The raspberries she planted are a late blooming variety and continue to ripen in October just before the frost. They spread well, are tough and survive. But
her Peach Leaf willow has more roots than leaves, so she might not plant those again.
And her adolescent ash tree bends to the ground in a heavy wind, while her nectarine tree does well! And her healthy apricot tree lives over her septic leach field. Since
she gets “stone” seed fruit—nectarines, plums, peaches, etc. only 1 out of 5 years there, she really appreciates
them and both freezes and cans them.
Vegetables
Her rhubarb grows well every year in its
patch, and is good until the temperature reaches 70. The stems are quite tart,
but good when sweetened, although the big showy leaves are poisonous.
She grows her vegetables in neat raised
beds, and is always experimenting. She uses plastic “fake wood” boards
to make the perimeter because they don’t rot. They were ordered from Hacienda,
and she got the corner attaching hardware from the Garden Supply Company at www.gardeners.com/Official-site .
Then she mixes her soil and asks it what it wants. She gets her soil foods
in Nambe from Terry Moffit. She finds that her veggies do best in the spring,
summer and fall on the east side of her house where they get shade in the afternoon.
After the hail storm, when she rescued
her baby tomato plants, she gave them rescue remedy in their water, which seemed to help!
Her older varieties of vine tomatoes, called “indeterminate” are tougher, and not as pretty, but they have
good taste. She does a unique staking job on them. She puts stakes along the outsides of the tomato row, and then attaches horizontal strings or sticks to
the stakes, so that this arrangement makes a kind of open box to contain the tomatoes.
One of her beds supports Satya’s
salad greens. Because there was too much sun for her delicate young plants, she
had them covered with woven shade cloth that she got at Lowe’s, and holds it down with “garden staples”
that look like big “U” shaped hair pins that are often used to hold down irrigation hose. The shade cloth comes in different thicknesses with 60%, 40% and 30% sun block capacity. You can also order it online, and in addition, it keeps off the bugs, as well as the frost. But if your garden is too shady, you get slugs!
Next, a round bed sustains her herbs which
“either die out or flourish.” Many are perennials, and they grow
intermingled. She uses herbs in everything.
And she freezes extra produce in her low energy freezer, but doesn’t can.
In her window boxes and containers, she
mixes something called “solid water” from Green Sense at www.greensense.com . It looks like big white sugar crystals,
and is called Rhodes polymer gel. You mix it
with the soil, and it holds lots of water that slowly releases so that your soil doesn’t dry out as fast.
In the winter, she extends her growing
season with short hoop houses, but this year there was too much snow. It weighted
them down.
SARBJITS'
This enthusiastic couple’s
garden seems to expand outward from their lovely home! Their method is to develop
one area per spring, and in this way continue creating more sections or “rooms” each year! It has surely grown to great proportions now! They try things
to see what will happen—garden adventurers, and have grown their vision with experimentation. What works stays, and what doesn’t leaves.
Sarbjit Kaur gives most of the credit for
creating the many varied garden concepts, and then establishing and maintaining these sprawling grounds to her husband, Sarbjit
Singh. She says it’s “his thing,” and he is always trying out
something new! Although she does put in her share of effort. But I was shocked to find no weeds! What a lot of work! I understand they even enlisted their Solstice house guest, Black Krishna to help
them get ready for our Garden Club visit!
Their gardens are all quite grand and comfortable
to be in with all the shade and vegetation, and of course they are so very, very lovely!
You will find that I skip around among
these garden rooms in this write-up because there is so much!
Secret Gardens
When you come down the Ram Das Puri
road, you are greeted on the left by a lion—sculpture, that is! If you
look closely, you will also find a whimsical Oriental dragon swimming along the ground.
If you turn in by the lion, you will find
a wonderful formal garden on the right—between the house and the road through which you can take a quiet meditative
walk. It is hidden among the native pinon pines that they have kept alive by
watering them. This keeps them healthy against the invasion of bark beetles that
have killed the surrounding pinons. However, Sarbjit Singh felt that some of
the fruit trees didn’t do well because the pinons were taking the water. Junipers
also create comforting tall green curtains and cozy nooks in this large garden—giving it “bones” to shape
it.
The well-designed and fully mulched beds
with gravel paths between them give rise to all kinds of interesting plants such as wild roses that produce great rose hips
(orange seed pods), a locust bush with curly limbs, a lot of striking blue salvia which Sarbjit Singh says is more care free
than the lavender that they have grown there. After a few years, lavender gets
old and scraggly, and it is tough to prune, so they are in the process of replacing it.
In addition, he grows red salvia—an annual; Jupiter’s beard; and santolina, a silver green plant 2 ft.
high, with yellow button-like blossoms, which dies out in the center as it spreads.
You will also find Mr. Lincoln roses, an
old tea rose variety of the most deep velvety red blossoms! And there are also
beautifully shaped Bradford flowering pear trees that explode in magnificent white flowers
in the spring. Extraordinary large coral pink poppies were in bloom! And purple leaf, shrub-like smoke trees gave interesting texture and color contrast. A flowering peach tree was perfectly positioned, while the shady globe willow had been attacked by woodpeckers. The holes they put in it sadly caused some limbs to die off.
Surprised, we came across a big old trailer
hitch, a large triangle of rusted iron beams. Sarbjit had inventively filled
it in with dirt to make an unusual raised bed!
Ship Gardens
Take a left here and you will find
yourself in a most amazing row of raise beds made with RR ties, about 3 ft. tall, by 4 ft. wide and 9 ft. long! There are about three of them in a line, with the end one shaped more like the prow of a ship as it narrows
to a point. They are all filled with plant beauties, and each has tall wooden
shade arbors built above it on which are hung wisteria and clematis vines, whimsical bird sculptures, Buddhas, and 5 big wind
chimes!
Opposite the Ship Garden along the path are very tall blue
spruces and green Engleman spruces. Quite a magnificent wall!
Garden Geometry
In several of his lovely gardens,
he has developed a very pleasing geometry with a tree, often a fruit tree in the middle, which spreads and doesn’t grow
as tall as most other trees. These central trees also show beautiful flowers
in the spring with prolific fruit, hopefully later on. Or it might be some other
kind of flowering tree, such a purple flowering locust.
This arrangement provides blessed shade
to both humans and plants alike. Then he creates a geometrical pattern of raised
beds beneath it, with gravel paths between them. So practical and yet satisfying. There are several of these in the back that are dedicated to both flowers and vegetables,
each one its own exploration!
But the “daddy garden”
you might say, is in this geometric style and is located by their back deck. It
is large, well developed and has a fairly large Rain tree as its central focus that gives dramatic clusters of yellow hanging
flowers in late July, early August. Here they keep a variety of seating for chilling
and outdoor living. Quite wonderful!
And topping the railing of their back deck
are widow boxes filled with amazingly bright petunias, while next to that is the most extraordinarily colored rose bush—yellow,
to orange to red blossoms. It is probably named Joseph’s Coat. The deck is covered with a pergola for shade, and both roses and clematis climb on the house.
The Back Gardens
In the back, you will find an interesting
terraced flower garden on a slope created with a couple of levels of cinder block retaining walls topped with red pavers. And you will also find scattered shade trees, especially purple flowering locusts!
Then just behind the house is a large area,
about 40’ x 15’ raised bed made with short cinder block walls, and some of corrugated sheet metal. He recycles in the most creative and unusual ways! This is
the area where the former owners kept their goats. Voila—instant composted
manure! It is now being used for corn and sunflowers. And he mulches with heavy layers of straw.
Back here, you will also find a couple
of those cozy geometric gardens that are former vegetable gardens in transition to flowers. Purple
pincushion flowers and gorgeous pink peonies do well under the crabapples, needing little work but giving an abundance of
flowers. Red coral bells spread in the Buddha corner. However, the columbine gets big and rangy after a while.
A special tomato bed is planted with beets
and carrots at the end of July as a fall crop. They have provided great results
in past years!
There a couple more raised beds made with
cinder blocks that are former compost pits. They are covered with black plastic
sheeting as mulch with soaker hoses underneath. One is full of melon plants poked
through holes in the plastic into the soil. And the other supports zucchini and
cauliflower in the same manner.
A bank of Columnade apple trees grow about
20’ high like a row of tall bushes. They screen the work area like a tall
fence, and get full of good apples!
Then on the side, between the Red Garden and the Triangle Garden, is a flower garden that is
morphing into a pepper garden. That’s because this area gets too much sun
for healthy flowers, but is perfect for the heat-thriving peppers. It is bordered
by a Buddha garden and flanked by rows of their neighbor, Satya’s solar panels.
5 Tree Red Garden
This is a fairly large formal garden
with 5 long leaf pine trees lining the right side. There are long raised beds
containing Burning Bushes that turn bright red in the fall. Here you will also
find dark red snap dragons, salvia, roses, crabapple, and small purple leafed flowering plums—each blooming at different
times of the year. These beds lead the eye to a very special cherry tree with
a variety of flowers as a regal focal point across the far end. The red colors
in this area are quite distinctive.
A Shady Entrance
The cozy, narrow front entrance area of
the house is fenced in to corral cats and dogs, and keep coyotes out! These pets
are so special to them that they even have a marvelous “cat” weathervane on top of their home! (from www.WindandWeather.com )
This entrance area is quite shady
as it is bordered with fast growing, columnar shaped Lombardy poplars. They are 10 years old, and 40 ft. high! There is also a flowering
pear whose leaves were ripped off on one side by that hailstorm. And there is
a mock orange with white flowers that smell great in the spring as you come to the front door!
The Silver Lace, or Irish Lace vine on
the fence is a volunteer, but it keeps the area lush and private. You may have
seen this same kind of vine growing on the roadside wall near the Gurdwara. Their
plump, bright snapdragons re-seed themselves each year, and they have many different roses, which they keep trimmed of dead
spots. The Sarbjits prefer the “rigosa” varieties because they are
hardy shrubs. They use Neem as an organic method of riding them of aphids, which
you can get at any gardening place.
Rose of Sharon, that beautiful flowering
tall shrub greets the visitor, and they have had success with arbor vitae evergreen trees, although they may yellow in the
winter.
Triangle Lion Garden
Beside the “car park,” you
are greeted with what Sarbjit Singh calls his “Triangle
Garden.” It is quite
a formal and masterly garden that is built up in successive layers of triangular shaped raised beds, each level being a little
smaller than the one below, and each layer’s triangle rotated by 90 degrees, sort of like an ascending Star of David! Then all the “points” of each triangle are planted, often with blue flowers
in red rock mulch. This garden is presided over at about eye-height by a white
lion-griffin with personality. Quite dramatic!
Around the garden, they have kept some
lovely pinon pine safe from bark beetles by watering them!
Practicalities!
Since the ground is full of rocks
there, to start any garden they had to pull these big rocks out by hand! Then
they ran all the dirt through screens to sieve out the smaller rocks. By this
time, you are about 8” deep because you have pulled out such a large volume of material.
Next they filled in the bed with compost,
their native dirt which is 75% clay and pumice in this ancient volcanic region, and sand.
The sand is trucked up by Cooks in Espanola, with a minimum of 7.5 cubic yards—that’s a big dump truck
size. His compost comes in bags from the store.
He gets pecan shell mulch from Garcia Landscaping
Materials (see www.sirigian.com/resources.html for their contact information), and by the next year it will have been sun bleached from
a rich brown to grey. Bark mulch deteriorates slower.
To create the pathways, he first puts down
6 ml. heavy black plastic sheeting, then covers it with gravel which needs to be replenished from time to time.
This is all expensive to accomplish, but
since it was done in pieces, it wasn’t that bad.
He tried a little patch of grass lawn,
but it didn’t work.
Sarbjit Singh starts his veggies and flowers
from seeds in the house in the winter, using grow lights and racks. He put in
more solar panels to make enough electricity to support it. But because a green
house would need heating in the winter, and cooling in the summer, taking even more electricity, he doesn’t have one.
Because of the undependable water pressure
from the big tank, he can’t rely on drip irrigation. So instead he has
developed what appeared to be a complex system of soaker hoses that he turns on and off manually. He has 3 main hydrants for all of this. Each hydrant has a
brass “manifold” that separates the water flow into 3 nozzles to attach hoses.
Then each hose branches out to several more garden hoses or soaker hoses to cover his whole place!
The large composting drum works well.
