Moving Day

We took advantage of the recent rain to move a blackberry out of one of the raised beds to a less crowded location along our back fence. (See item #8 here) Here it is in its new home between an orange tree and a grapevine, which isn't visible in this picture because it is dormant. It should have more to room to spread here, I'll be able to pick the asparagus in the other bed without being attacked by blackberries, and we should be able to pick blackberries here without stomping on asparagus or being maimed by rose thorns.

Lettuce alone (not)

The frost cloth worked fairly well to protect lettuce and spinach seedlings. You can see some of the drip tubing grid in this picture. Because the seeds were so small, I sprinkled them along each drip line rather than trying to put two or three seeds at each drip emitter. I thought the ones that weren't in close proximity to the drips wouldn't germinate. I was wrong, which means at some point I should do some thinning here.

My fall planting of lettuce and spinach in another location didn't do so well. I planted it in an area where I had done a spring planting of pepper transplants. The peppers had struggled all summer and I thought I'd leave them there a while longer, so that their scrawny skeletons would give a bit of shade to the germinating seeds. The good news is that the peppers really took off after it cooled off, and turned into nice bushy plants with many peppers. The bad news is that they completely crowded out the lettuce and spinach seedlings, so I've had to actually buy lettuce for salads this winter.

We got a little bit of rain today, which was nice. That's something we don't get very often here.

January in the rose garden

Doesn't look so good, does it? In the Phoenix area, January is the time to give roses a severe pruning, meaning removing all foliage and blossoms and cutting them back by at least half. Here's a link to suggested actions from one of our local rose societies. We cut them back as described in the article and fertilize them, but I don't use pesticides as a preventative as the article suggests. (As a general rule, we avoid using chemical pesticides anywhere in our garden unless absolutely necessary, and never in areas where we grow things we plan to eat.) Usually we add blood meal, bone meal, and Epsom salts to the root zone, but I have used all-purpose (N, K, P) granular fertilizer at times. They look terrible now, but here's how they looked last spring.

The trellises on the block wall are our latest project. I think block walls are unattractive, even when they have roses in front of them. So we hope to convert this one into a green wall by planting vines that will cover the area. The trellises are recycled from a pop-up gazebo we had for several years which started to disintegrate. We salvaged the undamaged metal by cutting off the damaged areas and mounted each section to the wall. Based on the successes and failures of the vines we've tried in other areas, we'll probably plant either honeysuckle or Carolina jessamine. The honeysuckle is faster growing, but the blossoms on the Carolina jessamine are larger. Both provide a lovely fragrance when in bloom.

Here's a picture of the trellis I mentioned in earlier posts. Currently we are growing snow peas on it. For some reason, the pea vines fell to the ground during the cold snap, and it's hard to retrain them back up it without breaking the vines. They're beginning to produce peas, though. There were nasturtiums bordering the raised bed, but the frost wiped most of them out.  We are using the center of the "tent" as a composting area for kitchen waste and leaves.

This bed did very well the first year we started it as an experiment with "lasagna gardening". We put down layers of newspaper, alfalfa, hay, and composted mulch, sprinkling bone meal and blood meal on each layer, and planted seedlings we'd started in peat pots. (Seeds won't work so well with this kind of garden as you can't control the planting depth.) It didn't do so well last year...I had no luck with the yard long beans I attempted to grow in the summer.

We took one class from the Phoenix Permaculture Guild in which the instructor suggested using trees as a part of a food garden design, because most vegetables can benefit from some shade here in our ridiculously hot summers. However, I've been to classes since then where the instructors disagree with that idea, and since the bed hasn't done so well lately, we removed a couple of limbs from the lemon tree in an attempt to give the area more light.

Surveying the damage

It's a balmy 71 degrees outside today, and the freeze warning is over, so we took down the spotlights and frost cloth today. I was pleased to see that the lettuce and spinach seedlings (foreground bed) and strawberries (middle bed) survived. The hibiscus and tecoma (along the fence in the background) have turned crispy and brown, as well as thevetia and bougainvillea elsewhere in the yard. Most of the nasturtiums were destroyed, along with a Sweet 100 tomato that came up as a volunteer. Most of the citrus trees look pretty good, with only a few areas of damaged leaves visible, but we won't know the extent of the damage until later. The last time we had a freeze like this, the lemon and Key lime trees didn't produce any fruit the following season, and a tangerine was taken over by its sour orange rootstock. This time we wrapped the bases of our three youngest citrus trees in blankets, covered the smallest one entirely in frost cloth, and aimed spotlights at the graft union areas on their trunks.

The caulifower plants show no signs of being affected by the cold weather, and one is beginning to head. Although the broccoli plants also appear to be undamaged, they did not produce a second growth of florets from side shoots after the main heads were removed. The kale and Swiss chard were only mildly affected (but the Swiss chard was in a bed where we put a spotlight in order to aim it at a tangerine tree). The banana plant is mush, but it should come back from the ground, and I hope the same happens with the calla lilies. Surprisingly, the vining snow peas seem to have fallen down from their trellis. I think that possibly they were pulled down because they had some tendrils wrapped around nasturtiums which collapsed.

We're still squeezing lemons. I did manage to give away quite a few lemons, oranges, and grapefruit, though.

Chop, chop

 It's warming up a little bit. The low last night was 28, but it is getting up into the high sixties during the day. Gardeners are advised not to prune frost damaged plants until danger of frost has passed and/or new growth has appeared, but we've been doing it anyway in certain situations. We're also somewhat constrained by the fact that once-a-year open trash pickup is this week in our area, and we want to take advantage of that as much as possible.

There are four bougainvillea plants on the narrow side part of our yard that we decided to take out. They've been there about ten years and are beautiful, thriving plants when they are blooming, but they are not in a good place. There are only about ten feet between the house and the block perimeter wall, and they take up so much space that it's hard to walk through the area from the side gate to the back yard without being attacked by vicious thorns. When I originally planted them, my idea was to have an attractive view from the bedroom windows, something more esthetically pleasing than a bare concrete block wall. Although they perform admirably in that function, they need to go. In their place, we're going to plant grapes and train the vines along the wall.

We also took down several limbs from the lemon tree, which is overhanging the trellis in one of the vegetable beds and creating too much shade for the peas and beans I've tried to grow there. The tree is quite large and produces hundreds of lemons, far too many for us to use. I give bags of them away and we also squeeze and freeze the juice for making lemonade.

Freeze update

Things are looking pretty sad right now as it has dropped down into the mid-twenties the last couple of nights. In addition to frost cloth, we are trying spotlights on the two most vulnerable citrus trees, a young tangerine and a Bears lime. Thevetia, tecoma, bougainvillea, and hibiscus leaves have turned brown and crispy, the nasturtiums and hollyhocks are limp, and even the Swiss chard and snow peas are suffering. We won't know the full extent of the damage for several weeks.

Brr!

Could be interesting here over the weekend as a hard freeze lasting several days is predicted. We'll move the plumeria into the garage again, but I'm not going to bother trying to save the tomatoes. I did pick about two quarts of green tomatoes and about a dozen peppers. Those plants will definitely be gone by this time next week, and probably the nasturtiums and petunias as well. If this forecast proves accurate, I expect the bougainvillea, tecoma, thevetia, lantana and hibiscus will be killed to the ground and I'll need to think seriously about harvesting and juicing citrus. On the bright side, I won't have to worry about cutting back the snail and lilac vines that are again threatening to encroach on our HOA no-man's land- nature will take care of that job for me. I just wish the cold weather would do to the weeds what it is going to do to desirable plants!

This area of the Valley definitely gets cooler than it did in our previous two locations. We never noticed frost damage on the landscape plants there.

Boring but necessary tasks

Today's gardening efforts were primarily devoted to getting weeds out of the raised bed containing rose bushes and pruning the thevetia hedge which separates the pool area of the yard from the garden area. Not very exciting, but necessary. It's not really the right time to prune, but the hedge had gotten so tall that it was blocking light and growth from the lime and tangerine trees we planted a few years ago. The tangerine tree is about four feet high, the lime tree about six feet high, and the thevetias were about 10 feet high.

Give peas a chance

Many people have commented on the amount of work Arizona Backyard Eden must entail, and to some respect that is true. For us, it's an enjoyable hobby- work yes, but pleasant work. However, I think people underestimate the amount that can be accomplished in small increments of time, over time, and that's something I'll try to demonstrate in future posts.

In accordance with my "15 minutes a day" theme for this year, today I went out and picked snow peas. Some of the ones on the bush varieties were really past their prime as the hulls were yellowing, but they still needed to be picked to encourage more blooming. These plants are the vining type, and were planted at approximately the same time as the bush variety, but have been slower to produce. They're in the area of the last year's hollyhock jungle, and probably don't get sufficient sun this time of the year. (Although lack of sunlight apparently has no effect on hollyhock growth)

Mike built the tent-shaped trellis, which is approximately 8 feet high, after the tomato cages we'd used for our first pea planting proved inadequate. It hasn't really gotten a good workout yet. The first crop I planted there was pole beans, which never produced a single bean in spite of prolific vegetative growth. I then tried snow peas in a fall planting, which were choked out by the invasion of the hollyhocks. This year's crop seems to be doing better, although I've had to reseed areas twice where the seeds did not germinate. We ran two drip lines with 6-inch spacing for the emitters down each side of the tent, and planted two pea seeds at each emitter. I'm tossing vegetable waste and other compost materials in the center of the tent...but no hollyhock residue this time!

New Year's Resolutions

I think I read somewhere that most New Year's resolutions have to do with (a) losing weight (b) exercising more (c) giving up unhealthful habits. Most people find that they are spectacularly unsuccessful in keeping them beyond a short period of time. So instead of making resolutions for our Arizona Backyard Eden, I'll submit a few observations about what went wrong and what went right this year.

1. Attempting to spend at least 15 minutes a day doing something outside...even if it is making a circuit of the yard- good idea. Even if it is insanely hot, I usually find that I will pull a few weeds or notice a problem with the drip irrigation. I've been a fan of the Flylady approach for inside-the-house tasks for several years, and she really is correct in saying "you can do anything for 15 minutes" and that "15 minutes a day over time will make a difference". It works in the garden as well as it does in the house.

2. Mulching with semi-composted ground-up hollyhock stalks- bad idea. Two years later, I'm still pulling up baby hollyhock plants from what is supposed to be a vegetable bed.

3. Following master gardener mentors Pam Perry's advice to pull vegetable and flower plants up when they are past their prime and "just let them die"...good idea. I've gotten more edible yield this year by following this suggestion. Tomato plants rarely "come back" after the hot weather, but I got a nice crop of bush beans in the same space after I yanked the struggling tomatoes out. Oh, and though you may have read that some annual plants can be perennials in this area, you won't get a second crop of broccoli from the same plants.

4. Fall planting of tomatoes- less than successful two years in a row. In our area, you're supposed to be able to plant tomatoes in late summer, provide shade through the hot months, and pick tomatoes in late fall.  The first time I tried this idea, the plants were loaded with dozens of beautiful green tomatoes just in time to be hit by unseasonably cold weather in December. Green tomatoes will ripen on the kitchen counter, but they do not taste as good as the ones ripened on the vine. This year we put a couple of plants in large pots and wheeled them into the garage when frost was predicted. The plants lived...barely....but green tomatoes take forever to ripen in the short days of winter.

5. Revamped drip irrigation system- so far, good idea. It is less prone to clogging than microsprayers and waters the intended area more evenly.

6. Planting cattails in the upper pond...bad idea. They have escaped their intended confinement to the perimeter shelf and are crowding out the water lilies, as well as blocking the view of the waterfall. And they are very difficult to remove from the center of the pond, which is about three feet deep.

7. Planting sweet potato vine around the lower pond next to the gazebo...good idea. I planted two and they spread prolifically in spite of the summer heat, through the fall, and well into the winter. It was only today I noticed any signs of frost damage. They are easy to propagate, too.

8. Planting blackberry vine, roses, and asparagus in the same bed...not a good idea. It was nice the first season or two, but now the plants have grown to be too much for the area.In all fairness, I hadn't taken the Master Gardener class when we started on this adventure, and wasn't aware of the mantra "Right plant in the right place". We're going to attempt to transplant the blackberry plant to a more appropriate location where its spreading habits will not be such a thorny issue.

One of the nice things about gardening is that it doesn't lend itself well to New Year's resolutions. It's an organic, ongoing process. Trying new things and seeing what works and what doesn't, planning and dreaming and making improvements...that goes on all year long!