June Harvest

Today I'm eating nectarines from a dwarf tree we planted a couple of years ago. This is the first edible fruit we've gotten from the tree, and it's pretty good. We picked two bunches of red seedless grapes from the arbor in front of the pool equipment, and they were actually grape-sized rather than the match head sized ones we've gotten from the older vines under the lemon tree. There are lots of tomatoes, but they probably won't last long in the summer heat. We also have several smallish bell peppers. No snapbeans, butterbeans, or corn yet...I probably planted those too late. The snapbeans are about halfway up the trellis now; I'm waiting to post a picture when they reach the top and/or start producing. I cleaned out the withered nasturtiums around the pool today, and found a volunteer leaf lettuce plant that decided to grow there. I'll leave it alone and see what happens, as I am doing with the volunteer snap peas.

The zinnias look really good, and there are a lot of interesting blooms in the "hummingbird and butterfly mix) that I haven't identified. It's always fun to plant a mix like that and see the different things that come up. I pulled up the hollyhocks which are done for the season, and Mike ran them through the new shredder. It's a budget version we found at Harbor Freight tools that was suggested in a Phoenix Permaculture Guild post. We were disappointed in how it did when we tried to shred the pea vines and bolted lettuce, but it did a nice job on the hollyhock canes, and popped all the seeds out of the cases. We're trying to compost yard waste more seriously this year- it seems a shame to send all we produce to a landfill and then go to Home Depot and buy several dozen bags of mulch.

Memorial Day Weekend Project

Here's a photo of our latest project, a raised bed surrounding a grape arbor. We had originally built a small wall of stuccoed cinder blocks to hide the pool equipment. Later we found a bench with a metal arbor that we though would look nice in front of the wall, which was kind of boring to look at. We'd had several plants die in that location because of the heavy clay soil, so we decided to try grapes planted in large wooden boxes with the bottoms cut out, long planter boxes on top of the wall, and a hanging basket at the apex of the arch. The planter boxes and hanging basket were unsuccessful, but the grapes really took off. Since we never used the bench for sitting anyway, we decided to take out the bench, remove the boxes around the grapes, and raise the whole area. We planted a rosebush in the center, with verbena and vinca surrounding it.

I think life is a bit like gardening. There are many things you can't control- like our heavy clay soil and the Arizona summer heat, and there are many things you try that don't work the way you hoped they would. But you work to change the things you can, you learn from your mistakes, and you keep trying new things.