Sonoran Desert Gardening – Page 2

Last of the Landscaping!

Six months after starting my yard renovation I am pretty much done. I am so relieved. Things look really tidy all the way around, thanks to a final total of 23 tons of decomposed granite!

The last 12 tons of decomposed granite was delivered to my home last Thursday. A very competent and small landscape business here in Tucson–Green Thumb Landscaping–shoveled the first 6 tons, and did some major improvements to my front yard; believe me, I needed the help, my huge backyard has been enough work for me! I highly recommend their work.

The last 6 tons was shoveled today by my mom and my new friend Mike, whom Bearbear and I met at the wildcat dogpark last year. Mike generously offered his time this morning and helped out: thanks to both to my mom and Mike!I had yummy apricot muffins and fresh coffee to get things going, and we wrapped up well before it hit 100+ degrees.

Here’s my mom and Mike hacking away at the last ton of rock; my back was a bit screwed up this weekend due to a sacro-illiac joint sprain (just one of many in the past 10 years, I’m sad so say), so I was just so thankful for the help:

Here’s just a small snapshot of one part of my yard after all the work today: it’s great to finally having everything looking great! No mean feat, given it’s the driest, hottest time of year.

Garden View During Heat Advisory Today

When I got up early to watch the French Open today, I could see through my kitchen window that my night blooming cereus was blooming: it’s the first bloom of the summer, and in the photo above you can see a little purplish bud in the lower right-hand corner promising more giant white flowers soon.

I took a few photos during the commercial break. Here are my cukes; beans and canatalope, compost and my beehive in the background, along with too many bales of straw–the soaker hose irrigation seems to be working just fine:

Things look kind of lush for Tucson, given we had a high heat advisory today (now, that is always remarkable around here in June; that means it really is hot). I think it was 107 Fahrenheit today.

Here are my sunflowers, hollyhocks mixed in with more standard desert/xeriscape perrenials like verbena, penstemmon, russian sage, desert milkweed and of course my very big blooming agave:

Hot, hot, hot. I’ve managed to create a bit of a “micro-climate” in my yard, though.

Landscaping With Me Mum

Just a few days ago my driveway was clear of all the gravel and rock I’d ordered earlier this spring:

So to remedy the situation, I ordered 6 tons of really pretty 1/2 inch desert gold decomposed granite; and my mom generously offered to help shovel and spread the stuff in my yard, despite osteoporosis: here she is early yesterday morning:

The gold color looks really nice in contrast to the brown stuff I used to make the pathways:

Here’s the yard (with just the pathway) before we spread the decomposed granite:

And here it is when we were done. Bearbear, as you can see, is poised for action, just in case he happens to see a cat out in the street.

After spreading the fine gravel at a 3 inch depth, I hosed it down and then tamped it by using a cookie sheet that I stood on: this packed down the clay particles in the decomposed granite and creates a very nice firm surface, which, in theory, should repel weeds.

So, this project took us 4 hours. I made a nice lunch (including chocolate chip muffins with cream cheese filling, yum), made sure my mom had a lovely nap outside under the citrus trees, and then home 50 miles south-east she went…but not without a quick self-portrait of us as she went out the front door. Per bone density tests she has multiple cracked/wedged vertebrae; but, you wouldn’t know it by her shovel-ready-acumen. I should be so lucky when I’m that age! Way to go, mom!

Finally, below, the next project: my hot date with 100 feet of Mr. Drip Soakerhose. This is a clever and easy way to irrigate, by cutting sections of soaker hose and solid tubing and connecting them with the yellow plastic connectors you see below, thus controlling where to soak the garden….and where not to. Once the soaker hose is set in place, I’ll mulch with straw; luckily, it’s been a really mild spring so far, and tonight it’s going down to…..50 degrees! Bizarre for so close to summer; so that I’m a bit late in setting up my irrigation probably isn’t going to hurt much, it’s not scorching hot….yet.

Endless Yardwork

It’s not quite Endless Summer…but at least all this work should make for a more beautiful yard for me this summer. What have I been doing the past few days? It hasn’t been anything art-related. Though last Sunday we had a great Irish house session at my home: 2 fiddlers, 1 piper, 1 flute, 1 guitar, 1 bodhran. It was great. A nice break from all the work.

So, all those plants I got at the plant sale (see the previous post) had to go in the ground, so I dug up the ground adjacent to my perennial bed, which of course has agaves and aloes in it, that’s the kind of perennial border you get around here:

…and I plunked in some of the plants from the sale, including some hollyhocks, we’ll see how they do….

Then, alongside my new path I dug up a narrow strip of ground; my ambitious plans for an annual flower bed. We’ll see how my dreams look in 2 months, when everything will be beaten down by the scorching hot days.

I have no reason to trust all the doves and birds that love to peck at the ground when I’m not nearby…so I covered up my new flowerbed with some chicken wire (now sold as “poultry mesh”!!) I scattered marigold, globe amaranth, cosmos, nasturtium and anise hyssop seeds; they are heat tolerant and I’ve had some luck with globe amaranth before. We’ll see what happens.

Then next to the flower bed I planted a couple of somewhat aggressive groundcovers, a wedelia (yellow drops) and a creeping lantana; there’s still some bermuda grass in that area that sadly shoots up occasionally and I’d like to give what’s left of it some hefty competition. That plant is a scourge. No, it’s worse than that. It’s a plague. You can’t kill it.

Next to the 2 groundcovers, where the giant hole in the ground used to be, is my new Sweet Pete fig tree, which my mom gave to me Monday.

Here you can see what I did with my cactus pruner; I broke a blade hacking away at this agave, though. I think I got a bit carried away.

My mom gave me some soaker hose she wasn’t using, so I strung it around my fruit trees: apricot–which is just a fledgling–and my more mature tangelo, orange and lemon trees. The hose is partially underground and I heaped lots of mulch on top of it. At a slow low-water-pressure drip, the ground is soaked 3 feet deep in 12 hours.

I still have some chores left to do: install more soaker hoses, install shade cloth on raised beds, paint the work bench where my bee hive will stand, and plant a cactus garden. And then order some more decomposed granite to fill in barren spots. I hope to have all that stuff done in another month. THEN I can get back to sewing and playing music.

Plant Sale at the Pima County Cooperative Extension Demonstration Garden

The University of Arizona’s “Campus Farm” is just down the street from me; it’s the large plot of acreage that is their agricultural program. They also have a lovely demonstration garden as part of their Cooperative Extension, and yesterday was the spring plant sale to benefit the Master Gardener program and the Cooperative Extension Demonstration Garden. Most plants–very nice plants suitable for desert landscaping–were $4. Uh-huh. What a deal. A lot of the same plants would be triple, at least, at a local nursery; and, they wouldn’t be as good. Here’s the line that formed well before the sale started:

Smart folks brought their own boxes, as you can see. I just staggered around with pots of plants in my arms. As soon as the gate opened, there was a feeding-frenzy under the small ramada where all the plants were neatly arranged; here you can see the “hold” table in the foreground, where folks have stashed their plants they want to buy, and the actual sale in the background:

Here’s a close-up of some of the lovely plants on hold, including my own; I picked up a pink trumpet vine, a penstemon, a couple of hollyhocks (we’ll see how they do) and some xeric groundcovers including a Chihuahuan primrose, and some hummingbird and bee friendly perennials:

The trumpet creepers are in full bloom in the gardens; that rose arbor in the background has a very nicely controlled Cecile Brunner rose. There were so many people at the sale. I think I heard a beleaguered sounding Master Gardener tell someone in the garden that “those plants aren’t for sale”.

I’d like to have the time to be part of the Master Gardener program. What fun. I can’t wait to put my plants in the ground…..tomorrow, I hope! Bearbear and I walked by the largely empty ramada today, the day after the sale; it was quiet, no one was there, and I think there were about 30 plants left unsold.

Garden Update

I’m off to Boston on Saturday. I’m leaving this blog behind and just taking my fiddle and a small carry-on. Nothing personal, blog. I just like to make a clean break from the routine every now and then.

I’ll be on the South Shore; and Dorchester, where some of my 3rd cousins (my Newfoundland grandmother’s brother’s grandchildren, if I got that right) live, they’re having a brunch for me Sunday, YUM. I like visiting Boston. It reminds me of my childhood, and I remember a lot about that area from the 70s.

Here’s the yard update; I can’t wait to get this project more close to done so I can start to sew again:

I cleaned up the northwest corner, now devoted to compost bins and….my new beehive, whenever it arrives (hopefully before the bees, that would be a good thing):

This is just a shot of what I’ll fix up when I get back, improve that path with the 2 tons of decomposed granite I have left:

Here are new perennials I got at the Tucson Botanic Gardens annual spring plant sale 2 weeks ago, I made a soaker hose from an old garden hose, mulched the plants, and I’ll cover this area with nice gold decomposed granite, eventually:

It looks a bit bleak, but compare it to this, 10 months ago:

Yuck! Isn’t that chain link fence and oleander horrible? I had to live with that for 5 years. And the too-close-for-comfort view of the duplex rentals next door? When the wall went up 9 months ago I was very very happy:

See you next week!

More Gravel…

Another day of working in the yard; but my guestimate now is that my 8 tons of river rock and decomposed granite is down to about 3 tons, maybe a bit less.

So, here’s some of what I did today (compare this to the previous post)…

And this is the path as it looks through the undeveloped part of my yard:

This took some time. I listened to lots of Irish music on my Ipod while shoveling. I was really surprised when I went by the more developed part of my yard, to what I think of as my desert perennial border, and I saw that my agave looks like it’s going to send up it’s shoot this spring! Check this out, here it is close up…

….and from a distance…..you can just barely see the tender white shoot in the middle….

I just “pruned” this agave with my new cactus pruner; I’ll have to post about this soon. Maybe by cutting back the base, I encouraged it to bloom. I dunno. More on the pruner next time. I’m beat!

No Time For Fiddle Tunes or Art Quilts :(

While it’s a bit frustrating to have no time for fabric art or fiddle tunes, I am happy at least to be making improvements to my yard….so when it’s hot this summer and I’m inside under the AC sewing or playing my fiddle, I can look out to a lovely yard with fewer weeds.

My mom came over yesterday to help me with a bunch of yard chores; here she is putting together 2 new raised bed frames for my expanded vegetable garden:

Then we dug up this old concrete footing that I’d forgotten about; it must be as old as the house, and the wall it once supported is long gone. The footing interferes with water flow/drainage and of course makes it impossible to plant anything in that area:

This is what we dug up; I’ll throw a few pieces in my trash can ever week till it’s gone. And, yes, all that green stuff is weeds.

Before my mom came, this is what I managed to do on my own, shoveling some of the 3 tons of Salt River rock I ordered into the swale I built to divert water away from my house; and, BTW, that AC unit you see? I want to tear that out and put in a window. It’s ugly, and useless.

By the time my mom left, the pile of rock was almost gone, and the swale complete.

Here are my new 2 raised beds! Time to fill ’em up with soil, plant some seeds and get the shade cloth up and soaker hoses installed: then I’ll have fresh veggies this summer. Lots. There are 2 more raised beds in the back you can’t see in this photo. Yum.

My Gravel Doom

Well, here it is: all 8 tons. And that’s just half of what I’m going to need.

I started shoveling the gray river-rock (from the Salt River) into the swale on the east side of my house; I put weed cloth underneath (that’s the black stuff), it’s porous but helps keep weeds out:

Anything green you see is a weed. Because of all the rain, the weeds are unbelievable. Three weeks ago I picked all my kale, leaving behind just stubs of plants; and with the recent rain, it’s all come back:

The poppies are volunteers. It’s supposed to hit 80 degrees later this week….so I’ll have to pick it all and freeze it. I have a feeling temperatures are going to warm up quick, which is why I’m anxious to move all that rock while it’s still cool.

Art Quilt Withdrawl

Remember this?

Yeah, I do too. I haven’t worked on it for 5 weeks!

Getting my new windows installed was part of the delay. Now I’m preoccupied about my yard, which is large and mostly not landscaped; it’s a lot of dirt for weeds and dust. Since it’s rained so much, it’s easier than ever to dig and move dirt around.

So, instead of sewing I tackled this part of my yard; I’ve dug a swale, which will be a path through the gate, and which will also channel water away from my house and down to the street:

I’m also about to get my spring/summer veggie beds in shape; here are 6 of my heirloom tomato plants, they have odd names like “Porter’s Pride”, “Harvest 24” and “Aussie” (guess where that tomato comes from); behind them are my seedlings, which haven’t done well in their peat-pots this year:

Soil amendments, and this doesn’t include my own compost, and lots of weed cloth:

I also have been straightening up the yard; as in, tree-trimming: here’s the citrus and olive tree before….

And after:

They almost look naked now. I think I got about 150# of tangelos off that tangelo tree in the back this winter.

Tomorrow, I’m getting 8 tons of gravel (I’m not kidding) delivered, and hopefully my cactus pruners will arrive in the mail: so that explains why I’ll continue to be unable to sew. Just not enough time. But my yard will look much better. The ground is soft and the weather pleasant….so I have no excuse!