Desert Growing Tips

When growing outdoors in the desert regions where it is in the 90s every day (southern New Mexico), are there any specific tips or techniques to keep in mind? I just came over to this forum on a recommendation from a friend from another forum. I'm sitting down to read the stickies tonight, but I'm pretty sure this is a valid topic.

The babies are already about 18 inches tall, so it's too late to mess with the soil for this batch (right?), but they seem to have stopped growing in the past week or so and have produced pistils. We have removed any males from the area. I don't know what strain they are. I water them at least three times a day, but the soil here is fairly sandy. We have them (doubly) fenced in to keep out animals, and have let the long grasses grow along the fence, to prevent erosion. We don't seem to have any sort of insect trouble. Maybe once every three days or so one of the bottom layer leaves will turn yellow, when this happens I have been removing them, and I've also been pruning some of the bigger palm leaves that were preventing lower leaves from getting light. They get shade from the side of the house for the first half of the day, but the days are long and the heat is strong out here. I was really hoping they'd get quite a bit taller before flowering, but at least they are fairly bushy, with nice strong trunks.

Any tips on how to get the most out of this batch, and how to improve the area for the next batch, would be highly appreciated.

I've never lived in the desert but have watched what drought and high temps. can do to plants. I would think shading the sun a bit would be most beneficial. I'm sure they sell canopies for this perhaps that website/gardener catalog Gardener's Supply I think it's called. Think the URL is gardeners.com. There are probably other sites as well. If I was in the desert or in a really hot and dry climate I'd shade my plants during the brutal part of the day with some kind of mesh designed to alleviate some of the intensity of the sun. You can also mulch your plants with compost. That will cool the soil a bit and give them nutrients and improve the sandy soil.

Personally speaking I'd love to take up the challenge of making a desert bloom if you will. It's a balancing act but if done right your plants can do very well and not have the same problems they get with wet cool(harvest time time)climates. I would definitely be using shade cloth for other things as well including green production to make compost. It would take a lot of water to get a patch of grass going but it would be worth it make compost and turn that sandy soil into loam. Takes a long time but it would be a welcome challenge.

More morning sun and less afternoon sun is best say full sun from sunrise til 130 or then light shade rest of day maybe even fans cool water between 65-75 degrees roots are cool plant is cool spread watering out not all at once double pot to keep sun off pot roots are in