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.

February: Hard Labor

February 5, 2016

Here's a panoramic taken from our side patio. Mike completed the raised bed/patio paver redo necessary for our pergola plans, and we're waiting on HOA approval on those. Since the weather has begun to warm up a little in the afternoons, we've been working on clearing Bermuda grass and other unwanted invaders from the raised beds, redoing the wells around the fruit trees and rosesbushes, working on rejuvenative pruning of frost-damaged and overgrown bushes and vines, and other labor-intensive tasks. Today Mike is working on the pond and streambed, which has again been overwhelmed by cloverlike plants with thick matted roots. He also found that iris roots had grown up into the pond pump, and is cutting those back along with doing some root pruning. I've been working on the raised beds and tree wells, and found several nice-sized sweet potatoes as a reward for my labors.

We're harvesting lots of broccoli, which is peaking now, along with lettuce, spinach, and citrus. Too bad my mother isn't here to enjoy the grapefruit. We can't even donate the extra to a food bank. Although we haven't had any problems, concerns about the pest which spreads citrus greening disease have caused a quarantine for citrus in the West Valley. There are lots of blossoms on the pea plants, but no peas yet.

Broccoli

Snap pea blossoms

Assorted lettuces

Grapefruit

Broccoli beginnings

I've been watching for broccoli transplants and picked up the last two pony packs at Lowe's today. I planted them in the newly-cleared sweet potato bed in front of the upper pond, along with the spinach seedlings I sprouted in peat pots. Here they are, and you can see the drip irrigation grid we use to water our raised beds.

Cherries, take two

The cherry trees we planted last year got scalded and died in the summer heat. We're trying them again in a new location, an area between the gazebo and the upper pond which gets some afternoon shade. The peach tree that was in this area finally died, and we took it out to make room for the cherry trees. These came from the Urban Farm and are on a rootstock that is hopefully more tolerant of desert soil and heat. We dug a trench around the trees and mulched it heavily, per Greg's instructions. We planted an apricot tree, also from the Urban Farm tree sale, on the other side of the pond where we tried the cherry trees last year. When Mike dug up that area for the tree, he found about a dozen more sweet potatoes I'd missed when I harvested them in November. I expect to see sweet potato vines return again in the hot weather as there are probably still more of them we didn't find.

We're continuing with general cleanup and soil preparation for spring planting. I jumped the gun a little this year and planted Blue Lake bush beans and nasturtiums a couple of weeks earlier than usual, because rain was predicted and I wanted to take advantage of that. This year's winter was rather mild; temperatures dropped into the 30s for a few days in December, but we never got a hard freeze. Hopefully we won't get a late freeze in February, which has happened before.


We're continuing to harvest citrus, lettuce, and Swiss chard, and enjoyed the first of the broccoli for dinner last night. The artichoke has returned, but no sign of any asparagus yet.

Broccoli is almost ready to pick!

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.

November gardening

I've been enjoying watching butterflies enjoying the zinnias...

...digging up sweet potatoes...

...and planting broccoli and several different lettuces in the bed formerly occupied by melons and butternut squash.

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.

A broccoli selfie

This was supposed to be a picture of a broccoli bouquet I picked yesterday, but the camera wound up a little too close. By the time I looked at the big picture on my computer instead of the little picture on my phone, this broccoli was already chopped up and simmering away in a crockpot, well on its way to its destiny of becoming our dinner.

I think this is the longest I've kept broccoli plants after harvesting the primary heads. They just keep producing little side shoots, and I keep picking them. I see no need to pull up the plants until they stop producing entirely. They are still tasty, and I'm still experimenting with recipes in a quest to find the ideal recipe for broccoli cheese soup.

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.

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.

Broccoli take two

This is our second crop of broccoli from the same plants. Once you remove the main flowering stem, smaller florets will sprout from side nodes. After harvesting these, I'll pull the plants up and put something else in this spot.

February overview

I'd originally planned to post "overview" pictures taken around the first of each month, but didn't do it because the yard was such a mess. Mike rebuilt the streambed between the two ponds, which necessitated taking all the rocks out of it and there were piles of rock and dirt everywhere.

We are harvesting lots of citrus, broccoli, and sugar peas now, and the asparagus is beginning to appear. We're getting ready for spring planting, which we usually do around Valentine's Day as it typically marks the end of any danger of frost. I did decide to chance it and put it one tomato plant last weekend, along with parsley and oregano transplants.

This year's winter was relatively mild and there has been little frost damage. A Japanese eggplant is putting out new growth, as is one of the tomato plants, and there are blossoms on the April-fruiting peach tree.

Broccoli take one

Time to pick the broccoli! My favorite way to prepare it is roasted with a little garlic salt and olive oil, then toss it with some fresh lemon and Parmesan cheese.

Broccoli, roses, and petunias

This bed off our back patio is bordered by petunias and nasturtiums. The nasturtiums were planted from seed and are up but not blooming yet; the petunias were transplanted in October at the same time as the broccoli transplants behind them. There is also garlic in this bed, but the shoots are only about three or four inches high at this point.

Behind the broccoli are rosebushes which are beginning to bloom again, and asparagus ferns that are beginning to yellow. We'll cut the asparagus back in a couple of weeks, and we usually cut the roses back in January.

To the left is a basil plant which is still going strong. Basil usually lasts here until the first frost, which is always unpredictable. It's could be as early as December or as late as February, or maybe not at all. If and when it comes, and depending on how hard a freeze it is, it may wipe out the nasturtiums as well.

It's also interesting to notice the difference in sun patterns at different times of year. Since this patio is on the north side of our house, it's not possible to take a photo this time of year without at least part of the bed being in shadow.

Early November overview

Most of the deciduous fruit trees have lost their leaves, but the citrus is beginning to show signs of ripening.

Round 2 of the zinnias are still growing strong and attract dozens of butterflies; the petunia transplants are doing well, and most of the nasturtiums have come up. Roses are beginning to recover from their summer slump and are flowering again.

The broccoli plants and sugar snap peas are strongly established, but of the salad greens I planted, only arugula came up. Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants are still setting fruit. I dug up the sweet potato bed and we've been working on preparing it for new plantings. We'll probably try strawberries in that location, this time with a fall rather than spring planting.

Most of the garlic cloves have sent up shoots, and the basil plant is still healthy; cilantro is also coming up in several places and this time I know what it is.

We're in the process of taking out the grass pathways among the raised beds and will replace them with crushed granite. Hopefully that will cut down on the continuing battle we've had with Bermuda grass invading the raised beds, as well as decrease our overall water usage. We had mixed feelings about doing that, because the grass is attractive and soft to walk on barefoot, but it really has been a problem to keep out of places we don't want it.

Fall is finally in the air!

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.

Surveying the damage

It's a balmy 71 degrees outside today, and the freeze warning is over, so we took down the spotlights and frost cloth today. I was pleased to see that the lettuce and spinach seedlings (foreground bed) and strawberries (middle bed) survived. The hibiscus and tecoma (along the fence in the background) have turned crispy and brown, as well as thevetia and bougainvillea elsewhere in the yard. Most of the nasturtiums were destroyed, along with a Sweet 100 tomato that came up as a volunteer. Most of the citrus trees look pretty good, with only a few areas of damaged leaves visible, but we won't know the extent of the damage until later. The last time we had a freeze like this, the lemon and Key lime trees didn't produce any fruit the following season, and a tangerine was taken over by its sour orange rootstock. This time we wrapped the bases of our three youngest citrus trees in blankets, covered the smallest one entirely in frost cloth, and aimed spotlights at the graft union areas on their trunks.

The caulifower plants show no signs of being affected by the cold weather, and one is beginning to head. Although the broccoli plants also appear to be undamaged, they did not produce a second growth of florets from side shoots after the main heads were removed. The kale and Swiss chard were only mildly affected (but the Swiss chard was in a bed where we put a spotlight in order to aim it at a tangerine tree). The banana plant is mush, but it should come back from the ground, and I hope the same happens with the calla lilies. Surprisingly, the vining snow peas seem to have fallen down from their trellis. I think that possibly they were pulled down because they had some tendrils wrapped around nasturtiums which collapsed.

We're still squeezing lemons. I did manage to give away quite a few lemons, oranges, and grapefruit, though.

New Year's Resolutions

I think I read somewhere that most New Year's resolutions have to do with (a) losing weight (b) exercising more (c) giving up unhealthful habits. Most people find that they are spectacularly unsuccessful in keeping them beyond a short period of time. So instead of making resolutions for our Arizona Backyard Eden, I'll submit a few observations about what went wrong and what went right this year.

1. Attempting to spend at least 15 minutes a day doing something outside...even if it is making a circuit of the yard- good idea. Even if it is insanely hot, I usually find that I will pull a few weeds or notice a problem with the drip irrigation. I've been a fan of the Flylady approach for inside-the-house tasks for several years, and she really is correct in saying "you can do anything for 15 minutes" and that "15 minutes a day over time will make a difference". It works in the garden as well as it does in the house.

2. Mulching with semi-composted ground-up hollyhock stalks- bad idea. Two years later, I'm still pulling up baby hollyhock plants from what is supposed to be a vegetable bed.

3. Following master gardener mentors Pam Perry's advice to pull vegetable and flower plants up when they are past their prime and "just let them die"...good idea. I've gotten more edible yield this year by following this suggestion. Tomato plants rarely "come back" after the hot weather, but I got a nice crop of bush beans in the same space after I yanked the struggling tomatoes out. Oh, and though you may have read that some annual plants can be perennials in this area, you won't get a second crop of broccoli from the same plants.

4. Fall planting of tomatoes- less than successful two years in a row. In our area, you're supposed to be able to plant tomatoes in late summer, provide shade through the hot months, and pick tomatoes in late fall.  The first time I tried this idea, the plants were loaded with dozens of beautiful green tomatoes just in time to be hit by unseasonably cold weather in December. Green tomatoes will ripen on the kitchen counter, but they do not taste as good as the ones ripened on the vine. This year we put a couple of plants in large pots and wheeled them into the garage when frost was predicted. The plants lived...barely....but green tomatoes take forever to ripen in the short days of winter.

5. Revamped drip irrigation system- so far, good idea. It is less prone to clogging than microsprayers and waters the intended area more evenly.

6. Planting cattails in the upper pond...bad idea. They have escaped their intended confinement to the perimeter shelf and are crowding out the water lilies, as well as blocking the view of the waterfall. And they are very difficult to remove from the center of the pond, which is about three feet deep.

7. Planting sweet potato vine around the lower pond next to the gazebo...good idea. I planted two and they spread prolifically in spite of the summer heat, through the fall, and well into the winter. It was only today I noticed any signs of frost damage. They are easy to propagate, too.

8. Planting blackberry vine, roses, and asparagus in the same bed...not a good idea. It was nice the first season or two, but now the plants have grown to be too much for the area.In all fairness, I hadn't taken the Master Gardener class when we started on this adventure, and wasn't aware of the mantra "Right plant in the right place". We're going to attempt to transplant the blackberry plant to a more appropriate location where its spreading habits will not be such a thorny issue.

One of the nice things about gardening is that it doesn't lend itself well to New Year's resolutions. It's an organic, ongoing process. Trying new things and seeing what works and what doesn't, planning and dreaming and making improvements...that goes on all year long!

Strawberry fields aren't forever (but mint patches are)

I took a break today from putting up Christmas decorations to mulch the strawberries Mike planted a few weeks ago. We've not had good luck with strawberries in the past, but so far they seem to like the new drip irrigation layout. It's also possible they prefer cooler weather. This is the first time we've attempted to plant them in the fall rather than early spring, and we hope these two changes make a difference. Past plantings have resulted in only a couple dozen strawberries before the plants burned up in the summer heat. By the way, strawberries are delicious in salads. In the cooler months, when we have no home-grown tomatoes, we often enjoy strawberries and/or oranges in their place. I dislike the store-bought tomatoes available in the winter; they taste like cardboard.

This bed also contains broccoli which is beginning to head, and some petunias and nasturtiums for color. What you don't see is the back of the bed, where I planted one small mint plant last spring. It has completely taken over the rear part of the bed, and we had to pull quite a bit out of the front to plant the strawberries. We whacked it off to the ground about a month ago, and it's back stronger than ever; I am quite sure it will be an ongoing battle to restrain it from spreading indefinitely. In case you are thinking of planting mint, take a suggestion I learned too late in a Master Gardener class: plant it in a pot rather than directly in the ground. That way you will have some hope of keeping it at contained. Another idea that I think I may try this year with mint and other invasive but tasty herbs: put it in a hanging basket.

The tree in the foreground is a fig tree, and the one in the rear is a self-fruiting almond. We've gotten a few figs and no almonds so far. Some gardeners make take issue with our trees-in-the-middle-of-the-garden design. Assuming they survive, the trees will eventually produce so much shade that we won't be able to grow the things we're growing now. We know that, but why not use the space now to grow something beautiful and delicious?

Gardens evolve not only with the seasons, but with the years....just like humans, they change and age, and it's good to appreciate what one has in the present moment. Activities I enjoyed in my twenties (skiing and rock climbing come to mind) do not hold the same fascination in my sixties. So I think I'll enjoy the strawberries while I can, and the figs later...but I'll probably be fighting the mint for the rest of my life!