a great career to get into now because there is a high demand but little supply. So we will see how things go. Anyway, I will try to hang out more here. Please provide some suggestions about the garden I am planning.

Thanks

[HoneyBerry]

Sounds like you found an excellent situation for gardening. There are alot of nut growers there where you are. There is drought where I am too. We haven't had much rain all summer. It started to rain about an hour ago. I almost forgot what it was like. I hope we get a good rain but not a deluge like imafan has been getting in Hawaii.

[pinksand]

I lived in Monterey Bay for a while and we used to spend summers there. Every now and then my heart aches for it and I go back to visit. I miss the smell of Cannery Row and the warf.

I wish I'd been more into gardening back then. All I can think of are ice plants, cypress trees, eucalyptus trees, fields of artichokes, the Gilroy garlic festival, and strawberry picking.

It's such a different growing environment than what I'm familiar with now so I'm unfortunately useless as far as recommendations go. Good luck and keep us posted!

[imafan26]

Look into plants that are more drought tolerant or have lower water requirements like squash and herbs. Consider instead of beds, using sip containers or modified hydro systems to make the best use of water for plants that use a lot of water. Tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, beans and peppers work well in those.

Other techniques would be to add a lot of organic matter and mulch heavily to conserve water and slow transpiration.
Watering slow and deep instead of short and shallow.