And the race is on...

April 19, 2016

Apricots and peaches are getting close to ripening. Who will get them first, us or the birds?

Apricots

Peaches

Looks like the birds beat us to this one. We picked the remaining apricots today and will let them finish ripening indoors, away from bird beaks!

We may have eaten a few while they were ripening on the counter.

Bye-bye broccoli

February 19, 2016

This week I harvested the last of the broccoli, which was beginning to flower, and removed the plants. Rather than pulling them up, I used the permaculture technique of cutting them off at ground level and leaving the roots to compost in place. That way I didn't uproot the larkspur seedlings that were hiding among the broccoli plants.

Peas, please!

Asparagus

Our days of eating fresh roasted broccoli for dinner are over for this year, but I picked the first of the snap peas and saw the first stalk of asparagus emerge from the ground.

Peach blossoms

Apricot blossoms

Almond blossoms

Almost all the fruit trees are beginning to bud and blossom now, with the exception of the Royal Minnie cherry and an unknown species of pear tree which is always the last to show signs of life. The cherry is probably dead above the graft line, but we're leaving it in the ground for now as there are still green sprouts from the rootstock.

May 1 Overview

As the peak gardening season begins in other parts of the country, it's winding down here. I removed the last of the broccoli and cilantro yesterday, and planted another melon in their place. I've stopped harvesting asparagus and let the ferns grow to provide food to sustain the plant for next year's crop. Very few lemons remain on the tree, the first flush of rose blooms have come and gone, and nasturtiums and petunias are pretty scraggly looking. In their place, zinnias, marigolds, alyssum, coreopsis, and galliardia are appearing. Hollyhocks are still going strong, and sweet potato vines are spreading into the streambed and the floor of the gazebo,

I harvested the first of the green beans, tomatoes, and eggplant this week, and should be picking yellow squash in another week. I've picked the half-dozen apricots our young tree produced, along with about two dozen smallish peaches. The remaining ones are even smaller, so I think I'll let the birds enjoy them. There are about a half-dozen green plums on our Santa Rosa plum, which is somewhat of an improvement over most years, and dozens of developing Asian pears. The apple tree is, surprisingly, still alive, but unlikely to produce any fruit.

The black metal structure in the upper left is the framework for one of our two portable gazebos that we use to shade the side patio in summer. We have to take down the canopy when the wind kicks up, as it has been doing for the past week. One of our future projects will be to replace these with a permanent pergola, which should be more functional, attractive, and stable.

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.

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

Apricot blossoms

I spotted the first blossoms on our younger apricot tree today. No sign of blossoms on the older tree yet.

Revamped pond

Here are two views of the reimagined upper pond and streambed. This one is the view from the gazebo with the new spillway. In the original design, there were plantings of plumbago which blocked the view of the pond when we were sitting in the gazebo. The additional spillway gives us a better view and also allows us to  better hear the sounds of the flowing water. The two trees are an early-fruiting peach on the left and a dwarf nectarine on the right. We're in the process of adding water plants to the new stream bed now- watercress, yerba mansa, and other small plants. Hopefully I will be able to keep the "evil four leaf clovers" at bay! The second view is from the side patio of our house. The bare tree on the left is an apricot, and the one on the right is an Asian pear. The green one in the background is Thevetia peruviana (yellow oleander). Mike loves these treelike shrubs as much as he hates bouganvillea, but I'd like to take this one out and plant more fruit trees. There's a kind of cherry that can supposedly be grown in the desert, but you need two varieties (Minnie Royal and Royal Lee) and I think this would be a good location for them. We planted three varieties of strawberry in the bare-looking raised bed in front of the pond, and a few of them have started to come up.

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.

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.

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!

Apricots and peaches

Apricots and peaches are ripening this week. I'm pleased with the results of the more-aggressive thinning we did on our Desert Gold peach tree. Although we only got a couple dozen peaches this year, they are larger and of better quality, and the tree seems healthier. Our younger apricot tree produced about a dozen apricots, which the birds enjoyed before they fully ripened, and now the fruit on our older apricot tree is ripening.

In order to circumvent the birds, we're picking peaches (and some of the apricots) before they fully ripen. They soften and sweeten nicely after a few days on the kitchen counter. This method works much better than trying to cover them with netting as we've done in the past, and it's a lot easier.

In this picture you can also see the new planting area created when we joined two raised beds. Because the bed is so large, we used flagstones to create pathways for weeding and harvesting access to the growing areas. We used all 6-inch drip tubing in this area as it seems to provide better coverage than the 12-inch variety. It's too late to plant a lot of the vegetables we like, so I put out some zinnia seeds.

And the race is on!

We're still waiting on peaches, but these Katy apricots may ripen first! This is a relatively young tree; we put it in when we added the raised beds three years ago.

In other news, we hit our first 100 degree temperatures yesterday afternoon...the long hot summer is upon us!

What a difference a week makes!

I've been gone for a week visiting my family in Alabama, and there have been quite a few changes in just a week. Things are finally waking up! There are blossoms on the apricot, apple, nectarine, almond, pear, and plum trees, and leaves on the crape myrtle. The roses have leafed out and should begin blooming in a couple of weeks. The three tomato plants I thought were dead have put out new growth, nasturtiums are blooming and some of the other annuals won't be far behind. Hollyhock plants are about two feet high. Even the grass is beginning to green up somewhat.

No beans or squash yet; I think that last cold snap hit at the wrong time for successful germination so I'll need to replant. The potato bush has come back nicely from the frost and the plumbago and snail vine are showing growth at the roots. The thevetia hedge hasn't really come back yet, although it's beginning to show signs of life. We pruned back the hibiscus and bougainvillea even further and never did find green wood, so it will be a long time before they come back.

We had Paul from The Pond Gnome over yesterday for a consultation and got some good ideas for projects to improve our ponds and streambed. We used flagstones to line the pond banks and streambed, and a lot of them have deteriorated. He suggested replacing them with rip rap, which will give us the same red rocks look and be more stable, and also replacing some of our pond plants with less invasive species.

February overview

Here's an overview of several of the raised beds in late February. A couple of  (yum!) asparagus shoots have come up, and there are now blossoms on the nectarine and apricot trees as well as the peach. The apple tree is beginning to leaf out, there are buds on the fig tree, and I even spotted a couple of buds on the two new bare-root peach trees we planted earlier this month.

Today's gardening tasks included planting more strawberries and spreading several bags of mulch over new plantings of tomato transplants, asparagus, beans, and squash. We are still harvesting several kinds of lettuce, Swiss chard, and snow peas.

Summer update, and some recipes

I'm back in the garden again, having gotten a green light from my chiropractor to resume (cautiously) my regular activities. I find there's nothing quite like digging out the Bermuda grass from the raised beds supposedly reserved for vegetables and flowers, to channel feeling of stress into something productive. I haven't been able to do that for a while, and I'm enjoying it- albeit in five minute intervals, because the temperatures here are above 100 degrees most of the time.

My current project involves planting things in the bare spaces left when I pulled out the broccoli, lettuce, spinach, nasturtiums, and larkspur. I seeded a border of sweet allysum around the perimeter of a couple of the raised beds, and I finally found some honeydew plants at Summer Winds nursery. It's rather late to plant them, even as transplants, but I thought I'd give it a shot. I'm trying a new planting method I observed in San Diego in a community garden...digging wells around the plants rather than planting them in the traditional mounds. Theoretically, that ought to help keep moisture around the plant's roots, which is always a challenge with new plantings in hot weather. I did mound up the soil a bit right around the stem of the plant, so water won't collect next to it. (not that there is much risk of that this time of year!)

We picked the last of the apricots and early peaches, and several varieties of tomatoes are doing very nicely. Our old standbys of cherry, Roma, and Early Girl tomatoes are already bearing, and some of the new ones we're trying this year have nice-sized green fruit. I found a delicious recipe for fish with roasted cherry tomatoes here and served it with roasted broccoli (my favorite recipe for that here) For dessert we had apricots in orange juice (recipe I used here) As you may guess, I enjoy trying new ways to prepare the food that comes out of our backyard as much as I enjoy experimenting with new things to grow and different ways to grow them.

Surprised by apricots

I just noticed that there are several dozen marble-sized apricots on two different trees. I hadn't seen them before...maybe I was too busy thinning peaches and pulling weeds to see them. I wonder how many times in life we miss seeing beautiful things because we are too busy with necessary tasks?

Of springtime and ashes

"What a wondrous time in spring, when all the trees are budding. The birds begin to sing; the flowers start their blooming. That's how it is with God's love, once you've experienced it. You want to sing; it's fresh like spring; you want to pass it on."

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, which I never have fully understood, perhaps because of my non-liturgical upbringing. Our pastor says Lent is her favorite season...I can't say that I feel the same way. Lent is sackcloth and ashes and repenting our sinful nature, which may be necessary, but is not enjoyable, and (I hope I don't get struck by lightning) seems somewhat masochistic to me. Maybe it works better in more temperate climates, where February is still winter, rather than in Phoenix, where it marks the beginning of spring.

Our earliest-bearing peach tree is setting fruit; a later bearing variety is covered in blossoms; and the apricot and almond trees are also beginning to blossom. I've already picked a nice batch of sugar snap peas and a few asparagus shoots (only because I only planted two plants....must remedy that!) and our second planting of lettuce is reaching harvest-size leaves. Pear, plum, fig, and apple have not yet blossomed, but have full buds I expect to see open any day now. Some of the nasturtiums are blooming (maybe I should pick a few and add to the lettuce for a salad tonight); lilac vines are blooming, and the air is becoming heady with the fragrance of citrus. Calla lilies, which I'd wondered if had survived, are emerging from the ground...larkspur and hollyhock are coming up everywhere, in unexpected locations. Even in the gravel part of the yard I'm seeing marigolds, hollyhocks, nasturtiums...to quote my favorite Jurassic Park quote, "life will find a way."

And, there are a few weeds that need to be pulled. There are always a few weeds to be pulled, and it's generally best to pull them early before they have a chance to grow to giant size and set seed. I can see that part of Lent. There are weeds to be pulled in our lives, and with weeds, it's generally best to pull them when they are small and manageable. But in my garden, and I think also in our lives, it's an ongoing process. And I don't want to concentrate so much on the weeds that I can't enjoy the flowers.