Monsoon plantings

I haven't posted for a while because in general I consider summer gardening in Arizona to be roughly equivalent to winter gardening in more temperate locations: the weather is not conducive to growing much of anything, and it's unpleasant to be outside for long. However, although it still regularly tops 100 degrees in September, the month marks the beginning of fall planting season.

We actually have three planting seasons here: spring, monsoon, and fall. I planted melons, beans, squash, and okra in midsummer. The beans never came up and the squash is struggling, but the melons and okra are doing very well. The basil that I planted this spring, along with some volunteers I didn't plant, is thriving. I only planted one Japanese eggplant this year because I still have eggplant from last year's bumper crop in the freezer, and I have several volunteer Black Beauty plants as well. They haven't produced much yet, but I expect them to take off later this month.

I actually began my fall planting about a week ago with a row of bush beans, and saw the first plant emerge from the soil today. I'll begin planting peas soon. My plan this year for the peas and beans is to space out the plantings a week or so apart. That works well to space out the harvests, and is also easier on me because it's still very hot, and I don't tolerate heat very well. About fifteen minutes at a time in the summer is about all I can handle!

Here's a link to the vegetable planting calendar for the low desert, and here's a link to a basil pesto recipe I made in our Vitamix. I used pecans instead of pine nuts, and it turned out pretty tasty.

Honeydew melon

Bush beans- planted about a week ago

Basil

Armenian cucumber (really a melon, but tastes like cucumber)

Red okra

A disappointment of sweet potatoes

The rain we've had for the last few days means cooler temperatures and easier-to-dig garden beds, so I decided today would be a good day to dig up the bed in front of the upper pond. I didn't plant sweet potatoes here, but apparently we overlooked enough tubules for them to come up quite prolifically all on their own. The whole bed was full of luxuriant green vines, which spilled out and covered most of the walkway between the bed and the gazebo. I was looking forward to an equally abundant harvest of tasty sweet potatoes, but was surprised and disappointed to find only a few of edible size.

We'll plant spinach in this area in a few days. I don't usually have much success with it germinating when I try sow the seeds directly in the ground, so I started them in peat pots indoors a week ago. About half of them have sprouted, but they aren't big enough to brave the outdoors yet.

In other news, the article about our backyard is in the November issue of Phoenix Home and Garden. The new garden editor did a wonderful job of writing a very nice article on short notice, the photographs are lovely, and those who've seen it have been very complimentary. However it wasn't quite what I expected based on my conversations with the previous garden editor, who came out to our house several times over a period of three years, and planned to do a "garden of Eden" overview theme. The published article was more about our ponds than the system of raised beds and pathways, which we think is the most unique feature of our backyard.The pictures of our pond and streambed were very nice, though....they don't look nearly as good now!

A time for every thing

Now that the photographer has come and gone, we're enjoying this (probably the last for a while) cool spell by working on some garden projects that we've been putting off. I also find my garden time more relaxing since I don't feel the need to keep it "company ready" at all times. Here are a few overview photos taken from different angles.

We've wondered if the photographer came out at exactly the optimum time. The roses were past their peak and fading fast, and the hollyhocks and coreopsis weren't blooming yet, although I think he got some nice pictures of larkpur, nasturtiums, and Mexican petunias in bloom. The vegetables have grown quite a bit, and I picked the first squash and green beans yesterday, along with the last of the broccoli and asparagus.

 I've also noticed this week, that while I thought of several ideas for blog posts about the thoughts that came to me while I was gardening, those posts never came to be. I'd think of an idea and tell myself I'd do it later, when I finished whatever gardening task I was doing when I thought of it. Then I'd find something else to do and promptly forget about it!

Ideas, like gardens and much else in life, are fleeting things, and sometimes it's best to act on them right away. However, I think there's something to be said for delayed gratification as well. "Seize the day", if acted on continuously, becomes "Look, a squirrel!" and nothing gets done. There needs to be a balance.

Although the photographer missed prime time for some things, I think he found plenty of things worth photographing. The nature of a garden, like that of the human mind, is growth and change. Like life, not everything in my garden is beautiful at the same time, and there is no such thing as a perfect moment. Roses give way to larkspur and larkspur gives way to coreopsis. Lettuce and peas will be replaced by squash, tomatoes, and beans, and those will in turn give way to eggplant, peppers, and melon. So it is with ideas, and with life in general.

"To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven."

"He has made all things beautiful in his time."

Is it spring yet?

Panorama taken on the first day of spring

We've been working to get the backyard ready for my retiree lunch this weekend, and a possible Phoenix Home and Garden photo shoot, date TBD. It's an enjoyable time of the year to work outside as we find new surprises every day..

Grape arbor and "Orange Bells" Tecoma

"Queen Elizabeth" roses and nasturtiums

Mexican primrose, rosemary, and mint

Baby squash!

Water lily and iris

Roses and larkspur buds

Roses and orange blossoms (I forgot to prune this bush!)

Tomatoes!

Plant a radish, get a radish?

I corresponded this week with Cathy Cromwell, who interviewed us last spring for a possible article in Phoenix Home and Garden magazine, about the timing for a photo shoot of our Arizona Backyard Eden. I'm guessing the garden will be at its best in late March or early April, which is when we've scheduled our annual IHS Retiree Luncheon in the Garden. At least I hope it will...gardens, like children, are seldom predictable, despite what this song from The Fantasticks might claim.

The nasturtiums and sweet allyssum I planted as a border around the raised beds didn't come up as thickly as I would have liked, so yesterday I transplanted a flat of marigolds to fill in the gaps. The roses may wind up blooming ahead of the larkspur and hollyhocks this year. The bushes are loaded with buds and a few of them have begun to open.

Is gardening dependable? Predictable? I think not, and to me that's part of the fun. But I would agree with the song  that "a man who plants a garden is a very happy man"!

Squash blossom

Yellow Iris

"Don Juan" climbing rose

Tea rose

Tea Rose

Late February overview

Spring is definitely here. The petunias planted last fall are blooming, most of the fruit trees are blossoming, and asparagus spears have poked their way out of the ground. (I picked the first spear today!)

The bed on the right still contains lettuce and Swiss chard, and the gone-to-seed broccoli has been replaced with tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and squash transplants. The bed on the left contains transplants of the same summer vegetables, plus bush beans which germinated rather poorly. Beyond the two beds in the foreground, in front of the upper pond, is a small bed containing red potatoes. I planted the seed potatoes in January, and they have come up nicely.

In the pool area, the banana tree has shown new growth, the roses behind the pool have leafed out, the bottlebrush is beginning to bloom, and the snail vine on the fence is showing signs of life.

Same area of the garden as the first picture, taken from a different angle, shows the "Iceberg" climbing rose in bloom, tea roses leafing out, and a carpet of larkspur seedlings.

February overview

 It's still pretty barren-looking, but our garden is beginning to show signs of life. The bed on the right contains broccoli, lettuces, and Swiss chard. I've harvested the main stalks of most of the broccoli, but we should be able to enjoy another meal or two from the secondary stalks that are forming. Some of the lettuce that we planted last fall is bolting, so I put out more transplants a few weeks ago. I also took a chance and put out tomato transplants a week early. Since our last frost date is around Valentine's Day, I usually wait until then, but temperatures have been in the high 70s and even into the 80s over the last week, with overnight lows in the upper 40s and 50s. This year we planted Yellow Pear, Sweet 100, Early Girl, Roma, Phoenix, and Heatmaster varieties.

I've been working on cleaning out the Mexican primrose invasion in the bed on the left. Currently it contains  a few hollyhocks, an artichoke, a couple of pepper plants and a Japanese eggplant that I think are still alive, and hopefully green beans. I planted those last week in the mulched area to the right of the pear tree, but they have yet to show themselves. Yesterday I sprinkled sweet allyssum seeds around the border of this bed.

This is the view from our side patio. You can see more of the broccoli/lettuces bed on the left. I put petunia transplants around it last fall, but none of them are blooming yet. In the bed on the right, the roses we pruned back in January are beginning to leaf out, and there are hundreds of larkspur seedlings that are about an inch high. No sign of asparagus yet, though, which concerns me a little. Last year we picked our first spears at the end of January. It's possible that I cut them back later this year than last, and that might be a factor.

We planted red seed potatoes in the bed in the middle of the picture, in front of the upper pond. A few of the potato plants have emerged. This bed should eventually have a nasturtium border, but I don't see any of those coming up yet.

This view is taken from the pool deck area. You can see the roses better from this angle, as well as the larkspur seedling carpet. The climbing rose on the right side of this picture already has several buds on it.

This photo is of the pool area. We have several rosebushes behind the waterfall, in a raised bed along the block wall. They usually bloom around Easter. In addition to the Key Lime tree in the back corner, we have a couple of young peach trees and a blackberry bush in this area. One of the peach trees began to bloom yesterday.

January overview

I've been rather neglectful in terms of posting for a while, as it's not a particularly photogenic time in our garden. So much for my intent to publish the bad as well as the good!

Most of what we've  been doing involves getting ready for spring planting, which we usually do around Valentine's Day. We had a December frost which killed off the zinnias, so I've been pulling those up and scattering their seeds in several new locations. About the only color in the garden now is from the still-blooming 99-cent Home Depot Black Friday poinsettias, which I moved here from the front yard.

We are harvesting and enjoying salads made from Swiss chard and Romaine, Bibb, and leaf lettuces, and will be harvesting broccoli soon. We're also harvesting lots of citrus. I like to put orange or tangerine sections in winter salads instead of tomatoes.  It's especially good with poppyseed dressing, and tastes much better than store-bought cardboard-tasting tomatoes. I'll wait for my own, thank you.I'm also freezing lemon juice from our very prolific lemon tree so we can enjoy homemade lemonade all year long.

Today I planted red potatoes in the bed in front of the upper pond. Last year I tried them for the first time in another area, and I think this one will be better. While planting them, I found several large sweet potatoes I'd missed when we dug up the bed in November, so I expect sweet potatoe vines will show up here eventually too.  I'm also going to take a chance and plant nasturtium seeds around its border, although if we get another frost they won't make it.

September Changes

In mid-August, we left on a three-week cross-country trip. The day we left, it was pouring rain (above) The vegetable beds were cleared out and replanted with corn, squash, and beans for an early fall crop.

Phoenix received record rainfall during the time we left. The middle photo shows what we found when we returned.

The third photo, taken today, shows the garden two weeks later. I haven't been able to do too much because I've been on antibiotics and was advised to avoid direct sunlight. However, most things (including weeds) seem to be doing just fine without any help from me over the past month.

The corn didn't germinate well enough for good pollination, so I've been attempting to encourage it by shaking the stalks in the morning. Even if we don't get any corn, I plan to use the stalks as trellises for snow peas. I haven't found any bean plants yet, but I was finishing off an old package when I planted them, and there weren't too many left to begin with. We have dozens of young acorn squash, but only a few yellow squash and zero zucchini. I also found (so far) five nice-sized melons, which I did not plant. I assume they came up from kitchen scraps I tossed out before we left. In other areas of the yard, sweet potatoes are sprawling everywhere. For the first time, I decided to try growing pumpkin, and planted it in two places: next to the streambed behind the corn, and under the lemon tree. The vines under the lemon tree are doing much better than the ones near the corn, but I don't see any pumpkins yet. Also under the lemon tree, I can see a couple of red potato plants coming up. Apparently I didn't find them all when I harvested them earlier this year, and the ones I left behind have sprouted a new crop.

August overview

We've spent most of July clearing out the raised beds for fall planting. Summers here are like winters elsewhere...not much fun and not much success in the garden. Serious gardeners extend the growing season by putting up shadescreen over their vegetable beds, but we usually don't; we just give everything a rest.

An unexpected consequence of our conversion of the grass pathways to gravel was the loss of several more trees in the summer heat. In addition to the apple tree, a plum and a fig tree started showing signs of severe decline. My theory is that the tree roots were shallow and spread out because of the grass watering pattern, and couldn't adapt to a drip irrigation system.

If you're wondering what to plant in August, here's a list: We planted beans, carrots, lettuce, and summer squash in the smaller bed nearest the house and are going to try corn (again) in the larger bed by the streambed.

July overview

This is not my favorite time of the year. because it's hot...hot...hot! It's not much fun to work in the garden, and the garden shows it. But since I made the commitment to myself to post overview photos around the first of each month, here's one from a different direction. I stood on top of the upper pond  to take this picture.

More on the road less blogged about

Our "backyard" is really fairly small. We do most of our gardening in the "side yard", so that's where most of the pictures on this blog were taken. The trees flanking the pathway are a pink grapefruit and an orange, and together with a lemon tree that isn't shown, are the oldest trees in our yard. They were planted as 15 gallon trees in the summer of 2002. Citrus trees have done much better for us than any kind of deciduous trees. They are on drip irrigation and we fertilize them three times a year. Here's the chart we use to calculate how much to feed them and when. You will note that they look more like bushes than trees because we allowed them to grow into their natural shapes. That's best for the trees, because the shade protects the bark from sunburn. Some say the fruit growing on the lowest branches is the sweetest.

And here's a picture of what the trees looked like when they were first planted! That's my mother in the picture. A breast cancer survivor since 1991, she is convinced that pink grapefruit played a part in her successful treatment. So when we moved here, one of the first things we planted was a pink grapefruit tree.

The road less blogged about

Since many edible plants are giving up for the summer, I thought I'd post some pictures of other things in our yard. Above is a photo of our second pond, or really the first one Mike built when we realized that the little prefabricated plastic one was too small for our liking. Below is a picture of this area as it appeared in 2003, with only the small prefabricated pond. We built it by removing dirt and plants from the raised bed between the patio and the block wall, and lining the hole with rubber pond liner. If you look closely, you can see  two newly planted one-gallon thevetia plants on either side.

Below is how the area looks today. The thevetia have grown into trees, and we added a prefabricated gazebo. It's much shadier and cooler (and also messier because thevetia are very messy trees!) but a very enjoyable place to sit and listen to the sound of trickling water, watch goldfish swim or birds at play, and smell rose, citrus, or plumeria blossoms.

Intruder alert!

It's too hot to garden in the afternoon, so I've been swimming laps for exercise and to cool off. While doing the backstroke one day, I noticed that a Chinese elm was growing in the bed behind the rock wall on the left. The HOA uses a lot of Chinese elms in landscaping the common areas, so this one must have rooted from a seed dropped over the block fence. It has multiple trunks and is about 6 feet high at this point. I missed seeing it earlier because its foliage at this point is somewhat similar to the cape honeysuckle I planted behind the waterfall. No wonder I wasn't seeing many blossoms from the cape honeysuckle! It has been nearly crowded out by the tree!

Early June overview

Yesterday marked the first 110 degree temperature of the year, and it's expected to be equally hot today.

We're still harvesting tomatoes, although most of them have stopped setting new fruit. Cherry and yellow pear tomatoes continue to produce, and I've found producing volunteer tomatoes all over the place. There are two volunteer cherry tomato plants growing out of the rocks lining the streambed, an as-yet unidentified tomato growing out of a parsley plant, and numerous kinds hiding out in the zinnia jungle.

The transplanted yellow squash in the foreground bed produces a nice-size squash every other day or so. The original mound, which lies in the large bed behind Zinnialand, hasn't done as well. The squash it produces are rather small if picked before they begin to darken and harden. I've gotten about one grey zucchini a week from the same bed, and nothing so far from the pattypan. The acorn squash has produced a long vine along the edges of the pond, but no sign of fruit yet. I haven't seen any melons or Armenian cucumbers yet, either. That's interesting, because the bed is alive with bees, hummingbirds, and other pollinators attracted to the zinnias and the artichoke blossoms. Maybe they are too busy with those flowers to bother with the squash and melon blossoms.

Last year's Japanese eggplant is still producing, and the new one is setting fruit. It was supposed to be a white eggplant...one Japanese eggplant is plenty..but it's clearly not. Some of the strawberry plants are still alive and producing, and I actually found a few blackberries that ripened rather than drying up.

Sweet potatoes are showing up in last year's planting beds. Obviously I didn't remove them all when I harvested them last fall. There are enough of them that I decided not to plant new ones. We're still harvesting smallish red potatoes from the bed under the lemon tree, as well as small but edible red onions.

I'm pretty sure our sick apple tree isn't going to make it, as its stunted leaves have turned from green to brown. What remains of the old peach tree appears fairly healthy, although it is a shadow of its former self. We should get the first peaches from one of the new ones we planted last year later this month. And of course, there are plenty of green citrus fruits growing on our grapefruit, orange, lemon, and lime trees.