The morning after

Eggplant and tomatoes are not a pretty picture today, but I did manage to salvage a few.

Frost is in the air

Too bad for these tomatoes. We would have had a bumper crop otherwise.

My idea of Black Friday shopping

99-cent poinsettias at Home Depot

Watermelon surprise

This volunteer watermelon hid pretty well among the zinnias, but it tasted good.

Broccoli, roses, and petunias

This bed off our back patio is bordered by petunias and nasturtiums. The nasturtiums were planted from seed and are up but not blooming yet; the petunias were transplanted in October at the same time as the broccoli transplants behind them. There is also garlic in this bed, but the shoots are only about three or four inches high at this point.

Behind the broccoli are rosebushes which are beginning to bloom again, and asparagus ferns that are beginning to yellow. We'll cut the asparagus back in a couple of weeks, and we usually cut the roses back in January.

To the left is a basil plant which is still going strong. Basil usually lasts here until the first frost, which is always unpredictable. It's could be as early as December or as late as February, or maybe not at all. If and when it comes, and depending on how hard a freeze it is, it may wipe out the nasturtiums as well.

It's also interesting to notice the difference in sun patterns at different times of year. Since this patio is on the north side of our house, it's not possible to take a photo this time of year without at least part of the bed being in shadow.

Evil four leaf clovers

Whoever came up with the idea that finding a four leaf clover meant good luck obviously wasn't talking about the aquatic variety that invaded our lower pond and has been working its way upstream like an invading army. I don't know how it found its way into the pond in the first place, but I spent a fair amount of time this morning trying to wrestle thick mats of the stuff out of the streambed. Some of the root mats were over an inch thick, and strongly resisted my attempts to pull them out of the rocks. I managed to get most of them out of the streambed by turning off the pump, putting on flip-flops, and wading in the small amount of chilly water which remained. In the process, I rescued a couple of baby goldfish that apparently had washed down from the upper pond and were stranded in the mess.

I haven't begun to tackle the plants growing in the pond itself. That is likely to be much more difficult, messier, and colder because I think I will have to stand on the pond bottom in order to get enough leverage to pry the matted root masses free.

It is an attractive plant, but very invasive and in hindsight, I wish I had taken steps to control it earlier. But then, they're a lot of things in life that are attractive, yet have a tendency to take over if we don't take steps to keep them under control.

Early November overview

Most of the deciduous fruit trees have lost their leaves, but the citrus is beginning to show signs of ripening.

Round 2 of the zinnias are still growing strong and attract dozens of butterflies; the petunia transplants are doing well, and most of the nasturtiums have come up. Roses are beginning to recover from their summer slump and are flowering again.

The broccoli plants and sugar snap peas are strongly established, but of the salad greens I planted, only arugula came up. Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants are still setting fruit. I dug up the sweet potato bed and we've been working on preparing it for new plantings. We'll probably try strawberries in that location, this time with a fall rather than spring planting.

Most of the garlic cloves have sent up shoots, and the basil plant is still healthy; cilantro is also coming up in several places and this time I know what it is.

We're in the process of taking out the grass pathways among the raised beds and will replace them with crushed granite. Hopefully that will cut down on the continuing battle we've had with Bermuda grass invading the raised beds, as well as decrease our overall water usage. We had mixed feelings about doing that, because the grass is attractive and soft to walk on barefoot, but it really has been a problem to keep out of places we don't want it.

Eggplant harvest

I harvested Japanese eggplant today. Would you believe all these  came from one plant?

Fall tomatoes

Three tomato plants survived the summer and are now loaded with fruit. This cherry tomato (I think it is a Sweet 100) was a volunteer which has sprawled to cover half of this raised bed. It probably has more than a hundred pea-to-marble sized tomatoes on it now. Two other plants in another bed, ironically among the ones that I thought had died last March, are also huge bushes bearing dozens of green tomatoes.

I'm not sure the tomatoes will ripen before a frost does them in. Although the temperatures are close to perfect for them to set fruit, it ripens much more slowly during the shorter days. That's what happened last year in my experiment with a fall tomato crop last year, and why I didn't plan to repeat the experiment. However, this year I didn't have to put out new, small transplants in late July and baby them through August and September...this were established plants that refused to die. I couldn't bear to dig up such healthy looking plants, so I decided to leave them alone.

We'll see what happens.

Sweet potato harvest

I've been dithering about when to harvest the sweet potatoes we planted from slips last June. I kept reading articles, and couldn't get up the gumption to destroy the beautiful vines, which grew happily and prolifically through the hot summer. My decision that today would be the day came not from something I'd read, but  because I was in a bad mood, and I've found that digging and other kinds of heavy garden work are excellent therapy for bad moods. Anyway, they obviously were ready to be harvested as some had reached quite a large size.

Here's one of the articles I found about harvesting sweet potatoes. I started to use a spading fork as suggested in the article, but was concerned that I'd damage the potatoes with its tines, so I used a trowel instead. After I pulled out the vines, I scraped away with the side of the trowel at the base of each root until I saw the top of a potato; then I used the pointed end to dig it out.

The potatoes will have to "cure" for a while before we can try eating them, but I definitely consider this year's sweet potato experiment a success and will try them again next year. The only thing I think I'll do differently is plant them earlier- in May rather than late June.

Damage Control

We noticed today that a large, heavily fruit laden branch of our lemon tree had broken. It could have been damaged by some of the monsoon winds, or it might have broken under the weight of all the fruit. The branch was undoubtedly weakened by neglectful (read: nonexistent) pruning practices. Several branches were growing far too close to each other, and had actually grown together where they joined the trunk. Wind or no wind, that's a bad thing because the cambium on both branches is compromised. We should have removed the smaller branch long before it got to this point. Now we need to take both of then out. The photo below, taken from another angle, shows the crowded branches clearly.

The lemons are mostly full sized, but still green. I've read mixed reports as to whether they will ripen off the tree, but we're going to wait and see what happens. We cut into one and there is plenty of juice, so they may be perfectly fine for the normal uses we'd make of them. If they were oranges, it might be a different story, but I don't expect lemons to be sweet when fully ripe. As you can see in the picture below, there are a lot of them!

October surprise

I found this watermelon growing from a vine that came up as a volunteer. I knew the vine was hiding beneath the zinnia jungle, but it didn't do much until we cleared out some of the zinnias and the watermelon vine had access to sunlight.

I don't know that it will reach an edible stage this late in the year, but it made me wonder. What kinds of hidden treasures might we find in our lives if we look closely, clear away some of the overwhelming busyness, and give overlooked possibilities an opportunity to flourish?

Companion Plantings

End of September/beginning of October overview

We're continuing weeding and fall planting this week. The sugar snap peas and a few lettuces are beginning to come up in the center bed, and I planted garlic in front of the roses in the bed in the foreground. The roses look pretty sad right now but should produce another flush of blooms and leaves in the next couple of months.

Here's a link to an interesting article I found on companion planting. This is the first time I've tried growing garlic, and I knew it was a good companion plant for roses, but wasn't sure how it would affect the broccoli which is also in this bed this year. The article also talks about the beneficial effects of nasturtiums, which are one of my favorite plants to line the perimeter of the raised beds. They are colorful, low growing, easily reseed themselves, and you can eat them too! It's always a trick (and a bit of a gamble) to plant them at the right time. A hard frost will kill them, as well a lesser frost if they aren't big enough, and they also die off in the summer heat.

Fall is finally in the air!

October marks the beginning of the nice time of year to live and garden in Phoenix. It actually gets down into the 70s during the night, rather than our summertime lows in the 90s, and it's entirely possible that  the temperatures won't reach the 100 degree mark during the day.

We are continuing to work on clearing out the beds and doing fall planting. Some of the sugar snap peas I planted a week or so ago are starting to come up, along with assorted other seedlings that I can only hope are lettuces. It's always somewhat of a surprise what comes up because there are so many plants that reseed themselves. It might be what I planted, or it might be something else I planted a year or two ago, or it might be a weed.

Today I planted broccoli and petunia transplants. The photo above shows the design we are currently using for drip irrigation, with 12-inch drips spaced parallel to each other 12-18 inches apart, and 6-inch drip tubing running around the perimeter of the bed. Each transplant is planted right under a drip emitter. In this bed I planted petunia transplants and nasturtium seeds alternately on the 6-inch perimeter tubing, and the broccoli is behind it, spaced every 12 inches on the 12-inch tubing. It's similar to "square foot gardening" in concept, but modified to fit our rounded bed setup. After I took this picture, I finished it off with mulch, which (mostly) hides the drip tubing and helps conserve moisture.

Fall plantings

We finished clearing out this bed, except for the Survivor Tomato and a plumbago that we'll move elsewhere this winter. The recent rain was helpful in watering in the sulfur and ammonium phosphate that we added prior to planting. I planted romaine, buttercrunch, and Salad Bowl lettuces, arugula, and Oregon Sugar Pod II peas in here, along with a few cilantro and bunching green onion seeds that were left over from a "salsa pack", and topped it all off with a light dusting of mulch.

The irrigation setup for this bed is a combination of 6 inch and 12 inch drip tubing. The 6 inch tubing runs around the perimeter of the bed and the 12 inch tubing is laid out in a grid pattern about a foot apart. The seeds are planted directly under each drip emitter. I planted several seeds in each planting hole because these are all leftover seeds and I'm not sure about the germination percentage.

For design purposes, I usually like to plant flowers around the edges of the raised beds, particularly this one which is right next to a sitting area on the patio. The last two years I planted nasturtiums here, only to see them destroyed by frost. I may try petunias this year, but I'll wait a few weeks before planting them...it's still over 100 degrees on a regular basis here!

Survivor (Phoenix style)

Summer is for my gardening motivation and success as winter is in other climates. Yes, I know it's theoretically possible to both plant and harvest something every month of the year here, but it is not enjoyable this time of year. High temperatures are still well over a hundred, and many days the monsoon adds humidity to the discomfort level. So I don't do a lot, and the garden shows it.

The largest plant in the foreground is a cherry-type tomato that came up as a volunteer, and deserves the title Survivor of the Summer. Although it currently isn't setting fruit, it is much healthier than most of our other edibles and I am hopeful that it will begin to produce again when the temperatures cool down a bit. Most of the other tomato plants I planted last February haven't made it this far.

We are also still harvesting Japanese eggplant and Armenian cucumbers. Unlike me, those plants seem to love the summer heat. The bed in the background has been overtaken by zinnias, which are on their second round this year. (They happily reseed themselves without much effort on my part). The sweet potato vines around the gazebo are going crazy, covering a fair portion of the gazebo floor and rooting themselves in the streambed.

I'm a little worried about our apricot, peach, and nectarine trees, particularly our oldest, largest apricot tree. They have lost most of their leaves, which is not uncommon for them to do this time of year, but I don't see any new leaves coming out on the big apricot tree yet, and that might indicate a larger problem. The leaves look as if they are suffering from salt burn, which is more likely in the summer when we have to water more frequently. Texas root rot is also a concern in our area, and there isn't a cure for that, other than not to plant fruit trees.

We (or rather Mike, who is doing the heavy digging) are currently preparing the raised beds for fall planting. That means digging out as much of the Bermuda grass as possible, working in soil sulfur to help alleviate the high soil alkalinity, adding nitrogen and phosphate, and checking that the drip irrigation system works properly. If you're interested in doing some fall planting of your own, here's a link to the Master Gardener publication, "Ten Steps to a Successful Vegetable Garden".

I'm looking forward to cooler weather when I can once again enjoy myself in the garden.

Things that grow well in the heat (3)

I haven't neglected the garden quite as much as I have this blog, but close. It's still far too hot to enjoy working outside, with highs still over 110 almost daily. This time of year, we also add humidity to the mix. It's definitely not a dry heat....it feels more like a sauna than an oven outdoors.

Most vegetables have long given up any attempt to stay alive, but Armenian cucumbers and eggplants apparently love the heat. I picked these Japanese eggplant from one plant today, and the Armenian cucumber was hiding in an unexpected location, allowing it to grow to giant size before I spotted it. The nice thing about Armenian cucumbers (which are more closely related to melons than traditional cucumbers) is that they still taste good even at this size. They never turn bitter and don't require peeling. Just wash, slice, maybe take the seeds out when they're this big, and enjoy dipping into a favorite veggie dip.

I usually make crockpot eggplant parmigiana with the eggplant. It's not necessary to peel or fry the eggplant; just slice into rounds, put in the crockpot and add a jar of spaghetti sauce. About an hour or so from serving time, top with grated mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. However, since Mike is trying to restrict his sodium intake, I went looking on the internet for recipes that didn't use processed spaghetti sauce or a lot of cheese. I found this recipe for a vegan eggplant stew and decided to use it as a base for tonight's dinner. Instead of canned tomatoes, I'm using ones from our garden than I froze earlier this summer, and I'm going to add some fresh basil (another plant that likes the heat) in addition to the Italian seasoning suggested in the recipe. And since we aren't philosophically vegan, I'll add a little cheese towards the end of its cooking time.

Sage in bloom

This sage is in our front yard, where we have more low-maintenance and desert-adapted plants. The Texas sage is a common landscaping plant here which produces lovely purple flowers when the humidity rises. Unfortunately, in most landscapes it is kept pruned into geometric shapes, so you don't see a display of flowers like this.

This location doesn't follow the "right plant in the right place" rule as it is really too large for for this spot, but I wanted to post a picture of it blooming as it will do when allowed to assume its natural shape and size. 

Not the melon!

I've been waiting for what I thought was a honeydew melon vine to set fruit. Surprise, surprise! It wasn't a melon, but an Armenian cucumber vine. No sign of melons anywhere...now I'm wondering if the vines growing on the trellis are melons instead of cucumbers!

And of course, the never-ending battle with Bermuda grass continues....

Almond harvest

When doing my daily walkabout in the backyard today, I noticed that the almonds are ready to be harvested. This is the first time any have appeared on our tree, which is a self-fertile semi-dwarf All in One cultivar. They look like shriveled dried up peaches, which isn't particularly surprising since they are in the same Prunus family. The outer hulls start splitting when they are ripe, as you can see in this picture. Peel off the splitting hull and you will find something that looks like a peach pit; the almond kernel is inside that. The tree was planted in 2010, so it's still young. It looks like we should get two or three dozen almonds from it.

The label description reads, "Hot summers required to ripen; 500 chilling hours". It must surely have been in its happy place this year as we had an exceptionally cold spell this winter, followed by an inferno of a summer that broke temperature records on several days.I literally fried an egg on a table on the patio the day the official high was 120 and my backyard thermometer read 125.

 Don't believe me? Here's a picture of the egg after about 20 minutes in the midafternoon sun. Gardening is a definite challenge in the summer here!

Winter squash vines

A couple of winter squash vines have escaped their raised bed and are snaking about eight feet across the grass under the apple tree. This is the first time I've tried winter squash, and I planted them in late February when I planted everything else. They've bloomed, but not set any fruit so far.

We finally got some rain from the monsoon activity yesterday. Rain is particularly welcome here because the high mineral content of the water coming through the drip lines can cause salt buildup in the soil, and burn the plants. A good monsoon storm helps wash all that stuff down away from the root zone.

Yesterday was the first day of the fall Master Gardener training class. I completed the class in 2010, so I'm volunteering as a mentor to interns taking the class, and Mike is taking the class as an intern. It's an intensive training, much like a college class in scope, and runs for three hours once a week for seventeen weeks. Each week we have a lecturer on a different topic, chosen from experts in that particular area. It's a very worthwhile experience and I'd recommend it for anyone seriously interested in gardening.

Gardens do not thrive on neglect

We just returned from a week in California leading a group of young people to work on repairs to a couple of aging city church buildings and some houses of low income and/or elderly members of the community. It was nice to sleep in a bed instead of a church floor surrounded by giggly teenagers, but it was not nice to take a stroll around our backyard garden! If a giant asteroid hit the earth and wiped out most life, I don't think the last thing alive would be cockroaches...it would be Bermuda grass. Yikes! I am not looking forward to the task of getting it out of the raised beds.

We have everything on drip irrigation, but this time of year I usually do a daily walkabout and provide supplemental water on an as-needed basis. Other than the Bermuda grass invasion, most things are still alive. I haven't seen any major casualties, other than the tomatoes, but I don't think I can blame their demise on lack of water. Because we took our portable pop-up canopies on the trip to shade people,  the poor tomatoes had none, and they really need it this time of year. There are some yellow squash and Japanese eggplant which grew to a harvestable size while we were gone, and the sweet potato vines are thriving. There are nice long vines on the winter squash, yardlong beans, zipper cream peas, and Armenian cucumbers, but no fruit yet.

One of the churches where our team works has a number of pocket gardens on the property, worked by people who live in a nearby subsidized apartment building populated by refugees from Eastern Europe and Asia. Many of these refugees suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and gardening is therapeutic as well as a source of economical and nutritious food. Some plots are maintained by homeless people. The church has a "Co-Op Cafe" serving the homeless which utilizes some of the produce. Here's a picture of some of these pocket gardens at the edge of the church parking lot. Anywhere there is a patch of dirt, someone will use it to grow food! I'd love to see this idea spread to other communities.

A quail family sets up housekeeping in our garden

One of the unexpected benefits of backyard gardening is that it provides an attractive habitat for wildlife. Once, a hummingbird built its nest about five feet from the ground in an orange tree, and we watched the eggs hatch and two tiny babies grow up and fly away. Many times when I go outside in the evening, a particular one will fly right up to me as if to say hello, and I imagine it is one of those babies I watched grow up.

 Today when I walked outside to pick peppers and tomatoes, I heard high-pitched baby bird sounds followed by an urgent, lower-pitched parental warning. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a mama quail leading her babies, which appeared to be quite young, to safety beneath some asparagus ferns in one of our raised beds. You can see Papa Quail keeping watch in the picture above on some tree stakes that used to hold an orchid tree in place. (The orchid tree was killed to the ground in last winter's frost, but that's another story)

The picture below shows both parents in another part of the yard. They've been diligent in their efforts to distract me from where their babies are hidden, and they're hidden well enough that I haven't been able to get a picture yet. When I walked out to the gazebo to prune back the snail vine which was daring to creep over the block wall into HOA territory, I ran into the entire quail family. I think maybe the parents had taken their babies to the streambed for a drink. Mama Quail quickly hustled her brood into the dense growth at the bottom of the honeysuckle vines, and then both parents started loudly vocalizing in attempts to lead me away from where the babies were hiding. The babies were very quiet, and the parents very determined.

Sometimes I think human beings could take lessons in family living from creatures like these. I like the way Mama and Papa Quail work together to nurture and protect their brood, and the parents seem to put their parenting duties ahead of other priorities, even their own safety. Not to mention the fact that the babies apparently do what their parents tell them to do, or not do....

Crockpot apple butter

At this time of year, I really hate living in Phoenix. It's much too hot for me to enjoy working in the yard. I ventured outdoors long enough this morning to pick enough Ein Shemer apples to try out this apple butter recipe: http://frugalliving.about.com/od/fruitbutters/r/Apple-Butter-Recipe.htm

I was a bit concerned about how it would turn out, because I think the apples were precooked to some extent. I had to cut out a lot of sunburned spots as I was peeling, coring, and chopping, and some were rather mealy in texture. I wound up making a few changes to this recipe, too. After the chopped apples had cooked for a few hours, I pureed them with an immersion blender. I also added some apple cider to the mixture because I thought they were drying out too quickly in the uncovered crockpot. It turned out somewhat chunky, but still quite tasty, and the house smells wonderful!

Survivor- Phoenix style!

Yesterday set a record high in our area, with an official high temperature of 119 in Glendale. One of our backyard thermometers read 123 in the shade at one point in the afternoon, and one placed on a slate patio table in the sun reached 149 degrees. Today is supposed to be even hotter.

So far, our newly planted sweet potato slips have survived. Each slip is planted under a drip emitter and heavily mulched.  The drip comes on every three days for an hour to encourage deep rooting, but I have also been giving them supplemental water twice a day by running a hose sprinkler for 5 minutes at a time.

I left the potato that produced these slips in water, and it produced more shoots! So I will be repeating this process in a different location in a few days.

Apple-picking time

There are a few varieties of apples which have very low chilling requirements and can be grown here. This is an Ein Shemer apple tree, which is an Israeli cultivar The fruit is yellowish green and similar in taste to a Golden Delicious. We've had this tree for about eight years....it's one of the first non-citrus trees we planted that lived to tell the tale. It's a smallish tree, which we prefer because it's easier to harvest the fruit, and because small trees allow us to have many different kinds in our tract-home-size backyard.

I thinned this tree heavily in the spring, but apparently not heavily enough. Since the fruit seems to be ripening earlier than usual this year, we'll take some of the tension off the branches by picking and eating apples! Stay tuned...I may try making apple butter this year!

Sweet potato slips

Inspired by seeing how well ornamental sweet potato vines grow in our hot summers, I decided to try growing edible sweet potatoes this year. As I understand, ornamental and edible sweet potato plants are the same species...just different varieties. The ornamental vines are bred for attractive leaves, and the edible ones for tasty roots. I looked for sweet potato slips several places and was unable to find them, so I eventually decided to try growing my own from a sweet potato I'd gotten at the grocery store. I'd read some warnings that grocery store potatoes might be treated to prevent sprouting, but this one sprouted just fine. I followed these directions.

After the slips sprouted roots, I put them outside in potting soil in this old aquarium on our back patio. I've found the aquarium works better than the plastic mini-greenhouse peat pot kits for starting seeds, because I don't have to worry about leakage and I think it helps keep the humidity up a bit once the cover comes off. We also have a cat that will  eat anything vegetative growing in the house, so I can't keep seedlings inside. This cat once ate a miniature rosebush we'd been given, thorns and all

The slips have gotten to a size now where I really need to plant them in the ground. Unfortunately, we're in the middle of a heat wave and expecting record high temperatures this week. I'm going to try planting them at dusk and then mulch heavily, keep them moist, and hope for the best. And next year I will start this process earlier in the spring!

A little bit of Hawaii in Arizona

Beginning when our children were in preschool, we started taking summer road trips, and by the time they were in high school, we had visited all 48 contiguous U.S. states. We didn't make it to Alaska and Hawaii until they were in college, and I will never forget the fragrances that greeted my nose when we first got off the plane in Maui. During our week there, I took great delight in learning about the flowers that contributed to those fragrances, one of which is plumeria, also known as frangipani.  Plumeria is often used to make leis, and to me, it smells like Hawaii.

We tried bringing back some cuttings, but were unsuccessful in rooting them. Several years later, our local Lowe's started selling small plants, and so far, we've managed to keep them alive. We have four plants in three different colors, and keep them in big pots in an area that receives partial shade during the hottest part of the day. We move the pots into the garage whenever their is danger of frost, which doesn't bother them since they drop their leaves and go dormant in the winter anyway. They start putting out leaves in late spring, followed by clusters of fragrant blossoms like these.

It may smell like Hawaii in this part of our backyard, but the heat tells another story. It's supposed to hit 117 degrees this week...ugh!

Pond plants

As you can see, the small clump of watercress we got from Paul, the Pond Gnome, has been fruitful and multiplied. The pickerel weed he gave us has also put up a spike of blue flowers.

The large bush is a potato bush, which has attractive blue flowers, but is not the right plant for this location. It's a good plant for our area which does well in hot weather, but it's too large and we need to keep pruning it back so that it doesn't block the view of the waterfall. It would be better suited to the area behind the waterfall, where it can grow to its full size and function as an attractive screen for the concrete block wall.

Plants that grow well in the heat (2)

This is gaillardia, or blanket flower, which is in the sunflower family. It reseeds easily and will come up every summer, producing loads of colorful blossoms in shades of maroon and gold. (ASU colors!) Once the petals drop off, puffy round balls remain which are rather attractive by themselves and will eventually become dandelion-like clusters of windblown seeds. It doesn't wilt, even on the hottest days, and will bloom until we get a fairly heavy frost.

I managed to do about five minutes of weeding around the perimeter of this bed today. Bermuda grass also thrives in the heat! I also completed step two of this year's sweet-potato growing experiment, which thankfully is an inside job. I love sweet potatoes, and they supposedly do well in our summer heat.

Plants that can take the heat

There are a few plants that can take our summer heat. Zinnias are one of them, and I can usually get two "crops" before frost sets in by scattering the seeds while deadheading. The green bean originally planted in this bed have been totally eclipsed by the zinnias, but I'm letting the zinnias have their way for now. We added flagstones to this bed for interior access, and I actually waded into this jungle on a bean hunt. The plants are still there, but not surprisingly, beanless at this time. When temperatures get this hot, most vegetables won't set fruit anyway, so we might as well enjoy the flowers. 

And the heat goes on...

Our outside thermometer reads 112 this afternoon, and most plants are showing the stress of our insanely hot summers. One plant that is apparently oblivious to high temperatures is sweet potato vine. I planted two plants in this area along the pond last year, which died back in the winter. A friend told me they wouldn't come back, so I planted another one this spring, The "dead" plants underwent a resurrection of sorts, and now I have three plants.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

We returned from a weekend in cool San Diego to find that the Phoenix summer heat has set in in earnest. 110 degrees, according to our outdoor thermometer. There's not much that can be done in the garden this time of year, other than try to keep things alive.

We're still getting lots of tomatoes from fruit that set before the heat arrived. The new varieties seem to be a definite "go", with larger tomatoes and less evidence of fruit splitting, blossom end rot. Cilantro is dead, but basil is healthy. The zucchini, yellow, and winter squash plants, as well as the melon plants, are still disappointing small for this late in the season. None of the eggplants I attempted to start from seed have survived. but the lone Japanese eggplant planted as a transplant is fruiting prolifically. I'm not too bothered, because I still have eggplant and squash in the freezer from last year's bumper crop. The Armenian cucumber, yardlong beans, and the few zipper cream pea vines that came up look fairly comfortable in their semi-shady location under the lemon tree. Nectarines are beginning to ripen, although the fruits are rather small, and watercress has virtually taken over the streambed between ponds. Zinnias and coreopsis are seemingly unaffected and look great; the marigolds are wilting a bit.

At this time of year, I garden in five-minute intervals. I used the time today to cut down hollyhocks that had ceased to bloom and set the plants aside to dry and become flower mulch. This year we had one deep-red plant that I hope will appear again next year.

Poolside in the garden

I haven't posted a picture of this corner of our yard in a while, so here is one. There are rosebushes along the block wall, and this year we added two new bare-root peach trees that we got from a Valley Permaculture Guild plant sale. We also added trellises for vines on the wall, made from recycled metal pieces of an old gazebo that had begun to deteriorate.

We planted two banana trees in the planter areas behind the pool last year. One died, but the other has come back nicely and appears to be multiplying...there's a baby banana tree next to this one which isn't visible in this photo.

I don't think we will get any key limes this year because of the freeze. The same thing happened a few years ago when we had another hard freeze. Limes are more susceptible to frost damage than other citrus fruits, but surprisingly enough we have a few limes on the Bears lime tree, which is a lot younger than the key lime. Luckily for my grapefruit-loving mother, grapefruit is the least susceptible and our Ruby Red tree wasn't affected at all.

The rosebushes are still blooming, but the nasturtiums and larkspur are gone, to be replaced with marigolds and zinnias. The large marigold directly behind the waterfall is a holdover from last fall which survived the frost. I've collected seeds from it and scattered them along the perimeter of this raised bed, the planters behind the pool, and other places in the yard.

The bushes in the center left edge of the picture are yellow and orange Tecomas ("Yellow bells") Like the banana, they were taken to the ground in last winter's frost, but have rebounded vigorously. The plants in the center right edge of the photo, and in the planter in the foreground, are Little John bottlebrushes, which seem to be quite frost-tolerant.

Flower mulch

Sadly, most of the hollyhocks, larkspur, nasturtiums, and bachelor's button are well past their prime, so I've been removing them from the garden. Since we had good success this year with an "accidental garden" created by composting spent flower stalks in place, I decided to create a few more piles elsewhere in the yard. We bought this small chopper several years ago at Harbor Freight, intending to use it on yard waste so that we could recycle more of it as compost. It's rather finicky...it can't handle wood materials any thicker than finger-width sticks, and green material causes it to jam. It did an admirable job of grinding up hollyhock stalks which, by the way, should not be used in a vegetable garden in a semi-composted state.

My piles of deceased flowers were looking rather messy, so Mike suggested we use the chopper on them. One of the places I think I'd like to see hollyhocks and larkspur next year is in the space between our gazebo and the block wall. We took the chopper directly to an area where I had one of my piles, and fed flower stalks into it, letting it spit out the chopped material directly on the ground. It handled dried larkspur spikes almost as well as the hollyhocks, but had a little trouble with the bushier bachelor's button plants. Now we have a lovely mulch full of seeds that I hope will become flowers that I will write about next spring!

Pond remodel progress

Here is the original (but remodeled) spillway into the streambed. The plants Paul gave us have really taken off, particularly the watercress. We're still working on the second (new) spillway which comes off the gazebo side of the pond.

The tree on the left side is a dwarf nectarine and the one on the right is an Asian pear. At the base of the pear is a plumbago and some invincible Mexican petunias that return like zombies no matter what I do to them. The dead branches in the upper center right belong to a thevetia which was frost damaged this winter. We haven't cut them off yet because (a) it would be a hassle, requiring the use of a ladder on an uneven surface and (b) Mike keeps hoping it will continue to green up.  The marigold in the foreground came from seeds I snagged while deadheading elsewhere and then played Johnny Appleseed in various locations in the yard.

More weeding and a strawberry update

I weeded the second half of this combined bed today. In addition to Bermuda grass, it contains several other troublesomely invasive weeds including mint and nutsedge. I made the mistake of planting mint last summer (you can read about that here, and also see how the bed looked last fall), but I have no idea how the nutsedge managed to sneak in. All three plants reproduce quite prolifically by stolons and runners, and don't even need to resort to the bother of producing flowers and seeds, although the sedge and mint can do that as well. The underground stolons are designed to break off easily when disturbed, which means that when I try to pull them out, some little piece is inevitably left behind. Each little piece will  then regenerate Hydra-like into many more obnoxious plants.

This bed contains small fig and almond trees and strawberry, artichoke, rosemary, Japanese eggplant, and pepper plants. The hollyhocks just appear as if by magic everywhere in the yard, and I leave them alone if they aren't crowding out something else. I think they may have actually helped the strawberry plants by shading them a little. It will be interesting to see if the strawberry plants survive the summer as most gardeners treat them as annuals here and replant each fall. We're still getting a few strawberries each day, most of which do not make it into the house. I ate the three I picked today while I was doing battle with the Bermuda grass.

The horror of Bermuda grass

"The horror of Bermuda grass" was the title of a PowerPoint slide shown in a Phoenix Permaculture Guild class we took a few years ago. I'm not as anti-grass as some people I know. I think it can have a place in an environmentally conscientious landscape; for example, in children's and pet's play areas, which is what this part of our yard was when we first moved here. But it does not have a place in the raised beds in which we are attempting to grow fruits, vegetables, and flowers, and keeping it at bay is horrible- a never-ending, sweaty, itchy, and time-consuming battle.

In an attempt to control its incursion into areas it is not wanted, I do a lot of hand-pulling, usually the day after the beds have been watered. In the summer  we run the drip irrigation tubing for an hour every three days. That's sufficient to moisten the soil to the one-foot level needed for most annuals, including vegetable plants, and unfortunately is also the ideal schedule to promote healthy deep-root growth in lawns. Weeding right after watering makes it easier to pull, and gets up more of the roots, although it's never possible to get it all out. I also plant things fairly thickly, especially around the perimeter where depending on the season, I plant nasturtiums, petunias, sweet alyssum, and/or marigolds. Some gardening sites recommend the use of glyphosphate as the only way to kill it roots and all, but I haven't found that method particularly useful. In general, I prefer to avoid the use of chemicals in places where I am growing things I plan to eat, and besides that, it doesn't work all that well! The few times I tried it, despite my careful attempts to spray only the Bermuda grass, desirable plants died while the grass responded as if it were fertilizer!

This bed is now our largest, created by joining two raised beds together. You can see where the old raised bed ended- the marigolds in the center of the photo formed the border of the old bed. In the back, next to the fence, is an asparagus bed, a small orange tree, and an apricot tree that produced about 20 pounds of fruit this year. We are currently growing tomatoes and green beans in this bed, along with zinnias, marigolds, and some petunias that have so far refused to die. The bare area is the newest part of the bed, but there are dozens of zinnia seedlings coming up, so it won't stay bare for long. The flagstones are for access for harvesting...and for weeding.

The last of the apricots and the first of the tomatoes

I canned about 10 pints of apricot preserves before taking the weekend off from gardening tasks. The birds enjoyed themselves, but I managed to salvage the few remaining today. And now the tomatoes are beginning to ripen! We tried a new varieties this year, with names like "Phoenix", "Solar Fire", and "Summer Set" that sounded like they would tolerate hot weather. I haven't done any taste comparisons yet, but the fruits are larger than we've gotten before, and they seem less susceptible to the blossom-end-rot issues that seem to plague our Early Girl fruits.

Putting up tomatoes is much less labor intensive than making preserves. Because we wind up using all of them within a few months, I just wash them and put them in ziplock bags, and into the freezer they go. When I'm ready to use them in soups, sauces, or salsa, I just thaw them out. The skins will slip right off...much easier than dealing with pots of boiling water!

My new favorite thing to do with the little red and orange cherry tomatoes is to halve them, toss with olive oil and basalmic vinegar, along with chopped basil and any other fresh herbs I'm in the mood to throw in, and refrigerate a few hours before serving.

Plumeria

This is the first time this plumeria has bloomed, and I was delighted to see that it was yellow as we also have the white and pink varieties. We bought them at Lowe's several years ago, and the colors weren't labeled. I love their fragrance...they smell like Hawaii!

Plumeria do surprisingly well here, but we can't grow them in the ground. We keep them in big pots that can be wheeled into the garage whenever there's a frost warning.

Apricot bounty

So far, we've picked about 11 pounds of apricots from our tree, and I estimate there are at least that many more remaining. I made a small batch of apricot preserves following the instructions here, and they turned out pretty good. The only ingredients are apricots, sugar, lemon juice, and water, and the preserves taste like fresh apricots. The preserves have a good spreading consistency even without added pectin, and they aren't too sweet. The recipe filled two pint jars, one which we are enjoying now, and one in the freezer for later. Now I just need to repeat the process about four more times for the remaining apricots....and go pick more of them before the birds get to them!

More listening to flowers

There is a time for everything,

    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

     a time to be born and a time to die,

    a time to plant and a time to uproot,

     a time to kill and a time to heal,

    a time to tear down and a time to build,

    a time to weep and a time to laugh,

    a time to mourn and a time to dance,

     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

     a time to search and a time to give up,

    a time to keep and a time to throw away,

    a time to tear and a time to mend,

    a time to be silent and a time to speak,

     a time to love and a time to hate,

    a time for war and a time for peace.

I have a love/hate relationship with social media. Most of the time I really enjoy Facebook; it allows me to keep up with friends old and new in ways that were never possible in the past. Among my Facebook friends, I have classmates I haven't seen since elementary school, friends (and a few former enemies) from high school, people I knew in college and seminary, former coworkers and church members, long-lost relatives, and many of my former students. It's usually fun to celebrate joys and sorrows with people I've known over the years; it's fun to see where life has led and is leading them; and it's interesting to be updated on their thoughts and what is important to them.

But some of the time, I'm saddened and bothered by what I read. People change, and grow apart, and sometimes you never really knew someone you thought you knew. I know some things about some of my Facebook friends that I wish I didn't know. (To be fair, some of them probably think the same about me!) When I see posts that are illogical,  intolerant, deliberately inflammatory, and/or designed to invoke fear and loathing of "the other", that's something I wish I didn't know about the person posting it. So, as I often do, I decided to walk away from the computer and work in our garden.

I started out deadheading coreopsis. Coreopsis is a large plant that thrives in our heat, and each plant has dozens of vibrantly yellow flowers on long stalks. Even after the flowers have faded and gone to seed, they're not unattractive, but I cut them off in order to extend the blooming period. I also throw the cutoff blossoms in places where I'd like for new plants to come up next spring. Since I hadn't deadheaded for several days, there was a lot of it to do, and as I cut back the stalks to a leafy part of the stem, I wondered if it would be a good idea to deadhead my Facebook friends list. There are people who I once knew who no longer bring joy to my life, and perhaps it is time to remove them.

Then I was surprised to see this yellow water lily. Possibly because of the aggressive way we went after the cattails that had taken over the pond, we haven't seen nearly as many blooms this year. Part of the reason we tried to remove the cattails was that the water lilies were being crowded out. However, since the cattail roots and the waterlily roots were intertwined, it was impossible to remove the cattails without disturbing the waterlily rhizomes. We've seen a few white blooms, but no pink, magenta, or yellow ones, and I wondered if those varieties were still alive. In the case of the waterlilies, the correct gardening technique as just to "let things lie".

Deadhead or let it be? That's always the question. There is a time for all things.