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

A disappointment of sweet potatoes

The rain we've had for the last few days means cooler temperatures and easier-to-dig garden beds, so I decided today would be a good day to dig up the bed in front of the upper pond. I didn't plant sweet potatoes here, but apparently we overlooked enough tubules for them to come up quite prolifically all on their own. The whole bed was full of luxuriant green vines, which spilled out and covered most of the walkway between the bed and the gazebo. I was looking forward to an equally abundant harvest of tasty sweet potatoes, but was surprised and disappointed to find only a few of edible size.

We'll plant spinach in this area in a few days. I don't usually have much success with it germinating when I try sow the seeds directly in the ground, so I started them in peat pots indoors a week ago. About half of them have sprouted, but they aren't big enough to brave the outdoors yet.

In other news, the article about our backyard is in the November issue of Phoenix Home and Garden. The new garden editor did a wonderful job of writing a very nice article on short notice, the photographs are lovely, and those who've seen it have been very complimentary. However it wasn't quite what I expected based on my conversations with the previous garden editor, who came out to our house several times over a period of three years, and planned to do a "garden of Eden" overview theme. The published article was more about our ponds than the system of raised beds and pathways, which we think is the most unique feature of our backyard.The pictures of our pond and streambed were very nice, though....they don't look nearly as good now!

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.

Invasion of the sweet potatoes

If you're looking for something that thrives in the summer heat, may I recommend sweet potatoes? I planted two ornamental sweet potato vines in a small area between our lower pond and gazebo three years ago. They die back in cold weather, but come back with a vengeance as soon as it warms up. By midsummer, if left to their own devices, they would cover the floor of the gazebo, the surface of the pond, the streambed, and the raised beds that border it on the other side.

I keep cutting off the vines, sticking the cuttings in hanging baskets and pots, and they keep coming!

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.

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.

The return of the sweet potatoes

I didn't dig up all the sweet potatoes from this area last year. They're back!

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.

More baby vegetables

There are a couple of small yellow squash on the plant in the foreground, and I believe a zucchini on the upper plant. It's hard to tell when they're at this stage, because what looks like a fruit at the base of the female squash flower will wither away if it isn't pollinated. I haven't seen any male flowers open, but they must have at some point because the yellow squash at least are definitely past the embryonic stage, not only on this plant, but also on one I transplanted to another area. No sign of fruit yet on the acorn or flying saucer squash plants.

I picked enough green beans for a meal and about five small Japanese eggplant. This is the first time I've tried to get a second crop from a plant that came back from the roots after winter cold seemingly destroyed it. I'm not sure if they are so small because of that, or because it's not really hot yet. Eggplant really like the heat. When everything else suffers, eggplant, okra, and sweet potato vines keep going.

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.

Sweet potato harvest

I've been dithering about when to harvest the sweet potatoes we planted from slips last June. I kept reading articles, and couldn't get up the gumption to destroy the beautiful vines, which grew happily and prolifically through the hot summer. My decision that today would be the day came not from something I'd read, but  because I was in a bad mood, and I've found that digging and other kinds of heavy garden work are excellent therapy for bad moods. Anyway, they obviously were ready to be harvested as some had reached quite a large size.

Here's one of the articles I found about harvesting sweet potatoes. I started to use a spading fork as suggested in the article, but was concerned that I'd damage the potatoes with its tines, so I used a trowel instead. After I pulled out the vines, I scraped away with the side of the trowel at the base of each root until I saw the top of a potato; then I used the pointed end to dig it out.

The potatoes will have to "cure" for a while before we can try eating them, but I definitely consider this year's sweet potato experiment a success and will try them again next year. The only thing I think I'll do differently is plant them earlier- in May rather than late June.

Survivor (Phoenix style)

Summer is for my gardening motivation and success as winter is in other climates. Yes, I know it's theoretically possible to both plant and harvest something every month of the year here, but it is not enjoyable this time of year. High temperatures are still well over a hundred, and many days the monsoon adds humidity to the discomfort level. So I don't do a lot, and the garden shows it.

The largest plant in the foreground is a cherry-type tomato that came up as a volunteer, and deserves the title Survivor of the Summer. Although it currently isn't setting fruit, it is much healthier than most of our other edibles and I am hopeful that it will begin to produce again when the temperatures cool down a bit. Most of the other tomato plants I planted last February haven't made it this far.

We are also still harvesting Japanese eggplant and Armenian cucumbers. Unlike me, those plants seem to love the summer heat. The bed in the background has been overtaken by zinnias, which are on their second round this year. (They happily reseed themselves without much effort on my part). The sweet potato vines around the gazebo are going crazy, covering a fair portion of the gazebo floor and rooting themselves in the streambed.

I'm a little worried about our apricot, peach, and nectarine trees, particularly our oldest, largest apricot tree. They have lost most of their leaves, which is not uncommon for them to do this time of year, but I don't see any new leaves coming out on the big apricot tree yet, and that might indicate a larger problem. The leaves look as if they are suffering from salt burn, which is more likely in the summer when we have to water more frequently. Texas root rot is also a concern in our area, and there isn't a cure for that, other than not to plant fruit trees.

We (or rather Mike, who is doing the heavy digging) are currently preparing the raised beds for fall planting. That means digging out as much of the Bermuda grass as possible, working in soil sulfur to help alleviate the high soil alkalinity, adding nitrogen and phosphate, and checking that the drip irrigation system works properly. If you're interested in doing some fall planting of your own, here's a link to the Master Gardener publication, "Ten Steps to a Successful Vegetable Garden".

I'm looking forward to cooler weather when I can once again enjoy myself in the garden.

Gardens do not thrive on neglect

We just returned from a week in California leading a group of young people to work on repairs to a couple of aging city church buildings and some houses of low income and/or elderly members of the community. It was nice to sleep in a bed instead of a church floor surrounded by giggly teenagers, but it was not nice to take a stroll around our backyard garden! If a giant asteroid hit the earth and wiped out most life, I don't think the last thing alive would be cockroaches...it would be Bermuda grass. Yikes! I am not looking forward to the task of getting it out of the raised beds.

We have everything on drip irrigation, but this time of year I usually do a daily walkabout and provide supplemental water on an as-needed basis. Other than the Bermuda grass invasion, most things are still alive. I haven't seen any major casualties, other than the tomatoes, but I don't think I can blame their demise on lack of water. Because we took our portable pop-up canopies on the trip to shade people,  the poor tomatoes had none, and they really need it this time of year. There are some yellow squash and Japanese eggplant which grew to a harvestable size while we were gone, and the sweet potato vines are thriving. There are nice long vines on the winter squash, yardlong beans, zipper cream peas, and Armenian cucumbers, but no fruit yet.

One of the churches where our team works has a number of pocket gardens on the property, worked by people who live in a nearby subsidized apartment building populated by refugees from Eastern Europe and Asia. Many of these refugees suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and gardening is therapeutic as well as a source of economical and nutritious food. Some plots are maintained by homeless people. The church has a "Co-Op Cafe" serving the homeless which utilizes some of the produce. Here's a picture of some of these pocket gardens at the edge of the church parking lot. Anywhere there is a patch of dirt, someone will use it to grow food! I'd love to see this idea spread to other communities.

Survivor- Phoenix style!

Yesterday set a record high in our area, with an official high temperature of 119 in Glendale. One of our backyard thermometers read 123 in the shade at one point in the afternoon, and one placed on a slate patio table in the sun reached 149 degrees. Today is supposed to be even hotter.

So far, our newly planted sweet potato slips have survived. Each slip is planted under a drip emitter and heavily mulched.  The drip comes on every three days for an hour to encourage deep rooting, but I have also been giving them supplemental water twice a day by running a hose sprinkler for 5 minutes at a time.

I left the potato that produced these slips in water, and it produced more shoots! So I will be repeating this process in a different location in a few days.

Sweet potato slips

Inspired by seeing how well ornamental sweet potato vines grow in our hot summers, I decided to try growing edible sweet potatoes this year. As I understand, ornamental and edible sweet potato plants are the same species...just different varieties. The ornamental vines are bred for attractive leaves, and the edible ones for tasty roots. I looked for sweet potato slips several places and was unable to find them, so I eventually decided to try growing my own from a sweet potato I'd gotten at the grocery store. I'd read some warnings that grocery store potatoes might be treated to prevent sprouting, but this one sprouted just fine. I followed these directions.

After the slips sprouted roots, I put them outside in potting soil in this old aquarium on our back patio. I've found the aquarium works better than the plastic mini-greenhouse peat pot kits for starting seeds, because I don't have to worry about leakage and I think it helps keep the humidity up a bit once the cover comes off. We also have a cat that will  eat anything vegetative growing in the house, so I can't keep seedlings inside. This cat once ate a miniature rosebush we'd been given, thorns and all

The slips have gotten to a size now where I really need to plant them in the ground. Unfortunately, we're in the middle of a heat wave and expecting record high temperatures this week. I'm going to try planting them at dusk and then mulch heavily, keep them moist, and hope for the best. And next year I will start this process earlier in the spring!

And the heat goes on...

Our outside thermometer reads 112 this afternoon, and most plants are showing the stress of our insanely hot summers. One plant that is apparently oblivious to high temperatures is sweet potato vine. I planted two plants in this area along the pond last year, which died back in the winter. A friend told me they wouldn't come back, so I planted another one this spring, The "dead" plants underwent a resurrection of sorts, and now I have three plants.

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!

It's greener on our side of the fence

Today I noticed the snail vine was starting to creep over the block wall again. I think its cascades of dark green leaves and lavender flowers are lovely, but apparently it's a big no-no as far as our homeowner's association is concerned, so I snipped off the strands that threatened to peek over the wall behind our gazebo. All vegetation must be strictly confined to our side of the fence and not encroach on the HOA side. Our "green wall" consists of snail, lilac, and honeysuckle vines, and they are very vigorous growers. Besides being much more attractive to look at than concrete block walls, the vines cool the area by transpiration and blocking reflected light, making the gazebo an even nicer place to sit and relax. The honeysuckle also has an intoxicating fragrance in the spring.

The plants in the foreground are sweet potato vines. This was the first year we tried them, and we've been very pleased with how well they work to line the streambed leading from the upper to the lower pond. They spread vigorously and are easily rooted, yet aren't invasive. When we first built the system, we made the mistake of letting umbrella plant grow in the streambed. That was a bad decision; not only does it grow tall enough to block the view, it also sends its roots and shoots everywhere and actually caused water to start spilling out of the streambed and into the gazebo. I'm not sure how long these vines will last and how they will handle a freeze, but at the rate they grow, replacing them won't be problematic.