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.

Spring plantings

Mid-February marks the beginning of prime spring planting time in the Phoenix area. High temperatures have been in the eighties the last few days, which is a bit warm for our normal February weather, but we're not likely to see freezing temperatures again this year. We planted yellow, zucchini, and acorn squash, cantaloupe and honeydew melons, and Armenian cucumbers in this bed. In another bed, which most recently hosted broccoli, we set out three more tomato transplants- Early Girl, Yellow Pear, and Purple Cherokee. I also found a spot for a new basil plant in a third bed.

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We added two stepping stone pathways in this bed because it's too large to access plants for weeding and harvesting without stepping on (and compacting) the soil. Below you can see how we adjusted the drip tubing layout for mound rather than in-line planting- just coil the tubing around the mounds. We use the same setup around the tomato cages. I only got as far as planting the back part of the bed today; I plan to plant bush beans in the front part, and when I do I'll use straight rather than coiled sections of drip tube and plant two bean seeds under each emitter.

Also seen in this picture is some mondo grass (called monkeygrass in the South) I transplanted from the side of the house because it will no longer get water when we remove the last of our backyard lawn. I think it will make a nice edge plant for the streambed.

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.

Fall plantings

We finished clearing out this bed, except for the Survivor Tomato and a plumbago that we'll move elsewhere this winter. The recent rain was helpful in watering in the sulfur and ammonium phosphate that we added prior to planting. I planted romaine, buttercrunch, and Salad Bowl lettuces, arugula, and Oregon Sugar Pod II peas in here, along with a few cilantro and bunching green onion seeds that were left over from a "salsa pack", and topped it all off with a light dusting of mulch.

The irrigation setup for this bed is a combination of 6 inch and 12 inch drip tubing. The 6 inch tubing runs around the perimeter of the bed and the 12 inch tubing is laid out in a grid pattern about a foot apart. The seeds are planted directly under each drip emitter. I planted several seeds in each planting hole because these are all leftover seeds and I'm not sure about the germination percentage.

For design purposes, I usually like to plant flowers around the edges of the raised beds, particularly this one which is right next to a sitting area on the patio. The last two years I planted nasturtiums here, only to see them destroyed by frost. I may try petunias this year, but I'll wait a few weeks before planting them...it's still over 100 degrees on a regular basis here!

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.

The circle of life (botanical edition)

I always think of my mother-in-law's garden when I see marigolds. She had an abundance of them which arose spontaneously each year, and I can remember my then-two-year-old son being fascinated by them. I haven't done so well with them here...this was the only plant that survived the summer out of what was intended to be a border of them. I've been collecting the seeds as the flowers dry up, and sprinkling them on the drip emitter lines in different places. Quite a few have sprouted, and I hope to have better luck with them this year.  You can also see nasturtiums coming up, which is what we had along the border prior to the marigolds. Now that the weather has cooled, they are coming up all over the place. So are weeds, unfortunately. You can see one of those in the picture, too. I didn't plant the nasturtiums, or the weeds for that matter; they came from seeds dropped last spring.

So far, we've been pleased with the new drip system. In most beds, we've laid it out in a grid with lines about a foot apart, and each line has a 1 gph drip emitters spaced a foot apart. We plant seeds right under the emitters in a variation of  the "square foot gardening" method. This seems to be more efficient and effective in getting water to the plants where they need it than the minisprayers we had previously. In some of the raised beds where I want a flower border, we have also run 1/2 gph drip lines with 6 inch spacing along the edges.
 

Second bloom

Although we lost several roses during this long hot summer, we are enjoying a nice second blooming season on the ones that survived. Our roses look best in the spring and truly awful during the summer. This is the first year I've remembered to do a fall fertilization, and these Queen Elizabeth bushes rewarded us by rebounding nicely.

We think the reason we lost several bushes this year was drip irrigation failure. (We also lost a Santa Rosa plum and a cape honeysuckle planted in this area) We had 4 gph flag drippers on them, but as part of our overall drip revamp this year, put circles of drip tubing in wells created around each bush. They should get the same amount of water, but it should be distributed better around the drip line.

In January, we'll do major pruning and fertilization but we should be able to enjoy roses through the Christmas season.

Summertime blahs

Summer is not my favorite time in the garden. It's too hot to work for more than a few minutes at a time, and it's a constant battle to make sure everything is getting enough water. We have a fairly sophisticated drip/minisprayer system, but drip irrigation is never maintenance-free. Drips get plugged and don't put out adequate water, or a sprayer works loose from its stake and sprays in the wrong direction, so we're constantly repairing and trying to improve the system.

The corn is going to be a disappointment, I'm afraid. Some of the silks have already turned brown and are not filled out, so I would say our experiment with hand-pollination was unsuccessful. Most of the pole beans died as a result of an emitter-failure that went undetected for a couple of weeks, and the surviving ones have no beans. I think it may be too hot for the pollen to be active now. Although we have several squash plants, I can see only one squash growing, and a couple of smallish Japanese eggplants. Tomato plants still have fruit, although they probably won't set any more this summer- too hot for them. There are a handful of blackberries and blueberries left, and our June-fruiting peach tree has a half-dozen peaches.

Sometimes all you can do is keep on keeping on- five minutes at a time weeding, checking for those plants that need supplemental water, and wait for the weather to cool off!

Summer changes in the garden

I pruned the orange tree today...removed some of the lower limbs which were hanging down to the ground. It looks more like a tree than a giant bush now, I should be able to plant something under it (haven't decided what yet) and we should still get plenty of oranges. The grapefruit tree looks like a bush too, but I am more reluctant to prune it as it seems more fragile than the other citrus trees and I would hate to accidentally kill it since my mother enjoys grapefruit so much. She still takes a big boxful back on the airplane, even though she has to pay extra to do so.

The first zinnia opened up today, and the orange daylily has also started blooming. The Confederate Jasmine behind the patio pond is still blooming, and the two Carolina Jessamine have started to come back, even the one I thought was probably dead. The birds have pretty well finished off the last of the peaches, but I enjoyed the first apricot a few days ago. There is apparently one plum this year at the very top of our Santa Rosa plum tree, which is wedged in between two rosebushes. Whose bright idea was that? Although we have had the tree for several years, we have never seen any plums. It may have helped that we put in another plum this year which will help pollinate it.

We are still struggling to the get the irrigation system right. There was a big puddle in one spot this morning, and other places aren't getting enough. I thought one day without watering had killed the parsley and mint I planted under the almond tree, but it seemed to bounce back after getting watered. I changed the system to come on every day. Supposedly you are not supposed to do that, but I haven't found any other way to keep things alive.

Irrigation adventures and something else we wish we hadn't planted

We've spent the last couple of days working on (and being frustrated by) the irrigation system. When we first moved here, the landscape designer we consulted suggested that we run one line for trees, one line for shrubs, and one line for pots. This system would work well if we didn't also have to consider watering needs of annuals, perennials, and vegetables.
In an attempt to coordinate watering depth needs, we're trying the following this year:

Program A is for pots, and runs for 5 minutes once a day in winter, up to 3 times a day in the heat of the summer. We've found some mini-sprayers that generally work well, but need to be replaced periodically as the holes get clogged with mineral deposits.
Program B is for shrubs, including roses, and runs 2 gph drips for 2 hours, once a week in winter, increasing to 3 times a week in summer.
Program C is for vegetables and annuals/perennials, and runs for 10-15 minutes daily to weekly, depending on the temperature and whether there are new seedlings or established plants. We haven't found an ideal delivery system yet; we've tried various kinds of sprayers and soaker hose, none of which have watered as evenly as we would like. This year we're trying a couple of new things. For the raised beds, we've added a conversion kit to our existing lawn sprinklers that has a kind of mini-bubbler, and in the vegetable garden, we're trying a different kind of soaker hose.
Program D is for established trees, which need to be watered for more hours less frequently.

Once we figured out how to program this into the irrigation timer, we also needed to make changes to our existing system. We didn't get as far as we would have liked in this process, because we also had to trace down the source of several leaks in the current system which were putting large quantities of water where we did not want it...wasting water and money!

Another distraction/complication.... the water leveler in one of our ponds stopped working, and upon investigation we found that it was clogged by umbrella plant that had outgrown its pot and wrapped its tentacles around the float valve. Umbrella plant is an attractive pond plant, but is very difficult to keep in check. It outgrows its pots and puts down dense mats of roots that must be periodically trimmed. Unfortunately we did not do that as frequently as it is apparently needed, so dealing with the problem involved a wrestling the heavy pots, a power saw to cut the roots, accompanied by some mild cursing.