Often all that desert dirt needs is organic material and water to grow things really well. It helps the water retention. Mulch heavily with several inches of something organic - I use shredded tree branches.

What sort of plant-based organic material can you get? Coffee grounds? Camel dung? Shredded paper? Vegetable trimmings?

Make a couple of slightly raised beds and pile all the organic material you can find on them, then plant through the piled-up stuff. (if you have chicken or other bird manure, spread it thinly as a fertilizer because it's rich)

You need to reverse your gardening schedule: Forget about growing European style veggies this season and grow the things that will thrive in the dry heat and penetrate the soil. Talk to local gardeners to see what they are growing.

Okra
Armenian cucumbers
Local melons
Purple Hyacinth Beans
Malabar Spinach
Eggplant

These will seriously improve the soil - you don't have to dig if okra roots have gone 4-6 feet deep. After they stop producing, just cut them off at ground level, toss them onto the compost heap, and plant something else.

Plant the tomatoes, chili peppers, and leafy greens in the early fall so they have winter to mature fruit in. I had lettuce growing in 110F weather here, in light shade, so it's possible.

Here's desert dirt with mulch piled on, and a drip system - growing eggplants, chilis, squash and okra
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Thank you so much for the information!

You know, we can just go out to the desert where there are trees growing and we can find plenty of camel dung. I never thought of that before. We brew Arabic coffee twice a day in our home as well as tea.

I will also start the Bokashi method of composting so I can get a good mix with the sand.

I am happy you posted your photo..now I can start researching what plants I will want to grow.

Thank you!

All your sand needs to become productive is organic matter, but that can be a problem too because the bacteria in the soil will be active year round so you probably need twice as much as someone in a more temperate area. For you composting of every bit of organic matter will be essential as well as accumulating all you can find to use for mulch.

Kimm, surely you jest? This thread seems like it might be tongue in cheek.

All desert sand needs is OM (and water! hmmm, what is a desert, I wonder?).

All we need to live on the moon is an effective way to get there and an atmosphere. And some OM and water would be nice.

I certainly agree that only a very few plants will thrive in the desert.

Ameera, I'd be very careful about creating actual raised beds in your climate as I imagine it would be incredibly expensive and impractical to irrigate them sufficiently.
'Raised beds' can mean different things to different people of course...
Raised edges round the garden are great, keeping things tidy and giving you a clear idea of where to mulch/amend.
A permaculture designer called Geoff Lawton has been doing wonderful stuff in the Middle East for many years; he's got loads of info online.
Re 'lawn': I am not a fan of 'fake'. Rather than pretending I wasn't in a desert environment, I'd research local plants that thrive, or at least cope, in your climate. Work with it: if you fight it, you will lose!
I got rid of my lawn in my very sandy area and landscaped using woodchips and really hardy plants, mostly native.
Of course, "get some woodchips" is probably not useful in your climate!
I know farmers in arable areas are still in the habit of burning off crop residues and you might be able to get your hands on some.

Mr. Brown. You have not seen and read the articles that are being written today about gardening in the desert? You are unaware of what is being grown in Isreal, Egypt, Ethiopia, and many other places that are deserts?

growing fruit in the desert

Watch this... You can grow anything in the desert if you have water and mulch. You could also check out how they do it in Israel, which would have a similar climate. I would probably get a drip irrigation setup.

Wish i could give you all my water. Between June 1st and Sept 30th last year, I had around 28 inches of rain fall in my yard.

Kimm, you are fine with pumping and evaporating fossil water with fossil fuel energy?

Mr. Brown I am not fine with using non renewable resources to get water form where its at to where it may be needed, however we have not yet created a good way to that without using those non renewable resources. Th3e water I use here is pumped from the aquifer by electricity, which is generated using non renewable reosurces, so I could not tell someone living in the desert that they should not also use pumps to move water, too.
What sufficient amounts of organic matter will do in sand is help hold moisture in the root zone which is mostly why plants will not grow in sand, whether in a desert or along the Lake Michigan shoreline.

wow thank you all for all the information!

After watching those videos of growing fruit trees in the desert I may just try to do a couple of trees for our new home.

For now we just have the land.. haven't finished completing the plans for the house. But as soon as the walls around the land are built, I will start bokashi composting in the land that will be empty next to ours. If I get a good 6 months to a year of doing as much bokashi composting as I can in a large area, I think I will have enough organic matter mixed with the sand for a nice garden.

I will abandon the raised beds as advised because of watering issues.. I was just thinking waaaaaaaay ahead imagining me successfully creating lush rich soil over the years and wanting it above ground so that once someone decides to build on that land I would be able to take all of the soil and move it elsewhere and not have to dig up the ground. Just fantasizing LOL

I'd take your rain water if I could franktank232! We certainly could use it LOL!

Kimm, my point is not really about sand, it is this:

A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Deserts are defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than 250 millimetres (10 in) per year,[1][2] or as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation.

You and I are practicing horticulture in areas where the rainfall is quite adequate to support growth of most plants, which is why we see them everywhere (our irrigating is merely supplemental for short periods and sometimes and in fact is not strictly necessary even for food crops if we know our business). In a desert one does not see them. Right now I am in florida which is about as sandy as most deserts, and on a hot day one might imagine, wildy, that one is in a desert. But everywhere I look there are trees, shrubs, grasses, forbs. Why is that, with an average of about 1% organic matter in the ground?

IMO, it is really presumptuous to give advice about an environment one has no experience with, whatever. If you do have gardening experience in an actual desert then you can correct me.

I believe there are a few regulars on this forum who garden in the American deserts, like the one who posted in this thread. How well that compares with middle eastern deserts I don't know. The Sanoran desert is apparently one of the wettest in the world, possibly much wetter than where the OP is talking about.

A question for you Ameera: how did people traditionally raise food in Dubai? I wonder if it so that there are a very few areas that have ground water near enough to the surface for plants to grow without irrigation, the so called 'oasis'? Most other areas would be quite impossible to live in without pumping water from very deep in the ground?

Ameera,
pnbrown makes a relevant point: I don't live in a desert; dry and sandy does not a desert make! But I still think I'd be very careful about raising the garden level, so I'm glad you're looking at alternatives.
When you say "sand" is it literally sand, with no organic matter? As part of my raised bed dismantling, I've actually dug out the sand to below ground-level and just added compost/anything I can lay my hands on, on top, without mixing. What invertebrates like worms and beetles do you have locally? I'm curious about the life in desert soil environments. If you have worms, they'll do all the 'mixing' you need.

If the weather service in Dubai can be believed they get around 36 inches of rain per year (around 93 mm). Granted that comes in 4 months and in deluges, but with proper planning it could be saved in cisterns just as people have been doing in those area for eons.

pnbrown, there are people who are fortunate enough to find what they call "sweet water" underground. So they were able to grow some things in certain areas back in the day.

One of my husband's uncles used to own a farm but all of his water was salt water... but they still used it to water some sort of plants... I just don't know what they were.

My brother-in-law just bought some land to farm on where he did find sweet water. Some days he can pump up more than others and during the drier times he does have to order water from some company that delivers it for his holding tank.

Even on our street we live on right now, a couple houses down- that family dug and found sweet water. So my husband's family dug but they only found salt water. this was a long time ago and that family has moved to a newer area so I have no clue what happened with that well of sweet water of theirs.

I am curious how that happens!

out in the desert there is some wild vegetation..and anytime that we get rain the plants out there noticeably grow and/or gets more lush.

Last year we got quite a bit of rain (over like a 2-3 week period LOL) and one desert area was shockingly green--though nothing I could compare to my home state of Colorado :)

I will post photos of the desert areas at the end of this post for everyone who is interested :)

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feijoas, I will post a photo of our land area (the background is distorted as they are other peoples' homes being built)... it is sand sand sand!! As you can see though, there are some wild plants that do grow in the sand... years ago our area was full of dunes and people went dune bashing and camping there. They flattened it all down for a residential area.

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as for worms... I would have no clue.... I don't think a worm could survive the harsh weather over here could they? I mean, maybe there are desert worms LOL. Out in the desert there are ants, beetles, scorpions (not in our area--at least I don't think there are!)...

I know you asked about invertebrates, but just for the info I there there are areas here where the big dunes are where there are gazelles, desert rabbits, geckos, mice, desert cats... though very rarely seen...

here is one lil' guy that came around my husband and his friends while they were sitting around bbqing in the desert--it wasn't afraid of people at all:

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oh, and how can I forget about the camels!! there are lots of camels and I could go around and gather camel dung :)

there are so many more species here though that I don't realize though... here are a couple of sites detailing wildlife in the UAE and the desert:

http://www.uaeinteract.com/travel/deserts.asp

http://www.arkive.org/uae/en/invertebrates

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kimmsr, before I moved here 5 years ago, my sister-in-law told me they got rain around only once every three years. And the rain would be over a 2 to 3 week period.

Since I have moved here it has rained every year. Also, over a 2 to 3 week period.. but some days it was enough to cause flooding (the drainage systems are not sufficient because they were built a long time ago)

But... this year it only rained very lightly for a maybe a few hours only a couple of times :( so no rain-water collecting chance this year (unless we get some rain but I doubt it)

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here are some desert photos:

some camels (some camels out here are wild but others are owned by someone who lets them out free during the day to graze)
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down on ground level beyond that hill is a family compound built right smack in the desert... its an old area but the whole square of houses is one family/tribe (good for them to live so close but I could NEVER live that close to so many family members LOL):

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These next two photos are in another area where there are trees...this was after all the rains of last year and yes, the trees are always there but not all that green on the ground. Its usually sparse vegetation amongst the trees with nothing but brown sandy ground everywhere...

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Hey, that jumping mouse thing's a jerboa isn't it? That's on my list of "weird creatures I'd like to see".
That looks like a fairly challenging gardening climate!
I've been looking at UAE gardening stuff and it appears that most people want 'Western' lawn surrounded by annual flowers.
That style and water-use clashes with my aesthetics and ethics: I find deserts very beautiful and I would be trying to work with the climate. Water's the biggie...
Do you have access to any old, local gardens and even gardeners? Of course that could be inapropriate for many reasons. I'd love to see more photos.

You might look at "Keyhole Gardens" as an alternative to the traditional raised bed. They combine composting, worms, and growing your veggies all in one neat package.

Thanks for the pictures. You will certainly need to use every conceivable water saving method, that much is clear. The area of your future house looks very dry indeed.

The closest experience I have is gardening in central florida where although there is no shortage of water as a yearly average, there is a quite dry season during the cooler part of the year, the sky is very clear so the sun is bright and hot and the sandy "soil" dries out very dry. There is a also a lot of drying wind that is very hard on food plants and young fruit trees.

I suspect there will be several critical factors for you, presuming that the main issue, water, is available.

Windbreaks will be super important, and the easiest thing would be to build the house with walls that enclose a sheltered garden. Second, you likely have far too much sun for most annual food crops, so if that sheltered area can have shade from about 1 or 2 in the afternoon might help a lot. With such clear sky and high sun there the morning will probably be enough. In extreme environments the majority of the heat stress on a plant that is not well-adapted will be from the west.

Equally important will be crop choices, and that is where it's especially unlikely anyone on this forum will be able to give good info. As mentioned earlier, there must be people in the region who will know everything. We all know of some dry hot climate tree crops: notably date palm and almond, maybe pomegranate, because they are popular foods in the west, but I am pretty sure that there are a number of leguminious trees as well that will grow in those conditions. There must also be some annual type and maybe perennial type greens and other vegetables.

I would think it logical that any of the common food crops that originated in the damper and/or cooler climates (which is most, by far) will be a waste of your time and resources.

Keyhole gardens are amazing.

What do you guys think about banana as another potential growth candidate. It loves the sun and the heat, hates too much water. And the corm can be dug up an moved to a new location.

Rudy

But does it love too little water?

The big advantage for the OP is the totally frost-free climate. At least I presume it is frost-free. Deserts can get quite cold at night, so that could be yet another stressor.

sorry for the delay in replying... I am a member on several forums and its hard to keep track with limited time LOL

I haven't forgotten this thread... I will post more photos and comment on recommendations and stuff hopefully in the next couple of days!

Thanks for all the info everyone is giving! :)

I would think mango would grow in that climate. Coldest temp this winter was 42F.

Mulch like crazy. Anything to conserve water.

Melons should grow great there in Dubai.

Mangoes need humidity. That is not always available in the Mid East.

Um// They grow in Phoenix, and the only humidity there is during July and August monsoon// They also grow south of the Salton Sea in California on a commercial scale. Israel and Egypt both produce a lot of mangoes. On top of that a google search shows Mangoes fruiting in UAE so obviously it can and is being done....

I used to live and garden in Kuwait, which as you probably know, has similar summers and considerably cooler, longer and wetter winters. Now I live in the icebox known as Saskatchewan, Canada. What a contrast and yet, so many similarities. OK, enough digressing...

Here's the planting schedule I used in Kuwait. You'll have to adjust this based on the even harsher climate of Dubai.

Cool season crops: sow around Halloween, harvest in February. Anything that is not a warm or hot season crop is in this category.

Warm season crops: sow in mid-September, harvest January through April. These include tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and cucurbits.

Hot season crops: plant anytime between March-June; harvest 2-3 months later and up until November. ONLY okra, amaranth and roselle fall in this category, in my experience. You may have some success with eggplant and melons if you provide ample water and shade. If you live near the coast and can take advantage of the humidity, that's even better. I know Dubai summers are a bit more humid than Kuwait...

Another hot weather crop goes by the Arabic name of molokhia. Sorry, don't know the English name. Cooked, the greens are rather like a mucilaginous version of spinach. Like okra and roselle, it is in the Malvaceae - one of the families with the most incredibly heat-tolerant plants. Purslane does relatively well too. However, I should point out that the June-September period is never optimal, even for these crops. Much as northern gardeners forget about gardening in winter, you may have to scale back during these four months. Take advantage of the other eight months of the year and make fall your most important planting period.