Fall Plantings 1

We've been working this week in the southeast corner of our yard, in an area which gets a fair amount of shade from a lemon tree. We cleared out the area of weeds and spent-plant debris, and enlarged the berm around the lemon tree so we can deep water it more efficiently. It has four high-capacity drip lines which run for several hours at a time (weekly in summer, monthly in the cooler seasons) and seems healthy and productive, but the water doesn't soak down three feet as it should with a tree of this size. We also gave it a final application of fertilizer for the year, which we should have done around Labor Day and as a result some of its leaves are looking rather chlorotic. After watering in the fertilizer, I'll sprinkle nasturtium seeds under the tree out to its dripline, and mulch with pine straw.

Because this area doesn't get much sunlight, especially in the winter, we have to be selective about what we plant here. Root and leaf crops work best, although I have successfully grown edible-pod peas. This year, I made two parallel trenches about a foot apart following the curve of the raised bed, and ran 6-inch drip emitter lines down the trenches. In the outermost trench, I planted several varieties of lettuce, and in the inner trench I planted snow and sugar snap peas. Behind the row of peas, we put up some trellis netting. The trellis netting is a new experiment this year; we've tried other methods of corralling pea vines and met with limited success. I haven't seen trellis netting in stores, but ordered this from Amazon.

And now we wait!

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.

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.

Nasturtiums in unusual places

One of the things I enjoy the most about or garden is taking a stroll and seeing what's new or surprising. I tend to be somewhat of a guided laissez-faire, serendipitous gardener. I let plants go to seed, wait to see where they come up, remove the ones that aren't where I want them, and fill in the bare spots with things I think will be attractive in those spots. 

Since I've been doing this for several years now, I often find plants growing in areas where I didn't plant them. This morning I spotted nasturtiums growing up a trellis intended for a snail vine, and nasturtiums springing from the rocks surrounding one of our ponds.

Nasturtiums and hollyhocks are the most prolific of my "let it be" plants, but this time of year I also find larkspur and lettuce in various locations. My most unusual discovery was a viola growing in the nonplanted, nonwatered gravel pathways.

Roses in bloom

As predicted, the roses are blooming early this year. I think these are "Queen Elizabeth" tea roses. Of the vines I planted on the block wall last year, only the snail vine and Lady Bank's rose survived, but the snail vine now covers several of the trellises. And the nasturtiums, which reseeded themselves from last year, are carpeting the ground beneath the roses and spilling over the side of the raised bed.

A friend very helpfully brought me a few bags of pine straw she raked up on her property in Flagstaff, and I used it to mulch the roses after I cut them back in January. Not only will this help to cut down on weed germination, conserve water, and cool the root zone, it should help acidify the soil a little as it breaks down.

Mid-March pool garden overview

The nasturtiums in this photo reseeded themselves, and the roses are beginning to bloom. Last year the roses didn't bloom until Easter. The queen palms are looking better than they ever have, I assume because I started fertilizing instead of ignoring them. A kumquat tree we had planted behind the original waterfall died, and I replaced it with a second pygmy date palm.

Under the lemon tree

We recently revamped this area under the lemon tree, which had originally consisted of two tiers. We combined the two tiers into one, higher tier, and planted onions and potatoes. The nasturtiums and hollyhocks are volunteers. I'd originally planted nasturtiums as tier borders, and they have reseeded and spread. I doubt this area will ever be free of hollyhocks after the mistake I made several years ago of using homemade compost made of ground up hollyhock stalks.

Citrus is starting to bloom and fill the air with fragrance, and the lemon tree is no exception, so here's my earworm for the day: "Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet. But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat."

Unless, of course, you add sugar and make lemonade, in which case it is very tasty.

Peach Blossoms #2

Blossoms have appeared on this young peach tree, a Mid Pride variety planted as a bare-root transplant a year ago. We purchased this and a white-fleshed variety from the Phoenix Permaculture Guild. The other new tree survived the summer, but died in late fall. Our oldest peach tree fruits very early, usually in late April, and we hoped to extend the fresh-peach season by choosing some later-fruiting varieties.

The larger tree in the back is a Key Lime. I don't know that I would choose that variety again. The fruit is very small and therefore time-consuming to juice, and it is dangerously thorny. In an attempt to avoid being scalped, we try to keep the branches pruned higher than our heads. I didn't plant nasturtiums here this year; these reseeded and spread from last year's border planting.

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.

Companion Plantings

End of September/beginning of October overview

We're continuing weeding and fall planting this week. The sugar snap peas and a few lettuces are beginning to come up in the center bed, and I planted garlic in front of the roses in the bed in the foreground. The roses look pretty sad right now but should produce another flush of blooms and leaves in the next couple of months.

Here's a link to an interesting article I found on companion planting. This is the first time I've tried growing garlic, and I knew it was a good companion plant for roses, but wasn't sure how it would affect the broccoli which is also in this bed this year. The article also talks about the beneficial effects of nasturtiums, which are one of my favorite plants to line the perimeter of the raised beds. They are colorful, low growing, easily reseed themselves, and you can eat them too! It's always a trick (and a bit of a gamble) to plant them at the right time. A hard frost will kill them, as well a lesser frost if they aren't big enough, and they also die off in the summer heat.

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.

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.

The snake in the garden

Here's another picture of our "lilies of the field" garden under the key lime tree. In addition to the nasturtiums, bachelor's button and larkspur are beginning to bloom.

All the citrus trees are in bloom now, and the smell is delightful. Unfortunately this week I have learned that for every gardening Eden, there is a snake determined to spoil the pleasure one can enjoy in it. The snake that is rearing its ugly head for me right now is seasonal allergies, something I'd previously thought myself immune to suffering. Ha!

Actually, allergies are not usually caused by citrus, or the other kind of things in my garden. Flowering plants like citrus and these nasturtiums are insect-pollinated rather than wind-pollinated, and usually the pollen grains produced by insect-pollinated plants are too large to be inhaled and cause trouble. It's more likely that my symptoms result from the neighbors' ash and mulberry trees, or from the current crop of spring weeds infesting every patch of ground in the Valley area.

Morning meditations

For the beauty of the earth

For the glory of the skies

For the love which from our birth over and around us lies

Christ our God, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.

During the last year, I've begun to practice (albeit sporadically) what some call meditation and some call centering prayer. It involves quieting my mind, concentrating only on breathing, and listening for the voice of God. This time of year I find it especially nice to do this outdoors, although I really must keep my eyes closed or I will see something I need to do, like pulling weeds or thinning peaches. Today it was the words of this old hymn which came to my mind. I think we often tend to get so bogged down in "doing" rather than "being" that we forget to appreciate the simple things in life, and to be grateful.

I think of this spot under the key lime tree as my "lilies-of-the-field garden". Last spring and summer, as annuals succumbed to the heat, I threw their corpses in a pile under this tree and left them alone until the spent flowers, seedheads, and leaves dropped off. I didn't do anything else here, other than add the revamped grid drip system we've been installing all over the yard, and try to stay ahead of the weeds by pulling them out as I saw them arise. And right now, this spot is the most colorful one in the yard, with very little effort on my part.

And now it's time to go and thin the peaches, pull out a few weeds, and pick some asparagus for tonight's dinner.

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.

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.

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!

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.