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.
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