Confusions

Fruit cocktail tree (peach, plum, nectarine, apricot)

The plum graft on this fruit cocktail tree seems to be a little confused about the season. I saw a few blossoms on the apple tree, too. Both trees are young....we planted the fruit cocktail tree a year ago to replace a mature and prolific apricot that had died for no apparent reason, and the apple tree last spring to replace a dwarf nectarine that probably died from a recent pond renovation.

We have had better luck with citrus trees than stone fruit trees here. The lemon, orange, and grapefruit trees we planted in 2002 have grown quite large and seem healthy, but the lifespan of our stone fruit trees is in the single digits. Sometimes I can come up with a reason from their demise (drip irrigation failure, roots disturbances from nearby renovations) and sometimes not.

My current understanding is that our planting methods may not be ideal. Early in our gardening adventure, we lost several stone fruit trees that we had planted in the lawn. Because we had successfully grown them in grassy areas of our previous two Phoenix-area backyards, we attributed their deaths to especially poorly draining, heavily compacted clay soil here. In an attempt to give them better drainage, we constructed the raised beds and filled them with better-draining soil. The problem with this method is that it's difficult to water the trees to the recommended three-foot depth because the water runs out of the raised beds. As the trees grow, their roots spread out rather shallowly in the raised beds rather than going deep, and that has been a contributing factor in their early deaths. At least that's my current hypothesis, and I'm not sure there's a way around it.

A blustery day

We got a bit of wind yesterday afternoon and it took down the rose arbor (as well as the hollyhock in yesterday's post)

Hollyhock 2.0

Hollyhocks

We don't usually get a second round of hollyhocks, but here is a pink one.

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.

Broccoli beginnings

I've been watching for broccoli transplants and picked up the last two pony packs at Lowe's today. I planted them in the newly-cleared sweet potato bed in front of the upper pond, along with the spinach seedlings I sprouted in peat pots. Here they are, and you can see the drip irrigation grid we use to water our raised beds.

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!

The resurrection of the artichokes and the genesis of the peas

We've gotten some rain the last few days, which is helping new plantings and making weeding a bit easier. Of course, it also brings out ants, which makes attempts at weeding somewhat unpleasant. I cleared out a lot of mint and Mexican primrose from the area lining the streambed, and discovered that our oldest artichoke has already started to come back. There's no sign of the one I planted last year yet; we'll have to wait to see if it shows up.

The sugar snap and snow peas are beginning to break through the soil. I planted heavily because I didn't know how old the seeds were, but they're coming up pretty thickly. Nasturtiums and hollyhocks are popping up everywhere too. Perhaps this year will be the one I manage to keep them under control. The nasturtiums aren't as much of a problem as the hollyhocks as they are low growing (and edible) but the hollyhocks will crowd out everything else if I don't aggressively go after them.

Here's a line of lettuces (along with more nasturtiums) sprouting along the drip line where they were planted. As with the peas, I threw everything I had left over out there- a mixture of romaine, leaf, buttercrunch, and who knows what all else. Because I haven't had much luck with spinach germination, I'm attempting to start that inside in peat pots rather than sowing directly into the ground.

In other gardening news: I spent several hours Sunday afternoon precooking eggplant for parmigiana and freezing it, and now I need to pick eggplant again. I gave up on the tomatillos and honeydew as the vines were dying back, and pulled them out so they'd stop blocking the sun from the pepper plants, which are beginning to produce. And I noticed a young citrus tree growing behind the waterfall that I'm guessing came from a key lime seed, but who knows what it might turn out to be? Most citrus is grafted onto sour orange or lemon rootstock; it doesn't do well when grown from seed.