Ten o'clock and 102 degrees

June 4, 2016

We knew our unusually long and cool spring was too good to last. Summer's here, and with a vengeance. Yesterday our backyard thermometer sensor, which is in the shade in a protected area on our back porch, hit 109 degrees. I spent the afternoon moving around the hose to provide additional water to our newest trees. Other than trying to keep things alive and harvest what's already set fruit, I mostly abandon gardening in summer and let zinnias take over. They are pretty and don't mind the heat.

Protecting peaches

Our Mid-Pride tree is full of nearly-ripe peaches. We neglected to thin this one as much as we did for the Desert Gold tree, but the peaches are actually larger. Go figure. This year, we're trying something new:using tulle bags (the kind used for wedding favors)  in an attempt to protect the ripening peaches from the birds. This was a suggestion from someone in a gardening Facebook group.which I've found to be very helpful.

Plumeria

There are still a few blooms on this yellow plumeria, which lives in a large pot on our side patio and is partially shaded by a pergola. The other one hasn't bloomed yet, and may not. These two are the only survivors of an unexpected early frost a few years ago that arrived while we were out of town and unable to move them into the garage as we usually do when there are frost warnings.

Petunias and sweet potatoes

Portulaca and sweet potatoes

I put together a second stacked-pot planter on the other side of the patio doors, this time using heat-loving portulaca rather than petunias. Sweet potatoes also love the heat, and are easy to propagate. I just use cuttings taken from vines, strip off the bottom couple of leaves, and stick the stem in the soil. As long as the soil is kept moist, they have no trouble rooting and taking off on their own. Mike created a drip irrigation system for them by drilling holes in each pot, and putting a circle of drip tubing in the planting area of each one.

Yard long beans and a volunteer tomato

Zinnias

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.

Fruitfulness

Zinnias (and beans, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, even if they aren't obvious)

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, and self-control"

I've been thinking about this verse as I watch beautiful and delicious things grow in my garden. It's always been one of my favorites, but my understanding of it has changed over the years. I used to think of it as a checklist of qualities I was supposed to have, and berate myself when I felt depressed, anxious, or otherwise lacking in any of them.

But as I've watched my garden grow, and as I've grown older, I've come to the realization that I can no more will myself to bear spiritual fruit than the flowers, fruits, and vegetables in my garden can will themselves into being. A tomato plant creates tomatoes because it is a tomato plant, not because it decides to do so. Given the right amount of sunlight, warmth, water, and nutrients from the soil, it has no choice but to produce tomatoes. It is true that I planted some of the things growing in our backyard, but others have come up entirely on their own, from seeds scattered by the wind or birds, or from vegetable scraps I threw out for compost.

I think "the fruit of the Spirit" manifests itself in us like the fruits in a garden. It's not something we strive to achieve, but something that grows out of our relationship with God. As we nurture that relationship in whatever ways we've found work best, the "fruits of the Spirit" can't help but grow in our lives.

Tomatoes

Artichoke

Fig

Green beans

Strawberrie

Yellow squast

Peaches

Red potatoes

Today's pickings

Yellow squash, several kinds of tomatoes, peppers, green beans, peaches, and grapes. The Roma tomatoes are volunteers that are growing in the zinnia jungle.

Peaches and weeds

We should get our first peaches from this Mid-Pride tree in a few weeks. This tree was purchased at the Phoenix Permaculture Guild's annual fruit tree sale and planted as a bare-root in February 2013.

The tall grass-like spikes are a reminder of our lasagne-gardening experiment several years ago. The hay we laid down in this area apparently had some kind of live seeds in it, and found its happy place in the composting vegetation meant to nourish more desirable plants. It spreads by underground runners and rhizomes, and shows up every spring without fail, no matter how diligently I have tried to dig it out.

At least this is a shady area in which to work. The current temperature, at not-quite-10 AM, is 98 degrees.

Early June overview

Yesterday marked the first 110 degree temperature of the year, and it's expected to be equally hot today.

We're still harvesting tomatoes, although most of them have stopped setting new fruit. Cherry and yellow pear tomatoes continue to produce, and I've found producing volunteer tomatoes all over the place. There are two volunteer cherry tomato plants growing out of the rocks lining the streambed, an as-yet unidentified tomato growing out of a parsley plant, and numerous kinds hiding out in the zinnia jungle.

The transplanted yellow squash in the foreground bed produces a nice-size squash every other day or so. The original mound, which lies in the large bed behind Zinnialand, hasn't done as well. The squash it produces are rather small if picked before they begin to darken and harden. I've gotten about one grey zucchini a week from the same bed, and nothing so far from the pattypan. The acorn squash has produced a long vine along the edges of the pond, but no sign of fruit yet. I haven't seen any melons or Armenian cucumbers yet, either. That's interesting, because the bed is alive with bees, hummingbirds, and other pollinators attracted to the zinnias and the artichoke blossoms. Maybe they are too busy with those flowers to bother with the squash and melon blossoms.

Last year's Japanese eggplant is still producing, and the new one is setting fruit. It was supposed to be a white eggplant...one Japanese eggplant is plenty..but it's clearly not. Some of the strawberry plants are still alive and producing, and I actually found a few blackberries that ripened rather than drying up.

Sweet potatoes are showing up in last year's planting beds. Obviously I didn't remove them all when I harvested them last fall. There are enough of them that I decided not to plant new ones. We're still harvesting smallish red potatoes from the bed under the lemon tree, as well as small but edible red onions.

I'm pretty sure our sick apple tree isn't going to make it, as its stunted leaves have turned from green to brown. What remains of the old peach tree appears fairly healthy, although it is a shadow of its former self. We should get the first peaches from one of the new ones we planted last year later this month. And of course, there are plenty of green citrus fruits growing on our grapefruit, orange, lemon, and lime trees.

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.

Peaches vs. birds and other moochers

Despite its obvious struggles, our eight year old Desert Gold peach is producing ripening fruit right on schedule. The way we know fruit is beginning to ripen is when we see evidence of birds helping themselves, and I noticed several have already been nibbled on.

If we wait for the fruit to fully ripen on the tree, the birds will get most of it, so we usually pick them in a not quite ripe state and allow them to finish ripening on the counter. They still taste better than anything from a store!

After this year's harvest, we plan to take off the long limb extending over the pond, which has very few leaves on it, and cut back the dead-looking branches to a point where the foliage seems healthy. If the branches don't have leaves, they can't photosynthesize food for the tree, so they're really just moochers. My theory is that by pruning away the nonproductive parts of the tree, the roots will be better able to provide nutrients to what's left.

Peaches in spite of it all

It looks like we will get a few peaches this year from our poor sick peach tree. In spite of its declining health, it still produces fruit.

There's a lesson here...

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.

He's dead, Jim.

Stone fruit trees are the redshirts of the desert garden, and it's a challenge to grow them here.. Peach trees only live 8-10 years, and nectarines usually lead even shorter lives. This dwarf nectarine and Desert Gold peach are probably that old, and have also undergone considerable stress during pond renovations to this area. I've concluded the nectarine is dead, and we'll replace it this spring, probably with a younger Desert Gold peach. The old one is showing definite signs of weakening as it has lost several branches and is leafing out poorly.

I'm also concerned about our oldest apricot tree, the one that yielded so many jars of apricot preserves last summer. It has yet to flower or leaf out, while a younger apricot tree is already setting fruit. The twigs are still supple and the wood is green, so we haven't entirely given up hope for its survival, although I'm not optimistic at this point.

It's always a little depressing when things die, especially trees I have known for many years. As I dig up Bermuda grass which has no right to live in Mike's strawberry patch, I feel a bit like Jonah after his gourd vine shriveled up today. A tree is just a tree, and yet...

If you're interested in trying to grow stone fruits in the low desert, here are are links to a couple of resources:

Master Gardener Citrus and Deciduous Fruit Tree publication
Greg Peterson article on fruit trees

Thinning, weeding, and planting: a Lenten meditation

Our Desert Gold peach tree has set fruit, not so much this year as some years, but it still needs to be thinned in order to yield tasty, reasonably sized fruit. As I've been working on that today, I also notice that some of the branches have died, so I will also do some pruning to remove the deadwood.

The recent rain has caused weeds to grow along with the vegetables and fruits in our garden. This time of year it is a daily battle to keep them under control. They seem to sprout up and grow a foot high overnight, and I try to get them out before they become fruitful and multiply. At least the moist soil makes them easier to pull out.

We planted two more fruit trees yesterday, Minnie Lee and Royal Lee cherries. Cherries are one thing that historically haven't been possible to grow here, because they require more chilling hours than we usually get. These are new cultivars that have only recently been appearing in nurseries, and they supposedly only require 200-300 chilling hours, which is about what we get. You need both varieties for cross-pollination; they aren't self-fruitful. We're also using them to experiment with a new growing method, high-density planting, in which you plant two similar trees in the same planting hole.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent on the Christian calendar. I didn't grow up in a liturgical church, so my take on this season is probably a little different. I don't think so much of "what should I give up for Lent?" as I think of thinning, weeding, and planting.

 Are there things in my life that need to be thinned? Many things that are desirable and good are best enjoyed in moderation. Trying to do too many good things at once may result in none of the things being done well, or even burnout.

Are there things in my life that need to be weeded? There are some things that don't belong in the garden of my life, and they deprive the things I want to see growing of water, nutrients, and sunshine. Ignore them too long, and they will spread and become more difficult to remove.

Are there things in my life that I want to plant? I've always found Lent a pretty good time to try out a new spiritual practice. If I try something and find that it brings me closer to God, then I try to make it a permanent part of my life. If not, I don't feel the need to continue it for an arbitrary period of time. Sometimes my gardening experiments don't work so well, either.

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.

Revamped pond

Here are two views of the reimagined upper pond and streambed. This one is the view from the gazebo with the new spillway. In the original design, there were plantings of plumbago which blocked the view of the pond when we were sitting in the gazebo. The additional spillway gives us a better view and also allows us to  better hear the sounds of the flowing water. The two trees are an early-fruiting peach on the left and a dwarf nectarine on the right. We're in the process of adding water plants to the new stream bed now- watercress, yerba mansa, and other small plants. Hopefully I will be able to keep the "evil four leaf clovers" at bay! The second view is from the side patio of our house. The bare tree on the left is an apricot, and the one on the right is an Asian pear. The green one in the background is Thevetia peruviana (yellow oleander). Mike loves these treelike shrubs as much as he hates bouganvillea, but I'd like to take this one out and plant more fruit trees. There's a kind of cherry that can supposedly be grown in the desert, but you need two varieties (Minnie Royal and Royal Lee) and I think this would be a good location for them. We planted three varieties of strawberry in the bare-looking raised bed in front of the pond, and a few of them have started to come up.

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.

Another messy job

I usually cut the cattails in the upper pond back once a year in an attempt to keep them somewhat under control, and to clear out the dead growth. I waited longer than I probably should have this year, because they exploded at the slightest touch, covering everything nearby (including me) in cattail fluff.

But look! Peach blossoms!

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.

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.

Waiting for peaches

"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not grow weary; they shall walk and not faint."

We're eager to taste our first summer fruit, peaches from this tree which I think is the Desert Gold variety. The fruit is usually ready to pick in early May, so it shouldn't be but a couple more weeks before we can enjoy eating them. This is our oldest fruit tree and although it didn't set as much fruit as it usually does, we took special care to thin it properly for its overall health, and in hopes of larger, tastier peaches. There are about two dozen peaches on it now, and they are sizing up nicely.

I'm an impatient gardener. I don't like to wait in general....I like to finish things. For those of you familiar with the MBTI, I'm a "J", meaning patience is not my strong suit. This can lead to gardening mistakes, such as this honeysuckle/rose arbor. However, gardening is also a great way to learn patience. I know that the peaches won't be as sweet if I pick them in their current hard, green stage, and so I wait.

Nectarines in bloom

Our dwarf nectarine tree is loaded with blossoms this year. The peach tree behind it is already setting fruit. I also noticed one of the calla lilies blooming today, and I picked a nice bowlful of sugar snap peas and some asparagus.

I have to amend yesterday's "no squash seedlings" observation. I replanted the mounds with some seedlings I'd started indoors, and watered them in well. Today what should I see but a cotyledon from one of the zucchini seeds I'd planted in February breaking ground!