Small accomplishments, small annoyances

My gardening goal for today was to weed this bed on the east side of our upper pond. It has two tiers, a narrow upper one near the pond, and a larger lower one formerly occupied by a thevetia which had crowded everything else out and killed a nectarine tree with its shade. We now have three fruit trees in this area...a Santa Rosa plum in the narrow upper bed where the thevetia originally was planted, and two supposedly desert-tolerant cherry trees in the larger lower bed.  Earlier in the spring, there were snapdragons, nasturtiums, and stock blooming around the base of the trees.

 Marigolds, zinnias, and sweet potato vines are now beginning to replace the faltering spring flowers, but there are other things attempting to get a foothold here that I don't want, primarily Bermuda grass and Mexican petunia (Ruellia brittonia) We will probably never get rid of all the Bermuda grass, because there used to be a lawn here, but I brought the Mexican petunia invasion on myself. Pro tip: don't plant desert-tolerant plants like Mexican petunia or Mexican primrose anywhere they have free access to water.They will be exceeding fruitful and multiply, crowd out more desirable plants, and they're impossible to eradicate entirely.

While weeding, I found something else I could do without in this bed: a colony of angry ants, unhappy that I was disturbing their home with my trowel. I try to be as pesticide-free as I can with our garden, and I know that ants are helpful in breaking up and aerating our clay soil, but I do not like it when they bite my hands and feet. And did I mention that at this time of year it's usually approaching 100 degrees by 10 AM? Time for a blogging-cum-water-in-the-air-conditioning break.

Bee-utiful borders

I like to plant flower borders around the perimeter of our raised beds, an idea I picked up from a Phoenix Permaculture Guild class we took a few years ago. Not only do they look nice, they attract bees which is helpful if you're trying to grow anything that requires an insect pollinator. And even if you aren't trying to grow food in your backyard, you're doing the environment a favor by providing for the bees.

There's a lot of speculation about why bee populations are declining, but one problem we have in large cities is the "urban desert" effect...buildings, parking lots, roads, and gravelscapes don't provide much in the way of livable habitat for them. The Maricopa County Cooperative Extension ran into this problem when they attempted a community garden project in an area of downtown Phoenix where there is a large homeless population. It was hoped that the garden would not only provide nutritious food to supplement the diets of people living in the area, but that the gardening skills they would learn might help some of them find work. But the Master Gardeners volunteering with the program found that many of the fruits and vegetables they planted never produced anything, because there were no bees living in the area to pollinate them. It would be a very serious problem if bees died out, so I'm happy to help them out any way I can, especially when what makes them happy makes me happy too.

The permaculture class suggested edible flowers, so I use a lot of nasturtiums, but they don't like really hot or cold weather. I usually plant petunias in late fall for winter color and in the spring, sweet alyssum and dwarf marigolds which will take the summer heat. I don't think you can see them, but there are dozens of bees on the alyssum in this photo. It has a sweet, honey-like scent that I think I enjoy as much as the bees do.

This bed contains bush snapbeans, tomatoes, and three kinds of squash. I didn't plant any of the tomatoes; one plant survived the winter and all the others are volunteers. I just put the cages around healthy-looking plants that came up in areas where I didn't have anything else planted. I'm not sure what kind of tomatoes they are as I had several kinds planted here last year. It will be interesting to see what they turn out to be.

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.

Exit nectarine, enter peach

Mike dug out the stump of the deceased nectarine tree today, and we replaced it with a Babcock white peach, which fruits a little later in the season than Desert Gold. I tried to salvage the snapdragons, marigolds, and purple heart that had been growing around its base, and threw in some more marigold and nasturtium seeds for good measure before mulching.

Gardening is like a box of chocolates

Gardening is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're going to get.

What is all this? I don't know yet. When seeds first come up, they all look pretty much alike. All seed plants produce either one (monocots, including corn and other grasslike plants) or two (dicots, including most other vegetables and flowers) embryonic leaves. It's not until the plant's first true leaves appear that you can begin to guess what the plant is, and that might be several days or even a couple of weeks.

When the true leaves appear, I'll be able to distinguish the smooth oval leaves of zinnias from the feathery leaves of larkspur. Telling a marigold from a tomato seeding, or a squash from a melon seedling, might take a little longer.

Knowing what was in this bed last year, I'm guessing that a fair number of these seedlings will turn out to be zinnias which I'll need to thin aggressively. There's some larkspur in this mix, too, and there are likely to be tomatoes considering how many wound up composting where they fell. And somewhere in there is the red okra I planted a couple of weeks ago.

Part of the fun for me is seeing what I wind up getting, and then trying to incorporate it into an attractive whole.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

We returned from a weekend in cool San Diego to find that the Phoenix summer heat has set in in earnest. 110 degrees, according to our outdoor thermometer. There's not much that can be done in the garden this time of year, other than try to keep things alive.

We're still getting lots of tomatoes from fruit that set before the heat arrived. The new varieties seem to be a definite "go", with larger tomatoes and less evidence of fruit splitting, blossom end rot. Cilantro is dead, but basil is healthy. The zucchini, yellow, and winter squash plants, as well as the melon plants, are still disappointing small for this late in the season. None of the eggplants I attempted to start from seed have survived. but the lone Japanese eggplant planted as a transplant is fruiting prolifically. I'm not too bothered, because I still have eggplant and squash in the freezer from last year's bumper crop. The Armenian cucumber, yardlong beans, and the few zipper cream pea vines that came up look fairly comfortable in their semi-shady location under the lemon tree. Nectarines are beginning to ripen, although the fruits are rather small, and watercress has virtually taken over the streambed between ponds. Zinnias and coreopsis are seemingly unaffected and look great; the marigolds are wilting a bit.

At this time of year, I garden in five-minute intervals. I used the time today to cut down hollyhocks that had ceased to bloom and set the plants aside to dry and become flower mulch. This year we had one deep-red plant that I hope will appear again next year.

Poolside in the garden

I haven't posted a picture of this corner of our yard in a while, so here is one. There are rosebushes along the block wall, and this year we added two new bare-root peach trees that we got from a Valley Permaculture Guild plant sale. We also added trellises for vines on the wall, made from recycled metal pieces of an old gazebo that had begun to deteriorate.

We planted two banana trees in the planter areas behind the pool last year. One died, but the other has come back nicely and appears to be multiplying...there's a baby banana tree next to this one which isn't visible in this photo.

I don't think we will get any key limes this year because of the freeze. The same thing happened a few years ago when we had another hard freeze. Limes are more susceptible to frost damage than other citrus fruits, but surprisingly enough we have a few limes on the Bears lime tree, which is a lot younger than the key lime. Luckily for my grapefruit-loving mother, grapefruit is the least susceptible and our Ruby Red tree wasn't affected at all.

The rosebushes are still blooming, but the nasturtiums and larkspur are gone, to be replaced with marigolds and zinnias. The large marigold directly behind the waterfall is a holdover from last fall which survived the frost. I've collected seeds from it and scattered them along the perimeter of this raised bed, the planters behind the pool, and other places in the yard.

The bushes in the center left edge of the picture are yellow and orange Tecomas ("Yellow bells") Like the banana, they were taken to the ground in last winter's frost, but have rebounded vigorously. The plants in the center right edge of the photo, and in the planter in the foreground, are Little John bottlebrushes, which seem to be quite frost-tolerant.

Pond remodel progress

Here is the original (but remodeled) spillway into the streambed. The plants Paul gave us have really taken off, particularly the watercress. We're still working on the second (new) spillway which comes off the gazebo side of the pond.

The tree on the left side is a dwarf nectarine and the one on the right is an Asian pear. At the base of the pear is a plumbago and some invincible Mexican petunias that return like zombies no matter what I do to them. The dead branches in the upper center right belong to a thevetia which was frost damaged this winter. We haven't cut them off yet because (a) it would be a hassle, requiring the use of a ladder on an uneven surface and (b) Mike keeps hoping it will continue to green up.  The marigold in the foreground came from seeds I snagged while deadheading elsewhere and then played Johnny Appleseed in various locations in the yard.

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.

A few changes and surprises

This bed has shown a lot of changes in the past couple of weeks. All three of the tomato plants that I thought were dead (see March 5 picture here) are flourishing, and the Early Girl has begun to set fruit. My second planting of green beans (behind the tomato cages) was more successful than the first, with plants now about two inches high. In the midst of the bean planting, there are a few surprises: lots of zinnias and one tomato that I didn't plant. And in the rear of the bed, the asparagus roots I planted on Valentines Day have sent up ferny shoots that are about six inches high now.

The marigold seeds I planted around the edges of this bed never came up, so I took advantage of discounted  pony packs at Lowe's to remedy that. As I deadhead the spent blossoms, I take the seeds and toss them in other places, mostly where petunias and nasturtiums are currently growing. Those won't make it through the summer in any kind of attractive format, but the marigolds and zinnias will.

Growth. Change. Adaptation. Surprises. That's gardening, and that's life.

More roses

We have three tea rosebushes in this raised bed adjoining our patio, along with various herbs, asparagus, tomatoes, hollyhocks, petunias, and marigolds. The tree in the background is a Santa Rosa plum

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!

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.