Apricots

At least we should get about a dozen apricots from this Katy apricot tree, which we put in a few years ago when we added the raised bed in front of the pond. So far this one seems healthy.

RIP apricot tree

Unfortunately. the apricot tree never came back so Mike took it out. Sad....I liked that tree.

The only fruit trees that seem to survive very long in our yard are citrus trees. The lemon, orange, and grapefrut trees that were among the first things we planted in 2002 are large, healthy, productive trees. We've only lost one citrus tree since we've been here, a tangerine that was overwhelmed by its sour orange rootstock following a bad freeze, and it didn't really die...we just decided to take it out when we realized it was no longer producing edible fruit. I've lost count of how many stone fruit trees we've replaced over the years, but we like them so we keep replacing them, hoping to enjoy their fruit for a few years at least.

I'm not sure why this one suddenly lost all its leaves early last September, but I knew it was a bad sign. We weren't digging around this pond disturbing its root system, which is what I blame for the loss of a couple of other trees. I've considered the possibility that we may have Texas root rot fungus in the soil here, but there's no way to no that for sure without someone who knows what they are looking for examining the roots under a microscope. I hope not, because virtually all dicots are vulnerable to it, and we want fruit trees, not palm trees, in our garden. So, we'll try to address possible drainage concerns and plant another Prunus species here, hoping it lasts at least as long as this one did.

Cilantro by any other name

Cilantro is the name given to the leaves of this herb, while its seeds are called coriander.'ve tried growing cilantro from both transplants and seeds. It works better when grown from seed. Last year I attempted to extend the growing season by pinching it off before it bloomed, but this year I've decided to let it go to seed. I think the flowers are rather attractive, and they also attract bees and other beneficial pollinators.

If you're interested in growing cilantro and/or coriander, here are a couple of informative links:
http://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/growing-cilantro.html
http://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/growing-coriander.html

Giant hollyhock

We had to get a sturdier stake for this pink hollyhock, which is about 10 feet tall.

That which survives

We lost one of the grapevines on this arbor hiding the pool equipment, as well as the miniature rosebush that was in the center. But the Mexican primrose, which I did not plant here, is going strong. I decided to leave it until its blossoming period ends and/or it gets attacked by weevils. It's an attractive plant, if only it weren't so invasive and susceptible.

Artichoke plant

 I've never tried growing artichokes before, and thought it might be fun to try. This plant is about a year old, and I think it's an attractive addition to our outdoor decor, even if it never produces anything edible. This morning I noticed an artichoke bud beginning to form in its center, so stay tuned!

Morning has broken

Morning has broken, like the first morning. 

Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird. 

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning, 

Praise for them springing fresh from the Word. 

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlight from heaven. 

Like the first dewfall, on the first grass. 

Praise for the sweetnes of the wet garden, 

Sprung in completeness where His feet pass. 

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning. 

Born of the one light Eden saw play. 

Praise with elation, praise every morning; 

God's recreation of the new day. 

No further words are necessary.

Roses in bloom

As predicted, the roses are blooming early this year. I think these are "Queen Elizabeth" tea roses. Of the vines I planted on the block wall last year, only the snail vine and Lady Bank's rose survived, but the snail vine now covers several of the trellises. And the nasturtiums, which reseeded themselves from last year, are carpeting the ground beneath the roses and spilling over the side of the raised bed.

A friend very helpfully brought me a few bags of pine straw she raked up on her property in Flagstaff, and I used it to mulch the roses after I cut them back in January. Not only will this help to cut down on weed germination, conserve water, and cool the root zone, it should help acidify the soil a little as it breaks down.

Tomatoes!

One of our February tomato transplants has set fruit , and there are lots of blossoms on the other two plants in this bed. I think this is an "Early Girl" but the identifying stake has gone missing.

Exit nectarine, enter peach

Mike dug out the stump of the deceased nectarine tree today, and we replaced it with a Babcock white peach, which fruits a little later in the season than Desert Gold. I tried to salvage the snapdragons, marigolds, and purple heart that had been growing around its base, and threw in some more marigold and nasturtium seeds for good measure before mulching.

He's dead, Jim.

Stone fruit trees are the redshirts of the desert garden, and it's a challenge to grow them here.. Peach trees only live 8-10 years, and nectarines usually lead even shorter lives. This dwarf nectarine and Desert Gold peach are probably that old, and have also undergone considerable stress during pond renovations to this area. I've concluded the nectarine is dead, and we'll replace it this spring, probably with a younger Desert Gold peach. The old one is showing definite signs of weakening as it has lost several branches and is leafing out poorly.

I'm also concerned about our oldest apricot tree, the one that yielded so many jars of apricot preserves last summer. It has yet to flower or leaf out, while a younger apricot tree is already setting fruit. The twigs are still supple and the wood is green, so we haven't entirely given up hope for its survival, although I'm not optimistic at this point.

It's always a little depressing when things die, especially trees I have known for many years. As I dig up Bermuda grass which has no right to live in Mike's strawberry patch, I feel a bit like Jonah after his gourd vine shriveled up today. A tree is just a tree, and yet...

If you're interested in trying to grow stone fruits in the low desert, here are are links to a couple of resources:

Master Gardener Citrus and Deciduous Fruit Tree publication
Greg Peterson article on fruit trees

The morning after

Subtract pea vines and add yellow squash and white eggplant transplants, along with a sprinkling of bloodmeal and a bag of mulch.

I dug up the yellow squash plant from a mound elsewhere in the yard where too many seeds came up. I haven't tried white eggplant before, but when I saw the plants at Home Depot, I thought I'd give it a try this year. Last year's Japanese eggplant is still alive, but the Black Beauty plant didn't make it.

All good things...

I've been away from our garden for a week, visiting my mother in Alabama. She's probably where I got the gardening bug, although gardening is quite different in Alabama. When I returned I decided it was time to take out the snap peas. Their best days are gone: I don't see any new pea pods and very few blossoms, and if I wait too long it will be too hot to plant something new in their spot.

The tall plant in the back of this bed is cilantro, which flowered while I was gone and not pinching it back every day. I think I'll leave it like this, as I understand cilantro is good for bees, along with a number of other plants I have.

After I harvest all the peas from the vines I pull up, I'm going to chop up the vines and use them for mulch in another part of the garden. Perhaps some of the dried peas I leave on the vine will surprise me by coming up nest spring.

Mid-March pool garden overview

The nasturtiums in this photo reseeded themselves, and the roses are beginning to bloom. Last year the roses didn't bloom until Easter. The queen palms are looking better than they ever have, I assume because I started fertilizing instead of ignoring them. A kumquat tree we had planted behind the original waterfall died, and I replaced it with a second pygmy date palm.

Broccoli sidecars

These late-planted broccoli plants produced disappointingly small main heads. I cut them off, and I think I will harvest more broccoli from the side shoots than the main stalk.

This picture also shows the surviving romaine lettuce transplants. Something caused the other plants to wilt overnight and die, but these seem healthy.

Iris in bloom

The iris we got from Paul the Pond Gnome last year has been fruitful and multiplied. Instead of trying to grow it in baskets on the pond shelf, we piled rocks on the shelf to hold the plants down. Clearly, they prefer this setup because there are now dozens of iris spikes where there once were a couple of plants. I've already divided them once and need to do so again. That is a fairly messy and muddy procedure as it involves contorting myself into awkward positions in order to saw through the thick underwater rhizomes. Also, the plants don't like having their comfortable growing spaces disturbed, and react accordingly by not looking so nice for a while. I think I'll wait until later to this...maybe a lot later.

The red plant in the background is Little John bottlebrush. We planted three small plants when we first began our gardening adventures, and they have grown and spread. This is a great plant for our area...not too frost sensitive or messy, long blooming period, not too thirsty, and hummingbirds love it.

Onions and potatoes

We're trying onions and potatoes for the first time this year, in the large bed under the lemon tree. These are red onions and potatoes. Yellow onions and white potatoes are relatively inexpensive in the grocery store, but the red varieties are more expensive (and taste better, I think!)

I also planted some onions for the set in a large pot. I think the package came with about 50 onions, and I found out last year they won't "keep" for until next year, so I planted them all.

Orange blossoms

I love the sweet smell of citrus blossoms this time of year! We're still picking oranges, grapefruit, and lemons while enjoying the fragrance of the flowers that will become next year's tasty fruit.

Two common misconceptions about citrus:

1. They don't cause allergies. People assume that they do, because allergies begin to flare when citrus is in the air, but it's not the citrus that is to blame. Generally, allergies are caused by wind-born pollens, and there are lots of those spreading their allergic cheer this time of year. The pollen in citrus and other bee-pollinated flowers is too large and heavy to float around in the air where it can be inhaled and cause trouble.

2. It's not necessary to pick the old fruit in order for new fruit to set. You can leave the fruit on the tree as long as it tastes good, and it won't interfere with new fruit formation.

First hollyhock blossoms

I don't plant hollyhocks: they mysteriously arise all over the yard. This one is so tall we had to stake it so it wouldn't block the pathway to the gazebo.

The never-ending story

Our adventures in gardening are a never-ending story of doing and redoing, of trying things and fixing mistakes. Case in point: this sitting area. It's in a low area of the yard, and there are drip irrigation lines going to the trees on either side of and behind it. When the lines come on, water tends to collect on the paver bricks beneath the swing. It's more an aesthetic nuisance than gardening problem, as the water will eventually seep beneath the stones where the tree roots can take advantage of it, but Mike is redoing the brick area to raise the pavers a few inches.

This is also the site of my impatient overplanting of honeysuckle vine because the climbing roses weren't growing fast enough. Earlier this spring I dug the honeysuckle out and moved it to another location, which the roses seem to appreciate.

Pond #2, before-and-after

Mike built this pond, our second, in 2004, by digging out a raised bed off our back patio. Originally we had Carolina jessamine along this fence, but as the thevetias on either side of the pond grew, it became too shady for them to survive, so I planted creeping fig in its place.

For comparison, here's how the back patio area looked in 2002 and 2003.

2002 back patio area. I thought we would never get rid of all those rocks!

2003 back patio area. Our first pond was a prefabricated plastic shell.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something that needs weeding

Well, maybe not exactly borrowed, but my friend Lisa gave me two plants from a pony pack of a kind of squash that's new to me, a pattypan variety that look like little flying saucers. I found them a home in an unplanted spot of this raised bed.

Behind the newly planted squash plants is an artichoke I planted last year, and a Japanese eggplant that made it through the winter and is showing evidence of its resurrection by its vigorous new growth. And unfortunately, there is also a lot of Bermuda grass and mint that needs to be removed!

The first rose of spring

I think the roses are going to bloom earlier than usual this year. I noticed this one already open, another bud about to unfurl on the same bush, and many buds on the other bushes.

High-density fruit tree planting

Our latest experiment is in high-density fruit tree planting, as popularized by Dave Wilson. These are Minnie Lee and Lee Royal cherries, which have just now started appearing in nurseries, although they've been available through Phoenix Permaculture Guild for several years. They have a chilling requirement of only 200-300 hours, much less that most cherries. I figured that even if they didn't set fruit, their flowers would be attractive. We purchased ours at Summer Winds and planted them about two feet apart, slightly angled away from each other, in this small bed at the side of our upper pond. Previously, we had a nectarine in this spot, but it died last year, probably because it was crowded out by the overgrown thevetia I removed last week.

Gardening is like a box of chocolates

Gardening is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're going to get.

What is all this? I don't know yet. When seeds first come up, they all look pretty much alike. All seed plants produce either one (monocots, including corn and other grasslike plants) or two (dicots, including most other vegetables and flowers) embryonic leaves. It's not until the plant's first true leaves appear that you can begin to guess what the plant is, and that might be several days or even a couple of weeks.

When the true leaves appear, I'll be able to distinguish the smooth oval leaves of zinnias from the feathery leaves of larkspur. Telling a marigold from a tomato seeding, or a squash from a melon seedling, might take a little longer.

Knowing what was in this bed last year, I'm guessing that a fair number of these seedlings will turn out to be zinnias which I'll need to thin aggressively. There's some larkspur in this mix, too, and there are likely to be tomatoes considering how many wound up composting where they fell. And somewhere in there is the red okra I planted a couple of weeks ago.

Part of the fun for me is seeing what I wind up getting, and then trying to incorporate it into an attractive whole.

Thinning, weeding, and planting: a Lenten meditation

Our Desert Gold peach tree has set fruit, not so much this year as some years, but it still needs to be thinned in order to yield tasty, reasonably sized fruit. As I've been working on that today, I also notice that some of the branches have died, so I will also do some pruning to remove the deadwood.

The recent rain has caused weeds to grow along with the vegetables and fruits in our garden. This time of year it is a daily battle to keep them under control. They seem to sprout up and grow a foot high overnight, and I try to get them out before they become fruitful and multiply. At least the moist soil makes them easier to pull out.

We planted two more fruit trees yesterday, Minnie Lee and Royal Lee cherries. Cherries are one thing that historically haven't been possible to grow here, because they require more chilling hours than we usually get. These are new cultivars that have only recently been appearing in nurseries, and they supposedly only require 200-300 chilling hours, which is about what we get. You need both varieties for cross-pollination; they aren't self-fruitful. We're also using them to experiment with a new growing method, high-density planting, in which you plant two similar trees in the same planting hole.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent on the Christian calendar. I didn't grow up in a liturgical church, so my take on this season is probably a little different. I don't think so much of "what should I give up for Lent?" as I think of thinning, weeding, and planting.

 Are there things in my life that need to be thinned? Many things that are desirable and good are best enjoyed in moderation. Trying to do too many good things at once may result in none of the things being done well, or even burnout.

Are there things in my life that need to be weeded? There are some things that don't belong in the garden of my life, and they deprive the things I want to see growing of water, nutrients, and sunshine. Ignore them too long, and they will spread and become more difficult to remove.

Are there things in my life that I want to plant? I've always found Lent a pretty good time to try out a new spiritual practice. If I try something and find that it brings me closer to God, then I try to make it a permanent part of my life. If not, I don't feel the need to continue it for an arbitrary period of time. Sometimes my gardening experiments don't work so well, either.

March overview and a look back

Most of the fruit trees have begun budding and blooming, as have the hollyhocks, larkspur, and bachelor's button that have appeared in various places after reseeding themselves. It's always fun to go out and see the garden surprise of the day- what has come up and where, what's budding, what's blooming or fruiting. (although sadly, sometimes the surprise is what has died!)

Day to day changes in anything are often so subtle that we don't realize change is taking place. Here's a photo looking toward the same corner of the yard, taken in 2002 when we began this adventure.

.A lot has changed since 2002, and not just in our backyard garden. Some of the changes have been good and some bad and some I can't tell yet. I think it's best to think of change like a garden- something one is actively involved in shaping. There are things I can't control, like our hot, dry climate and our alkaline, poorly draining soil, but there's plenty of work for me to do dealing with the things I can control. I also try to remember that change is not usually an instantaneous event, but something that happens gradually over time.

A disappointment of broccoli

I'm disappointed in the results of the second planting of broccoli. We set these transplants out in January, and the small heads are already beginning to flower. It seems to do much better when planted in the fall and allowed to grow slowly through the winter. There just isn't enough leafy growth to support big heads of broccoli in these plants, and I assume the flowering is a function of day length and temperature.

The romaine lettuce transplants I set out at the same time have not done so well either. I bought transplants because of all the salad greens I planted in the fall, only arugula came up. About half the transplants have succumbed suddenly to an unknown problem. One day they appear healthy; the next morning they are wilted and limp.

Almond blossom time

There are lots of blossoms on the almond tree now, but I'm not sure if it will produce any almonds. The mild winter that spared the hibiscus and other frost-sensitive plants from frost damage this year probably didn't provide enough chilling hours for it to set fruit.

Oh yes, please let the rain come down

We're getting some much needed rain here today. The last time we had rain was before Christmas.