The Las Cruces Report: Late May

When I lived back in New Hampshire, we always put our gardens in on Memorial Day weekend. Oh, we could try to trick Mother Nature by getting plants in the ground before that, but they really wouldn't start to grow until the end of May when the ground warmed up.

Other memories about growing things in the East--we aspired to have corn that was "knee high by the Fourth" (of July); the first haying was done in between rainstorms, also in July, and we always wished for fresh tomatoes from the garden for summer picnics, but didn't really start harvesting them until late July and early August.

Oh, my, things are so different out here in southern New Mexico. First of all, the corn:

 Here is Beez, kindly supplying the knees next to a flourishing field of corn. You can see that it's good and high, and here we are still in the month of May.

Dry soil in the orchard

However, any crop that is flourishing here is doing so because of irrigation. Because the irrigation district is very short of water due to lack of snowmelt, farmers who usually get three to four acre feet per season for their fields are getting 3 acre inches this year. That means that in order to irrigate, they have to pump water from ground wells. This is what the soil looks like in our neighboring pecan orchards. The trees still get flooded, but the water comes from the aquifer, not from the mountains, and the soil dries out a lot in between due to lack of rainfall. We haven't had rain for months now, but there is some rain in the forecast for the week, so keep your fingers crossed for us.

A couple of other notes: The first cutting of alfalfa was done well over a month ago now. That always amazes me. There are probably three more cuttings to come. And our tomato plants are all starting to take off, growth-wise, and are in bud. I'll let you know when we pick the first tomatoes.