November gardening

I've been enjoying watching butterflies enjoying the zinnias...

...digging up sweet potatoes...

...and planting broccoli and several different lettuces in the bed formerly occupied by melons and butternut squash.

A harvest of fallen corn

 

Today I decided to pick corn. I wasn't expecting much, because the germination rate of the seeds I planted was so poor. For a few days, I attempted to compensate by hand-pollinating, but then we got hit by a windstorm that flattened most of the stalks. I unsuccessfully tried propping them back up with upside down tomato cages before giving up and leaving them to fend for themselves.

I have not had much success with corn in the past; I'm lucky to see a dozen kernels on one ear.  They usually look more like the ear on the far right than the one on the left. That's because corn is wind-pollinated and each silk must meet up with a pollen grain to grow into a kernel.  That's hard to do with only a few plants; you really need a larger block of plants than is practical in a backyard garden. Although I wasn't anticipating any more in the way of edible results this year, I thought I'd try using the stalks as supports for the snap peas I planned to plant later. The windstorm put an end to that idea. I resigned myself to using the cornstalks for outdoor fall decorating purposes.

When I pulled up the cornstalks today so that they'd have time to dry out before Halloween, I was surprised to find the most filled-out ears of corn my garden has ever produced, and it seemed that some of the fullest ears were the ones lying on the ground! How did that happen? I can only guess that when the pollen fell from the tassels, it wound up in a higher-than-normal concentration near the ground where the embryonic ears now lay.

Then, as I sometimes do, I started thinking about what life lesson I could learn from these plants. Sometimes the ill winds that beat us down actually serve to make us better human beings. Sometimes people who have suffered the most are the kindest, and sometimes the people who have the least are the most giving.

It's an upside-down world sometimes, and not just for corn plants after a windstorm. And sometimes being upside-down is a good thing.

After the storm

We got quite a bit of wind and rain yesterday. So much for yet another attempt to grow corn. In the big scheme of things, we were fortunate....no big trees down and no lasting damage to anything other than the corn. We have some friends who had a big tree come down and take out a section of their block wall.

September Changes

In mid-August, we left on a three-week cross-country trip. The day we left, it was pouring rain (above) The vegetable beds were cleared out and replanted with corn, squash, and beans for an early fall crop.

Phoenix received record rainfall during the time we left. The middle photo shows what we found when we returned.

The third photo, taken today, shows the garden two weeks later. I haven't been able to do too much because I've been on antibiotics and was advised to avoid direct sunlight. However, most things (including weeds) seem to be doing just fine without any help from me over the past month.

The corn didn't germinate well enough for good pollination, so I've been attempting to encourage it by shaking the stalks in the morning. Even if we don't get any corn, I plan to use the stalks as trellises for snow peas. I haven't found any bean plants yet, but I was finishing off an old package when I planted them, and there weren't too many left to begin with. We have dozens of young acorn squash, but only a few yellow squash and zero zucchini. I also found (so far) five nice-sized melons, which I did not plant. I assume they came up from kitchen scraps I tossed out before we left. In other areas of the yard, sweet potatoes are sprawling everywhere. For the first time, I decided to try growing pumpkin, and planted it in two places: next to the streambed behind the corn, and under the lemon tree. The vines under the lemon tree are doing much better than the ones near the corn, but I don't see any pumpkins yet. Also under the lemon tree, I can see a couple of red potato plants coming up. Apparently I didn't find them all when I harvested them earlier this year, and the ones I left behind have sprouted a new crop.

Bee-gone!

Wow! What a night! Emily from  AZ Queen Bee came out last night about 8 PM and took care of our bee problem, which turned out to be more extensive than we had thought. The whole extraction process took about an hour and a half.  She said that normally wild hives have about 10,000 bees, but estimated there were about 50,000 in the hive under our Bridge to Nowhere (which is going somewhere soon...most likely to the landfill!) There was not much honey, but a lot of bees, eggs, and larvae in the hive. The queen apparently took the Edenic command to "be fruitful and multiply" quite seriously. Fortunately, these were fairly docile creatures, as bees go.

After suiting up, Emily used a vacuum device to suck up the bees into bee boxes for transport to their new home. She wound up filling three bee boxes. Here's what they look like:

She then upended the bridge so that she could scrape out the honeycombs underneath. Practically the whole bottom surface of the bridge was covered in honeycomb. Here's a picture of her holding up a section of it:

Mike was a little more daring than I was in, and got in close enough to take some pictures and a short video of the bees swarming the underside of the bridge. Here's a screen shot taken from the video, which turned out much better than the still shots did:

And here's the video:

Oddly enough, Mike didn't get stung, even though he got in closer than I did. I got stung once on the leg and decided not to go any closer. BTW, if you get stung, take the stinger out as quickly as possible, ice it for several minutes, then put toothpaste on it. This is the least painful bee sting I've ever had.

Emily said that it might take several days for bee stragglers to dissipate. This morning, we saw several dozen flying around, I assume looking for their former home. She also told us that "robber bees" from several miles around might wander in after catching the scent of the disturbed honey and wax. 

If you're ever in need of a beekeeper, I highly recommend the AZ Queen Bee! She is very knowledgeable and professional. I found the experience very interesting and educational. 

To Bee Continued

 I put up a "help me" post in the Desert Gardeners of Maricopa County Facebook group and got a response from someone whose brother is a beekeeper. She came out today, along with her nephew, to scope things out in advance.  The pictures I took yesterday were from my camera phone, which only has a digital zoom. Mike took these today with his "real" camera, which has an optical zoom.

There appear to be three distinct clusters of bees hanging from the underside of the bridge. We think they came in after Friday's heavy rains, because I first noticed them on Saturday, and because right after a rainstorm is when a hive is most likely to split off to form a new hive. These bees must think they have found paradise in our Arizona Backyard Eden...a shady, protected spot, lots of flowers, and easy access to water in our ponds. However, what is paradise for bees might be called something else by humans living in close proximity to them.

Hopefully, the father-and-son beekeeping team will be here today or tomorrow to escort our bee friends to a home that will be a better fit for them than this spot behind our pool.

Bees where I don't want them

A couple of days ago on my walkabout in the yard, I noticed an unusual number of bees in an area behind our pool, near the fence line. We have a decorative wooden bridge we call "The Bridge To Nowhere" there, and they have apparently set up housekeeping under it. Although they are not particularly aggressive bees, they cannot stay where they are. I really don't want to kill them if I can avoid it, because there is such a problem with bee population decline. I called a couple of beekeepers that people in the Desert Gardeners Facebook group recommended, and hopefully they will be relocated to a better home soon.

August overview

We've spent most of July clearing out the raised beds for fall planting. Summers here are like winters elsewhere...not much fun and not much success in the garden. Serious gardeners extend the growing season by putting up shadescreen over their vegetable beds, but we usually don't; we just give everything a rest.

An unexpected consequence of our conversion of the grass pathways to gravel was the loss of several more trees in the summer heat. In addition to the apple tree, a plum and a fig tree started showing signs of severe decline. My theory is that the tree roots were shallow and spread out because of the grass watering pattern, and couldn't adapt to a drip irrigation system.

If you're wondering what to plant in August, here's a list: We planted beans, carrots, lettuce, and summer squash in the smaller bed nearest the house and are going to try corn (again) in the larger bed by the streambed.

July overview

This is not my favorite time of the year. because it's hot...hot...hot! It's not much fun to work in the garden, and the garden shows it. But since I made the commitment to myself to post overview photos around the first of each month, here's one from a different direction. I stood on top of the upper pond  to take this picture.

All good things...

Unless you shade them, tomatoes don't last very long in our summers. Pollen becomes inactive and the fruit and leaves become sunburned. These are probably the last slicing-size tomatoes we will get this summer, although the cherry types seem to go on and on.

Today I pulled up three tomato plants that were in significant decline. One was a plant that survived the winter and leafed out again, and the other two had their root systems compromised by the patio addition. I also picked almost a dozen ripe tomatoes from the plant in the picture above. There are a few more green ones remaining, and I'll probably take this plant out too after I pick them.

More on the road less blogged about

Our "backyard" is really fairly small. We do most of our gardening in the "side yard", so that's where most of the pictures on this blog were taken. The trees flanking the pathway are a pink grapefruit and an orange, and together with a lemon tree that isn't shown, are the oldest trees in our yard. They were planted as 15 gallon trees in the summer of 2002. Citrus trees have done much better for us than any kind of deciduous trees. They are on drip irrigation and we fertilize them three times a year. Here's the chart we use to calculate how much to feed them and when. You will note that they look more like bushes than trees because we allowed them to grow into their natural shapes. That's best for the trees, because the shade protects the bark from sunburn. Some say the fruit growing on the lowest branches is the sweetest.

And here's a picture of what the trees looked like when they were first planted! That's my mother in the picture. A breast cancer survivor since 1991, she is convinced that pink grapefruit played a part in her successful treatment. So when we moved here, one of the first things we planted was a pink grapefruit tree.

Armenian cucumber sprawl

My outdoor thermometer sensor says it's 109 in the shade, but the heat doesn't seem to faze this Armenian cucumber. Not only do the vines sprawl everywhere, but they also continue to set fruit. There's a foot-long cucumber hiding in those vines that wasn't there a few days ago.

Armenian cucumbers are actually in the melon family, but they taste like cucumbers and can be used as such in recipes. I like to chop them up and marinate with olive oil, basalmic vinegar, and fresh basil and/or oregano. Sometimes I add onions or tomatoes if I have some on hand. They don't need peeling and don't taste bitter when they get big.

That's my rescued basil plant cozying up to the Chardonnay bottle in the large pot. I have irrigation in the pot which comes on twice a day, but pots dry out quickly in our summer heat and I've found that wine bottles work well in allowing water to seep out slowly. The new foliage is coming in nice and green rather than mottled, so it apparently likes its new home.

Invasion of the sweet potatoes

If you're looking for something that thrives in the summer heat, may I recommend sweet potatoes? I planted two ornamental sweet potato vines in a small area between our lower pond and gazebo three years ago. They die back in cold weather, but come back with a vengeance as soon as it warms up. By midsummer, if left to their own devices, they would cover the floor of the gazebo, the surface of the pond, the streambed, and the raised beds that border it on the other side.

I keep cutting off the vines, sticking the cuttings in hanging baskets and pots, and they keep coming!

The road less blogged about

Since many edible plants are giving up for the summer, I thought I'd post some pictures of other things in our yard. Above is a photo of our second pond, or really the first one Mike built when we realized that the little prefabricated plastic one was too small for our liking. Below is a picture of this area as it appeared in 2003, with only the small prefabricated pond. We built it by removing dirt and plants from the raised bed between the patio and the block wall, and lining the hole with rubber pond liner. If you look closely, you can see  two newly planted one-gallon thevetia plants on either side.

Below is how the area looks today. The thevetia have grown into trees, and we added a prefabricated gazebo. It's much shadier and cooler (and also messier because thevetia are very messy trees!) but a very enjoyable place to sit and listen to the sound of trickling water, watch goldfish swim or birds at play, and smell rose, citrus, or plumeria blossoms.

Intruder alert!

It's too hot to garden in the afternoon, so I've been swimming laps for exercise and to cool off. While doing the backstroke one day, I noticed that a Chinese elm was growing in the bed behind the rock wall on the left. The HOA uses a lot of Chinese elms in landscaping the common areas, so this one must have rooted from a seed dropped over the block fence. It has multiple trunks and is about 6 feet high at this point. I missed seeing it earlier because its foliage at this point is somewhat similar to the cape honeysuckle I planted behind the waterfall. No wonder I wasn't seeing many blossoms from the cape honeysuckle! It has been nearly crowded out by the tree!

Missed one!

 I only thought I picked all the vegetables and fruits that were out there yesterday. This morning I went to toss some kitchen scraps in the garden and look what I found hiding!

Today's pickings

Yellow squash, several kinds of tomatoes, peppers, green beans, peaches, and grapes. The Roma tomatoes are volunteers that are growing in the zinnia jungle.

Small but tasty

This is probably as big as these Thompson seedless grapes are going to get...about the size of my pinky fingernail...but they taste good. We have about a dozen clusters this year on this vine and none on the older vines under the lemon tree. I'm not sure if their problem is inadequate water or sun. I gave this one regular bucketfuls of pond water in addition to its drip irrigation. Interestingly, this one was also the one most attacked by grape leaf skeletonizers.

Potatoes

We tried red potatoes for the first time this year. I planted them mid-February, which was probably on the late side, but that's when seed potatoes showed up in nurseries. The potatoes we got were on the small side, but it has been fun to just go out into the back yard and dig some up whenever they're needed.

Chop-and-drop mulching, or If you can't beat 'em, use 'em!

 Part of what attracts me to permaculture gardening principles is that I'm a lazy gardener. So when I saw a reference to "chop and drop" mulching in the Desert Gardeners of Maricopa County Facebook group, I was intrigued enough to do a little research. Here's one explanatory link I found and here's a Youtube video demonstrating the process.

Bermuda grass, mint, Mexican petunia, and Mexican primrose have long been the bane of my gardening existence .In the past I've spent a great deal of time and effort trying to dig them up by the roots and throw them in the trash. According to "chop and drop", I not only don't need to do that, I am removing nutrients from the soil that will have to be replaced somehow.

I especially don't enjoy weeding in the heat of the summer, so I think now would be a good time to experiment with this method on the mint and grass infesting this raised bed. I don't think there is much danger of the stolons rooting themselves during our hot, dry summer, so I just cut them off at ground level, chopped them up with clippers, and left them to dessicate in the sun. Theoretically, they will provide a cooling, weed-supressing, moisture-conserving layer of mulch now, and eventually will decompose and add  their nutrients back into the soil. As a bonus, I got to enjoy the lovely, soothing smell of mint as I worked.

Word of warning: Don't include weed seed heads in your chop-and-drop mulching, or you will come to regret it next spring. I do include flower and vegetable seeds, if this is a place I might want to see those particular flowers and/or vegetables.

An excuse to collect wine bottles

I saw an article detailing a rather complicated way to make plant waterers out of wine bottles here. When I did a little research, I found that some people have been successful in just sticking an unmodified wine bottle into damp soil. I tried out the idea on a rescued Cherokee Purple tomato accidentally uprooted in our latest patio project. So far, it seems to be working as intended.

Squash and eggplant

Yellow squash, and what was supposed to be a white eggplant and obviously is not.

Interestingly, this yellow squash was a transplant from a mound in another location. The squash that came up from seed in the original mound are doing rather poorly,while this one is flourishing. This eggplant is also doing much better than an older one that survived the winter.

In addition to the squash, I picked the first Armenian cucumber today from vines growing at the other end of this bed. I'll use it tonight, along with the last of the Purple Cherokee tomatoes, in tomato-and cucumber salad. There's no need to buy out-of-season lettuce for a salad when you have tomatoes and/or cucumbers.

Plumeria and water lilies

White water lilies in one of our ponds. I've seen white and yellow this year, but no pink. The pink one may have been damaged when we purged the cattails from this pond.

Yellow plumeria blossoms on the plant we moved from a broken pot to the ground

White plumeria blossoms on a tree that's still in a pot but is now about ten feet tall. If the experimental ground planting works, we will try moving this one out of its pot as well.

Watercress

Today I spent some time thinning plants in the streambed that runs between two of our ponds. I constantly battle a rather invasive cloverlike plant that appeared out of nowhere, forms huge root mats that require considerable effort to extract from under the rocks, blocks the flow of water until the riverbanks overflow, crowds out more desirable plants, and in general makes a nuisance of itself.

The watercress in the picture above is a nicer plant. Although I have to periodically thin it out, it doesn't form root mats like the clover, and stays out of the deeper water where my water lilies are. Maybe we ought to start eating our thinnings, according to this article. Watercress sandwiches, anyone?

Peaches and weeds

We should get our first peaches from this Mid-Pride tree in a few weeks. This tree was purchased at the Phoenix Permaculture Guild's annual fruit tree sale and planted as a bare-root in February 2013.

The tall grass-like spikes are a reminder of our lasagne-gardening experiment several years ago. The hay we laid down in this area apparently had some kind of live seeds in it, and found its happy place in the composting vegetation meant to nourish more desirable plants. It spreads by underground runners and rhizomes, and shows up every spring without fail, no matter how diligently I have tried to dig it out.

At least this is a shady area in which to work. The current temperature, at not-quite-10 AM, is 98 degrees.

OK, so I was wrong

I braved the heat long enough to due a little weeding in the back of the zinnia jungle, and found this acorn squash....

...so I checked the Armenian cucumber for signs of life and found these!

Early June overview

Yesterday marked the first 110 degree temperature of the year, and it's expected to be equally hot today.

We're still harvesting tomatoes, although most of them have stopped setting new fruit. Cherry and yellow pear tomatoes continue to produce, and I've found producing volunteer tomatoes all over the place. There are two volunteer cherry tomato plants growing out of the rocks lining the streambed, an as-yet unidentified tomato growing out of a parsley plant, and numerous kinds hiding out in the zinnia jungle.

The transplanted yellow squash in the foreground bed produces a nice-size squash every other day or so. The original mound, which lies in the large bed behind Zinnialand, hasn't done as well. The squash it produces are rather small if picked before they begin to darken and harden. I've gotten about one grey zucchini a week from the same bed, and nothing so far from the pattypan. The acorn squash has produced a long vine along the edges of the pond, but no sign of fruit yet. I haven't seen any melons or Armenian cucumbers yet, either. That's interesting, because the bed is alive with bees, hummingbirds, and other pollinators attracted to the zinnias and the artichoke blossoms. Maybe they are too busy with those flowers to bother with the squash and melon blossoms.

Last year's Japanese eggplant is still producing, and the new one is setting fruit. It was supposed to be a white eggplant...one Japanese eggplant is plenty..but it's clearly not. Some of the strawberry plants are still alive and producing, and I actually found a few blackberries that ripened rather than drying up.

Sweet potatoes are showing up in last year's planting beds. Obviously I didn't remove them all when I harvested them last fall. There are enough of them that I decided not to plant new ones. We're still harvesting smallish red potatoes from the bed under the lemon tree, as well as small but edible red onions.

I'm pretty sure our sick apple tree isn't going to make it, as its stunted leaves have turned from green to brown. What remains of the old peach tree appears fairly healthy, although it is a shadow of its former self. We should get the first peaches from one of the new ones we planted last year later this month. And of course, there are plenty of green citrus fruits growing on our grapefruit, orange, lemon, and lime trees.