Jardin de Milagros

02/19/2026

Greetings from the Jardin. No harvesting occurring now—but really busy with field preparation and with getting ready for spring planting. There are about 3,000 seedlings which have sprouted in our greenhouse and these seedlings are beginning to show their first true leaves. Varieties currently sprouted are Jalapeño, Big Jim Numex, Joe Parker, Barker, Serrano, Shish*to, Santa Fe Grande, NM 10-4, Lumbre, Banana Pepper, Bell Pepper, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Broccoli, cherry tomatoes, and Big Boy tomatoes. Also, the first shipment arrived of onion slips to be transplanted—10 cases of 1500 to 2100 each case. So 15,000 to 21,000 onion slips will be transplanted, beginning next week. Another 30 cases will arrive in early March for Spring Break groups to transplant. Additionally, field prep continues: fabric removal, soil turnover, disking, roto-tilling, soil amendments with compost, mulch, fertilizer and flake sulfur, roto-tilling again, drip line placement, fabric lay-down and then we can plant seeds or transplant seedlings. Busy times! Come see us. Susie & Jerry

12/12/2025

UPDATE: Greetings from the Farm. Things have really slowed down here due to the end of the warm weather growing season. The only veggie growing now are onions we seeded in rows in October. They are only 2” tall now and will not grow fast in these winter months.
As you may know, we strive to produce 100,000 lbs of fresh vegetables each year. We came very close this year. Our production was 99,436 lbs. A really good year and we thank all of our supporters—those who volunteer here, those who give money, and those who pray for the success of feeding the food insecure here in the El Paso region. Thank you All.
Susie & Jerry Hobson

11/03/2025

Greetings from the Jardin on this Monday November 03, 2025. The cool Fall weather is here and is quite nice. Last Wednesday, we had a touch of frost on Susie's car. Just a bit of thin ice, but it did get the tops of the sweet potato vines---which have since turned part black. We are beginning to trim the vines in preparation for digging out the sweet potatoes. Also, today; we will begin to Glean pumpkins from the La Union Maze Pumpkin Patch. We will strive to get 6 totes of pumpkins (about 600 lbs each). To date, we have produced 96,639 lbs from the Jardin. It has been a good production year and we should reach our 100,000 lb goal when the sweet potatoes are added up.

06/26/2025

06/26/2025

Greetings from the Jardin. During March of this year, we transplanted about 118,000 onion slips into the garden and we are about 3/4 done in harvesting them. Yesterday, Wednesday, June 25th, we had 48 volunteers here pulling onions. All total, we pulled 8,500 to 9,000 lbs of onions, which have since been delivered to the Kelly Center for Hunger Relief in El Paso, Texas for distribution to the "Food Insecure" in El Paso.
Of the 46 volunteers, most came from the United Way's "Day of Action" project: (28 volunteers came from El Paso Electric Co. and 5 volunteers came from Raiz Federal Credit Union). Thank you United Way (Aracely Lazcano), El Paso Electric and Raiz Credit Union.
Also helping was a group of 7 youth and 4 adult leaders from the Odessa Connections Christian Church; and 1 youth from First Christian Church in El Paso, Texas. (This group of youths and adults came on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday--Thank you very much.)
And, we had 1 of our regular weekly volunteers help with managing this large and productive group volunteers--Thank you Becky Nelsen!
Susie & Jerry Hobson

06/23/2024

Greetings from the Jardin. Yesterday was a Milestone day for the Jardin. The 1,000,000th lb of vegetables was delivered and donated to the Kelly Center for Hunger Relief. Kelly distributes these vegetables to the “food insecure” in the El Paso TX area. It has taken 14 years of growing vegetables at Jardin de Milagros to reach this milestone. Susie & Jerry Hobson thank all of those who have contributed time, funding and/or prayers in helping furnish these garden fresh vegetables to help feed our neighbors in need.

10/16/2022

Mom is doing great.

06/08/2022

Greetings from the Jardin. We picked the first Zucchini this morning. Also last week, one of our volunteers pulled up this 2 lb onion. Things are heating up here with triple digit temperatures expected every day of this week. Mosquitos are not here so far. Lots of veggies are growing, but still several weeks away from being harvested. 98% +/- of the garden is in. More later. Coffee is ready by 7:00 am if you want to stop by for a visit.
Jerry & Susie

05/24/2022

Greetings from the Jardin---Apologies for not posting more often. Lots of stuff has been going on here on the farm. Much of the work this year has been about field prep, transplanting, seed starting in flats, and a little bit of harvesting. Texas 1015Y Super Sweet White Onions were transplanted in Dec, Jan, Feb and Mar. All total, 112,000 onion slips were transplanted. Various types of chiles have been transplanted and are growing in the field. These include Big Jim, Jalapeno, Hungarian Wax, Cerrano, Santa Fe Grande, Shish*to, Joe Parker, Barker, and NuMex 10-4. Sweet Potato slips (1,000) were also transplanted after April 15 (our last frost date). Squash and Cucumber seeds were field seeded, have sprouted and are growing nicely. There are yet many things to get started: transplanting of tomatoes, field seeding of egg plant, bell peppers, melons and more squash. We experienced a hail storm on Tuesday night April 26. Damage to vehicles, roof, greenhouse, high tunnel, and to the larger more mature onions was the result. Always something happening at the farm. Hope you are doing well and are healthy. Susie & Jerry Hobson

08/16/2021

Greeting from the Farm (Swamp??). We have had about 9" of rain from last Thursday evening. Its gonna take a few days to dry out enough to be able for work in the fields. Jardin de Milagros is having a good year so far in 2021. Production is currently 55,293 lbs of produce. We should get close to our goal of 100,000 lbs for the whole year if the weather permits and the bugs do not cause too many problems. Come see us. Plenty to help with here. Jerry & Susie

05/05/2021

Good Morning on this 3rd day of May, 2021. We have been busy getting ready for the summer season and warm weather crops. Currently we have about 95% of the crops seeded or transplanted.

The transplanted varieties are: Onions, Big Jim Numex long green chile, Poblano chile, Santa Fe Grande chile, Shish*to chile, Serrano chile, Hungarian Wax chile, Joe Parker Chile, Sandia chile, Jalapenos, Jalamundos (giant jalapenos), Broccoli, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Brussels Sprouts, Bell Peppers, Black Beauty eggplant, Ichiban eggplant, Roma tomatoes, and Invincible tomatoes.

Field seeded vegetables are: Watermelons, Cantaloupes, Canary melons, Crenshaw melons, Honeydew melons, Black zucchini, Grey zucchini, Yellow Straight Neck squash, Acorn squash, Armmenian cucumbers, Carrots, Okra, Cherrybelle radishes, French Breakfast radishes, Corn, Beets, Sugar Snap Peas, and Blue Lake 274 green beans. We also have a few test plots for some other veggies.

Remaining things to get into the garden are: Sweet Potatoes (have not arrived yet), Valencia peanuts, and Butternut squash.

We are actually in pretty good shape right now, but the weeds are beginning to sprout and insects are beginning to show up. So we still have much to do and care for. In about a month we will begin to see summer produce ready for picking. Trips to deliver the produce to the Kelly Center for Hunger Relief have been few so far this year, but will become more frequent in June. Our goal is again for 100,000 lbs of produce. Hopefully, Mother Nature will cooperate.

As always, we welcome your support either financially or via our work chores here on the farm. In any event, come by for a visit and see everything.

Thank you, Susie and Jerry Hobson

03/31/2021

Hi there and Greetings from the Jardin--We hope that this Easter week is a good one for you and your families. We are just about to finish our 2 weeks of the post 2nd vaccination time frame, before the full effect of the vaccine is in place according to what the experts say. Hope we are protected and as safe as we can reasonably be.

In the Garden, we are now in the final stages of field preparation and have begun to transplant and field seed. Black Zucchini, Grey Zucchini, and Yellow Straight Neck squash seeds are now in the ground. Also Sugar Snap Peas, Radish and Beet seeds have been planted. We are succession planting the Radishes and Beets--which we started about 4 weeks ago. The first plantings have sprouted and we will have a few Radishes to begin picking next week.

This week on Monday and Tuesday, we transplanted the Cabbage, Cauliflower, Broccoli, and Brussels Sprout seedlings. Not sure these will do much as it is likely to get warm too soon for them to produce much before bolting to flowers and bitterness.

We ordered another and final crate of onions yesterday as we did not have quite enough onion slips to finish filling out the prepared rows. We needed about 600 more onions to finish the last row and we will need to replace the earlier transplants which did not make it.

Every day now we move the 40 +/- seedling flats (162 seedlings/flat) out of the greenhouse on to tables to harden them off. We started with one hour/day, then 2 hrs/day, then 3 hrs/day, then 4 hrs/day and yesterday they were out for 6 hours. Today they will be out for 6 hours again. Next week we will begin to transplant these into the field if the weather forecast looks favorable. This will be about 5,000 to 6,000 seedlings to be transplanted.

Sweet Potato rows are just about ready to drape the black plastic film over them. The Sweet potato slips should ship to us on about April 15.

The High Tunnel winter veggies will be cleared out this week or next so that we can prepare it for the Bell Pepper and Jalapeno seedlings.

Our days seem to fly by and we get a bit tired by supper time. We are fortunate to have volunteers and some paid help. Otherwise this effort would be much reduced or nonexistent.

Thank you to all volunteers and supporters.