Wheat and tares and melons

Jesus once told a story about a farmer who found his crop heavily infested with weeds. Rather than attempt to dig the offending plants out, possibly causing damage to the roots of his wanted crop in the process, he decided to allow wheat and tares to grow together until harvest time. When that time came, he reasoned, he could pull everything up at once, keep the good stuff, and throw away the bad.

September marks a "pull everything up and start over" season in our gardening year. During the long, hot summer, "weeding", if done at all, mostly meant chop-and-drop...that is, cut the weeds off close to the ground and toss their carcasses on the ground where they provide a cooling and water-conserving mulch for the roots of our fruit and vegetable plants. But as the weather cools and the days shorten, most of our summer crops are at the end of their life span, and it's time to get serious about digging up weeds, roots and all, prior to planting fall crops.

Bermuda grass is a particularly invasive and persistent enemy, one whose roots can go down several feet. We know it's impossible to eliminate entirely without the use of herbicides, which we really prefer not to use in close proximity to things we plan to eat. Mint, Mexican primrose and Mexican petunia, and a large cloverlike creeping plant are also invasive, although not as deep-rooted. Now is the time for these things to go away from places they are not wanted, at least until next spring when we'll repeat the process.

We're leaving some plants that are still producing in place...eggplant mostly, and a few surviving tomato plants that might be coaxed into setting a second crop. We thought about digging up this melon, which has produced nothing but rampant vegetative growth...or so we thought. As we peeked through its leaves this morning, we found two good-sized honeydew melons that were hidden by the leaves on its vines. I think we'll wait on digging up the Bermuda grass that is growing in here for a bit longer.

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Chop-and-drop mulching, or If you can't beat 'em, use 'em!

 Part of what attracts me to permaculture gardening principles is that I'm a lazy gardener. So when I saw a reference to "chop and drop" mulching in the Desert Gardeners of Maricopa County Facebook group, I was intrigued enough to do a little research. Here's one explanatory link I found and here's a Youtube video demonstrating the process.

Bermuda grass, mint, Mexican petunia, and Mexican primrose have long been the bane of my gardening existence .In the past I've spent a great deal of time and effort trying to dig them up by the roots and throw them in the trash. According to "chop and drop", I not only don't need to do that, I am removing nutrients from the soil that will have to be replaced somehow.

I especially don't enjoy weeding in the heat of the summer, so I think now would be a good time to experiment with this method on the mint and grass infesting this raised bed. I don't think there is much danger of the stolons rooting themselves during our hot, dry summer, so I just cut them off at ground level, chopped them up with clippers, and left them to dessicate in the sun. Theoretically, they will provide a cooling, weed-supressing, moisture-conserving layer of mulch now, and eventually will decompose and add  their nutrients back into the soil. As a bonus, I got to enjoy the lovely, soothing smell of mint as I worked.

Word of warning: Don't include weed seed heads in your chop-and-drop mulching, or you will come to regret it next spring. I do include flower and vegetable seeds, if this is a place I might want to see those particular flowers and/or vegetables.

Mood regulators

Whenever I find myself in a bad mood, I go for a walk in our backyard. Today was one of those days.

We've been working on a project in the front yard and have run into a few complications that will take some time to resolve. Water has been running into the street from the sprinklers in our small grass lawn, probably because of a combination of slope, clay soil, and type of grass. We're trying to resolve the problem by tiering the area, rather than having the grass slope all the way down to the sidewalk. We haven't got it right yet, and this morning I was again greeted with the unwelcome sight of wasted water and less than verdantly green grass.

First of all, I don't enjoy working in the front yard nearly as much as in the back yard. The front yard is our public, HOA-mandated persona. In the back yard I am free to express myself and experiment, which adds to my enjoyment. In the front yard I am constrained to do pretty much what everyone else in the neighborhood does. It's rather like wearing uncomfortable but socially correct business attire to go to work, and changing into something comfortable when you get home.

Secondly, I don't enjoy working with grass. I am not an anti-grass crusader like some people I know. I think there is a strong case to be made for its use, especially as a play areas for children and pets. I think it probably has a little bit of an evaporative cooling effect due to transpiration, making outdoor activities more enjoyable (tolerable?) I think it mitigates the urban heat island effect, as well as removing some carbon dioxide and pollutants from the air. But since our children are grown, and our cats stay indoors, it isn't particularly important to me. All in all, I'd rather be surrounded by fruits, vegetables, and flowers than grass. However, that's not really an option for our front yard.

Anyway, I was in a bad mood, so I went for a walk in the backyard, knowing I will never fail to find something to make me smile. I found these yummy yellow pear tomatoes, the first of the season, hiding at the base of a tomato plant, and then I enjoyed strolling by these bottlebrushes which are loaded with blooms. Not only are they beautiful to see, they are softly pleasurable to touch, and literally singing with bees and other insects.

For me at least, bad moods and backyard gardens don't mix. Front yards are another story.

Grapes, continued

Here's the grape arbor that has produced our only edible grapes so far. It is in full sun in front of a fence that hides our pool equipment. The grapevine on the left is a Thompson seedless grape that's about seven or eight years old. The one on the right is a Flame seedless that we just put in today to replace one that died.

Originally, the two grapevines were in large wooden planter boxes with the bottoms cut out, placed on either side of a purchased bench/harbor. We had plastic planter boxes on top of the half-wall planted with asparagus fern and annuals. After a couple of years of the bench getting almost no use because the location was too hot and sunny to be an enjoyable sitting area, and the annuals routinely dying of heatstroke, we decided to replace the bench and planter boxes with this raised bed. We built the raised bed up to the same height of the wooden boxes holding the grapes, removed the boxes, and filled in the area between the grapes with soil. Both grapes did fine up until last year, when the driplines malfunctioned and we didn't notice until it was too late.

Today, in addition to planting the new grapevine, this time on the inside of the arbor rather than the outside, we dug out the Bermuda grass, Mexican primrose, spent nasturtiums, and a dead miniature rosebush that also succumbed because of insufficient water. We left a volunteer asparagus fern in the middle, sprinkled the area with marigold seeds, and mulched everything heavily. Oh, and we also revamped the drip lines to provide more water.

Doing what I can

God, give me grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Taking, as Jesus did,

This sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it,

Trusting that You will make all things right,

If I surrender to Your will,

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,

And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

-Reinhold Niebuhr

I was too obsessed yesterday with trying to figure out what might be wrong with the apple tree to either enjoy or do anything constructive in the garden. Today I think I will make better use of my time by digging out the Bermuda grass that is threatening to infest this raised bed and choke out these snapbeans.

I've done what I can about the apple tree. I've gone through three separate disease keys from the Cooperative Extension services in several Western states, and although I'm not 100% certain, I think it is likely some kind of crown or root rot brought on by our archenemy of poorly draining clay soil, and there's not much I can do about that. Mike reminded me that before we planted the apple tree, we dug down about three feet in an attempt to improve the drainage, and amended the native soil with compost. That was the general wisdom ten years ago, but since then recommendations have changed. One of the results of backfilling with heavily amended soil is that the area will sink over time as the compost decays, resulting in a sunken area. The sunken area is really obvious now that the grass is gone, meaning that when we water, it pools right next to the trunk and stays there, opening the roots up to various infections.

The first lines of the "Serenity Prayer" above are well known, probably because of their adaptation by Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs, but the last part isn't as familiar to most people. For some reason, I was reminded of the thoughts behind this prayer today. If I'm going to be a successful gardener, I have to work with my backyard as it is, heavy clay soil, extreme heat and all. I'd rather have better soil and more moderate temperatures, but this is what I have to work with. Trees may die, but there are other things in our garden to enjoy, and perhaps the difficulty of coaxing beauty from a less-than-ideal situation adds to its appreciation.

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!

Goodbye bermuda grass pathways

Last fall, we decided to take out the last of the grass in our backyard. We had mixed feelings about this because although the grass was attractive when green and nice to walk on barefoot, it was time consuming to mow and edge and futile to keep from invading the raised beds.

We sprayed the grass with glyphosphate, which only works when the grass is green and growing, last fall. Although I'm not a big fan of chemicals and prefer avoiding their use when possible, there are times when they are necessary and this is one of them. Other methods, such as solarizing the soil with clear plastic, aren't as effective in getting rid of the grass and tend to kill off beneficial soil organisms.  Here's an article from the Maricopa Cooperative Extension Service giving more details about the safety and efficiency of this method, along with more detailed instructions.

The glyphosphate did a pretty good jub of killing the grass, because we only saw a few patches of green this spring, which we resprayed. We then scalped the dead grass as closely as possible, applied pre emergent herbicide, and covered the pathways with 3/8 inch screened gravel.  Rain is predicted for the weekend (the first in over two months) so hopefully we'll get enough to thoroughly water in the pre-emergent.

Gardens do not thrive on neglect

We just returned from a week in California leading a group of young people to work on repairs to a couple of aging city church buildings and some houses of low income and/or elderly members of the community. It was nice to sleep in a bed instead of a church floor surrounded by giggly teenagers, but it was not nice to take a stroll around our backyard garden! If a giant asteroid hit the earth and wiped out most life, I don't think the last thing alive would be cockroaches...it would be Bermuda grass. Yikes! I am not looking forward to the task of getting it out of the raised beds.

We have everything on drip irrigation, but this time of year I usually do a daily walkabout and provide supplemental water on an as-needed basis. Other than the Bermuda grass invasion, most things are still alive. I haven't seen any major casualties, other than the tomatoes, but I don't think I can blame their demise on lack of water. Because we took our portable pop-up canopies on the trip to shade people,  the poor tomatoes had none, and they really need it this time of year. There are some yellow squash and Japanese eggplant which grew to a harvestable size while we were gone, and the sweet potato vines are thriving. There are nice long vines on the winter squash, yardlong beans, zipper cream peas, and Armenian cucumbers, but no fruit yet.

One of the churches where our team works has a number of pocket gardens on the property, worked by people who live in a nearby subsidized apartment building populated by refugees from Eastern Europe and Asia. Many of these refugees suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and gardening is therapeutic as well as a source of economical and nutritious food. Some plots are maintained by homeless people. The church has a "Co-Op Cafe" serving the homeless which utilizes some of the produce. Here's a picture of some of these pocket gardens at the edge of the church parking lot. Anywhere there is a patch of dirt, someone will use it to grow food! I'd love to see this idea spread to other communities.

More weeding and a strawberry update

I weeded the second half of this combined bed today. In addition to Bermuda grass, it contains several other troublesomely invasive weeds including mint and nutsedge. I made the mistake of planting mint last summer (you can read about that here, and also see how the bed looked last fall), but I have no idea how the nutsedge managed to sneak in. All three plants reproduce quite prolifically by stolons and runners, and don't even need to resort to the bother of producing flowers and seeds, although the sedge and mint can do that as well. The underground stolons are designed to break off easily when disturbed, which means that when I try to pull them out, some little piece is inevitably left behind. Each little piece will  then regenerate Hydra-like into many more obnoxious plants.

This bed contains small fig and almond trees and strawberry, artichoke, rosemary, Japanese eggplant, and pepper plants. The hollyhocks just appear as if by magic everywhere in the yard, and I leave them alone if they aren't crowding out something else. I think they may have actually helped the strawberry plants by shading them a little. It will be interesting to see if the strawberry plants survive the summer as most gardeners treat them as annuals here and replant each fall. We're still getting a few strawberries each day, most of which do not make it into the house. I ate the three I picked today while I was doing battle with the Bermuda grass.

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.

Planting, interrupted

We've completed clearing out the raised beds, for the most part and for now. The grass may fade and the flower wither, but Mexican primrose is forever. Once it warms up, we will also be battling Bermuda grass invasions. We got some of our spring plantings completed before we were interrupted by rain, which is always nice, but it would have been nicer if it had waited until we'd finished planting and mulching. Some areas of the Valley actually got a light dusting of snow and/or hail, but not here. It really didn't get that cold, which is also a good thing.

The bed in the foreground, which adjoins a pavestone patio, will contain mostly flowers. Coreopsis, larkspur, and snapdragon seedlings are already coming up, and I added petunia transplants as a border on the patio side. I also planted one hill of yellow squash and one hill of zucchini in this bed.

I planted tomato transplants and bush beans in the left rear bed, and plan to border it with marigolds. In addition to my favorite Early Girl, Roma and Yellow Pear tomatoes, we're trying some new varieties that are supposed to be more heat tolerant- Phoenix, Solar Fire, and Summer Set. The new asparagus trench is in the rear of this bed. The right rear bed contains strawberries and a small fig tree.

For now, I'm waiting for things to dry out a little bit so that I can get back to planting!