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

Zinnias and tomatoes, round 2

We usually get two rounds of zinnias each year. The first shows up in late May and peaks in June and July. They're usually looking pretty bad in August, with more brown than green leaves, so I pull them up and scatter the seeds. By September new seedlings start appearing, and they'll usually bloom through November. I haven't bought zinnia seeds for several years because they reseed so readily. This tomato plant was also a volunteer, so I have no idea what kind it is, but it has several nice-sized, oddly shaped tomatoes which will hopefully ripen before freezing temperatures get here and destroy the vines. Fall tomatoes are always chancy. They won't set fruit when the temperatures are too hot, but as the days shorten, they ripen much more slowly, even with moderately warm daytime temperatures. I don't recommend buying plants to try in the fall, but I'm willing to give a volunteer a chance to see what it will do.

This month in the garden

I've been neglecting this blog, but have been fairly diligent about posting a picture a day to my Facebook gardening album, which is easier than thinking of something clever, inspirational, or educational to post here. Plus I think most of those who read this blog are also my Facebook friends.

We've had an unusually mild spring so far, but summer is here, and I tend to let the garden go because it's too hot. As you can see, zinnias are taking over our largest raised bed, which we planted in February with tomatoes, squash, beans, and eggplant. We're working on thinning them by "chop-and-drop" method, which means cutting them off and ground level and cutting into smallish pieces to use as mulch. This time of year plants can use all the mulching they can get.

Mike built a shade structure for one of our blackberry bushes out of PVC pipe and shade screen. Here it is behind the fig tree.. It has been a success...we harvested blackberries for the first time this year. In the past they've dried up before ripening.

Speaking of figs, they are also beginning to ripen. We planted a Brown Turkey fig last fall to replace the Ein Shemer apple that died after we converted the grass lawn to gravel. The small tree is loaded with figs.

We continue to harvest tomatoes and squash, but they're fading fast. The green beans have about had it too, but the eggplant and melons are beginning to produce. I didn't even plant the melon..several vines came up as volunteers, including this one in the gravel pathway! Part of the fun of gardening for me is unplanned surprises like this.

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

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.

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.

Swallowtail butterfly on zinnia

We have lots of butterfly visitors in our zinnia patch, but it's hard to get a picture because they're always moving. The trick is to stand still and wait until they come close.

If you're interested in butterflies native to the Sonoran desert, here's a link to an informative article, or you can download this pdf on Pollinators of the Sonoran Desert, which has color pictures not only of native butterflies, but also hummingbirds and other pollinators.

Hummingbird on zinnia flower

Hummingbirds are usually drawn to tubular flowers, but this one (on the orange flower in the middle) seemed to be finding something worthwhile in these zinnias. He spent quite a bit of time going from flower to flower this morning, and I'm wondering if he wasn't looking for insects. Hummingbirds don't live on nectar alone.

Of zinnias and Eden

"And God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed... And out of the ground God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food...And God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it."

As larkspur, nasturtiums, and hollyhocks begin to set seed and die, zinnias are beginning to come into bloom. I didn't plant these zinnias (or the larkspur, hollyhocks, and most of the nasturtiums either for that matter). Flowers from seasons past dropped seeds that lay dormant until the instructions encoded in their DNA told them that conditions were right for them to germinate. The time of year they show up varies somewhat, but zinnias like warmer temperatures and longer days.The main thing I've had to do in this bed is pull out zinnias in places where they were crowding out the beans and squash I did plant. There are also a lot of tomatoes I didn't plant mixed in with the zinnias, and in some cases I've had to pull them out too.

In the story of the biblical Garden of Eden, God planted the garden and Adam and Eve were supposed to take care of it. God did all the heavy digging, so to speak, but from the way I read the story, humans were supposed to tend the garden. The work wasn't meant to be burdensome, but enjoyable and creative. That's how I like to think of our garden. I like to let nature take its course as much as possible, making adjustments as I see fit.

That means I let plants nearing the end of their functional lives get a little straggly as they set seed and provide food for birds and insects. My HOA probably would object to this were the plants in our front yard, because their emphasis is on maintaining appearances. It means I probably don't get the maximum yield in terms of fruits and vegetable production, because I like to leave room for flowers in my vegetable beds. I also allow birds to eat some of our excess peaches and other fruit, because I like to watch birds. Farmers might see this as wasteful, because their emphasis is on growing enough to make a profit.

 I like a garden that is both pleasant to the sight, and good for food, not only for me, but for other living creatures. It provides enough fresh fruits and vegetables for us to enjoy and some to share. And it's not burdensome to take care of it, but enjoyable and creative.

Squash

It looks like will we get at least one zucchini this year. The urban legends about zucchini that multiply like tribbles haven't usually been born out in our experience. Generally, we have more luck with yellow squash than zucchini.

No fruit yet on the pattypan or acorn squashes, although the plants seem healthy. I'm seeing an abundance of female flowers and a deficit of male flowers on all the squash plants so far, and it takes two to tango, or to make squash. Thanks to zinnias, alyssum, and other heat-tolerant flowering plants we have plenty of bees and other pollinators. So, if the female:male ratio improves before it gets too hot, we ought to see more in the way of squash.

I spent a few minutes clearing out mint and Mexican primrose that was encroaching on the pattypan squash's access to water and sunlight. I do believe if a giant asteroid were to wipe out most life on earth, mint and Mexican primrose would survive, along with cockroaches. While doing so, I found a surprise in the way of a pepper plant I didn't know was there. I had pepper plants in that spot last year, so I assume this one either self-seeded or came up from the roots of a plant that appeared to be dead. I often just cut away dead or spent-looking plants, rather than uprooting them, so I don't disturb the roots of other things growing in the same area.

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.

Baby vegetables

We're seeing the beginnings of green beans and yellow squash from our February plantings, as well as several Japanese eggplants on a plant that lived through the winter. Zinnias are coming up everywhere in this bed. I regret having to pull healthy, attractive plants up, but if I don't they will take over and crowd out the beans and squash. I once heard it said that the definition of a weed is a plant growing where you don't want it, but I still hate to pull up zinnias.

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.

Watermelon surprise

This volunteer watermelon hid pretty well among the zinnias, but it tasted good.

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.

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.

Plants that can take the heat

There are a few plants that can take our summer heat. Zinnias are one of them, and I can usually get two "crops" before frost sets in by scattering the seeds while deadheading. The green bean originally planted in this bed have been totally eclipsed by the zinnias, but I'm letting the zinnias have their way for now. We added flagstones to this bed for interior access, and I actually waded into this jungle on a bean hunt. The plants are still there, but not surprisingly, beanless at this time. When temperatures get this hot, most vegetables won't set fruit anyway, so we might as well enjoy the flowers. 

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.

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.

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.