November 6, 2009: Do the Best With What You Have

I had very good intentions of getting the second square foot garden box built this week, but my only source of "forest products compost" (Wal-Mart), was sold out. I've found this to be a pretty good mix when combined with composted manure, and affordable at under $5 for a 1- 1/2 cubic feet bag. So...yesterday my friend, Esther, and I decided to head for Phoenix to buy some plants, potting mix and spend ourselves silly at Costco. We stopped in Buckeye to check out Wal-Mart's plants, but they only had some really horrid looking Patio tomatoes, way overpriced, and no other varieties that could be grown in containers. Nearby was Lowe's, so we checked on their plants and scored their last two Patio tomatoes. They were lovely, stocky plants with lots of blossoms and some tiny tomatoes already forming, and only $3.45 each. We also picked up two 2 cubic foot bags of potting mix with moisture control, which was a bit pricey, but already contains fertilizer and should work well to retain moisture in our dry desert heat. Esther drives a small Honda sedan, and we already had two large picnic coolers in the trunk to transport our frozen foods from Costco. We had to move one of them to the back seat so we could get the two large bags of potting mix in the trunk. The precious tomato plants were tucked safely between our purses, on the floor behind the driver's seat.

On to Costco, where between the two of us we purchased nearly $300 worth of groceries, mostly frozen, and a very large plastic mat to go under Esther's office chair. This managed to fill every remaining square inch of trunk space, plus the cooler on the back seat. The mat got rolled up and placed in the back seat, on top of the cooler.

After a quick Costco hot dog, drink and churro, we headed for the next nearest Lowe's to check on more plants. Esther wanted another Patio tomato, and you know what a sucker I am for tomato plants. We also decided we needed a few flowers to brighten our patios and gardens. We did find a few Patio tomatoes, although they were much smaller and had no blossoms or tomatoes on them, and were not in the best shape. We caved and each bought one anyway, and had to pay the same price as we had for the beauties at the previous Lowe's. We also bought a bunch of pansies and white alyssum. The tomato plants were placed on the floorboards behind the passenger seat, the eight 6-packs of flowers were placed single file inside the rolled up office mat. By now, the poor little Honda was darned near dragging bottom! But we weren't finished with our shopping!

Back toward home, we stopped at Goodyear to do some more Wal-Mart shopping. I had to buy 20 pounds of frozen chicken hind quarters for my dogs. Yes, I spoil them with roast chicken and veggies, but they are my babies, you know ;-) And the only place left to put them was on the front floorboard, under my feet. It was a really hot day, so I didn't mind cooling my feet on frozen chicken parts. Wal-Mart had the compost I wanted for the garden, but we had no space for it so I had to pass.


Today I potted up the tomatoes and most of the flowers. I ran out of potting mix for my last large planter.


This corner of the patio gets sun from the east and south, from morning until around 2:00 pm. It also gets a gentle breeze to aid the tomatoes with pollinating. You can see the difference in the sizes of the tomato plants. The three pots on the ground are the ones I brought from Washington, and the lettuce is almost ready to pick again. I'll have some for the Monday Harvest post! Later this winter, when the temperature drops, I'll move the tomatoes to the south end of the mobile home, which gets bright, hot sun as well as reflected light. The pots are light enough to bring inside at night if the forecast is for cold weather.


I had a bucket of compost left from the little square foot garden, so I dug it in around the end of the front rock garden. I hope it is enough to give these pansies and alyssum decent soil in which to grow.


More pansies and alyssum were put into the long planter, and the big pot needs more mix before it gets planted, possibly with a geranium or two.


See the pretty little blossoms and tomatoes!


Red Romaine


Red Sails lettuce, with a stray Red Romaine or two.


The radishes emerged in the 9 sf. garden yesterday, all three rows! No sign of lettuce yet, I hope the record breaking temperatures we had this week didn't cook the seeds. It ranged from 93F to 97F three days in a row, and the sun was brutally hot on the soil.

All in all, things are looking pretty good considering we have only been down here for about 2-1/2 weeks. I'm trying to squeeze all I can from the small spaces I have to garden.

November 2, 2009: Monday Harvest

*Each week Daphne's Dandelions hosts Monday Harvest. Be sure to visit her blog to see who is harvesting what this week!*


YES! I do have a harvest! I picked the first lettuce leaves from the three pots I brought south with me. Well, hey....it's something!



I was looking at the beautiful photos that Thomas (A Growing Tradition) and Dan (Urban Veggie Garden Blog) put on their blogs, and I'm ashamed that I rinsed off these leaves, tossed them on a paper towel and took their picture. I have all the time in the world down here, so there is no excuse not to at least put them in a pretty bowl for their portrait. Oh...I don't have a pretty bowl in this kitchen. All I have are bright orange plastic ones! Well, darn. I'm going to town today, so I'll just hit the dollar stores and find myself a few inexpensive pretties, just for photographing my Arizona harvests. It won't take many, LOL!

November 1, 2009: The Winter Garden

It hardly seems worthy of a blog, but after going from somewhere around 400 square feet of garden space and over a thousand pounds of produce grown in my Washington garden, here is my tiny Arizona winter garden. Quite a contrast, eh?


We had three cold, windy days when it was impossible to work outside with all the dust and sand blowing in my face. I decided it was the perfect time to sit inside and make seed mats. For this small garden, rather than use 12" square napkins I used sheets of toilet tissue. The tissue passed the soak test, disintegrating easily after being submerged in water. I thought three of these 12" sections would fit the width of the little garden (I later found I had to tear off one sheet, as the garden wasn't quite three feet wide). I made mats of four different kinds of lettuce; Red Romaine, Green Romaine, Red Sails and Buttercrunch. Then I cut narrower strips and glued on seeds of three types of radishes; Champion, Cherry Belle and Sparkler. I finished with mats of Bloomsdale Long Standing and Tyee Hybrid spinach.


Last year I had two of these little garden boxes, but I wasn't very happy with the depth of the good soil I put in them. This year I dug last year's good soil down about 6" into the sand below, incorporating it well, then stacked the two boxes on top. I mixed a bag of "forest products" compost with a bag of composted manure and added that to the box, mixing it into the soil. This should give me a depth of about a foot of good planting medium.


I watered the box really well, then raked the soil level.


I positioned the seed mats, holding them down with a bit of the soil. I overestimated how many would fit, but I got all the lettuce in as well as the radishes, which were placed between the rows of lettuce.


Soil was added to cover the seed mats, and all was tamped down with my rake.....which has a bow in it, so it doesn't tamp very evenly.


Plastic fencing was added to keep the wild bunnies out...I hope. I let the excess fencing lay on the ground around the box to deter digging.

I found two 2x4s that I can use for another box for the spinach. It will only be 2' x 2', but should hold enough spinach for our needs. I also planted that large pot with scallions, and have three more pots to fill with ??? as soon as I can get some potting mix from the store.

October 31, 2009: Happy Halloween!



My garden pumpkins were all put to good use, as pies or Halloween Jack O' Lanterns.



Kevin


Kris


Scott and Kobi


Alicyn


Trick or Treat!


Bryan, Amy and Alicia (Alicyn's parents/sister) don't have theirs carved yet, thus no photos from them.


October 29, 2009: Congratulations, Shawn Ann!


Congratulations, Shawn Ann!


October 28, 2009: Mr. Fixit

Mr. H had an extension cord that had been accidentally cut, then repaired with electrical tape. Upon my insistence, yesterday he picked up a new end for it and today he did a lovely job of repairing it properly for my safety and his.

But.....



Uh....what's wrong with this picture?


October 26, 2009: Things are Heating Up!

The Sears repairman was supposed to be here between 8 and noon today to fix the water heater. By three this afternoon, I was sitting in a lovely tub full of warm water.....because I boiled four big pots of it on the stove and took them into the bathroom to add to the cold water in the tub! I was feeling so clean and good smelly in that bath when the repairman finally arrived. But now the water heater is temporarily fixed.....the igniter was defective, and he didn't have a replacement in stock, so it will be a week to ten days to have it shipped. The heater was installed new last January, and used less than two months. They sure don't make things like they used to. This time the part was under warranty, so it didn't cost us anything for the replacement. Next time we might not be so lucky.

When I looked out my bedroom window Saturday morning, I was greeted with this lovely surprise. The cacti around my house usually blossom while I'm gone through the summer, so I was excited to see a bud on this cactus when we arrived last week. As beautiful as it is, it blessed us for less than a day. It was gone by noon.






The weeds aren't too bad this year, evidently we didn't get much rain through the summer. I've begun the clean up on lot #1 (shown here), just six more lots to go. Yep......seven lots of nothing....LOL! That area of vegetation is the east boundary of our property, the other six lots are to the south of this one. It's always a bit of a shock to go from the green of Washington to the tan of the desert.


The tree we cut down has been removed to the local landfill.

I'm only getting internet sporadically, so I'm not answering the comments as well as I should be. I hope all of you understand. I've checked out the library, and they didn't have their internet up and running at all, so I have to make do with this occasional connection for now. No work has been done on the WIFI tower in this entire first week we've been here, so I'm not holding my breath it will be finished anytime soon.




October 23, 2009: Everything is Under Control

Well, almost everything. DISH sent out an installer and got three TVs and an extra outlet installed, so I don't have to watch sports with Mr. H now. Our water heater was under warranty with Sears, so that will be repaired....but not until Monday. We're still heating water on the stove for washing dishes and bodies. The toilets have both been repaired, so no more buckets of water in the bathrooms. I've started the yard cleanup, and we actually removed one of the old palo verde trees from the back, which just might tempt me to build a 4'x8' garden back there.

Internet connection has been very poor, I couldn't get on at all after about 7:00 am yesterday, and I'm just now getting on today....let's hope it will connect long enough to post this! But guess what...that might all change before long.

See that tower that's right across the street? That will become a new WIFI tower that's supposed to reach out 30 miles. I have no idea when it will be finished though. I've heard it is eventually supposed to be 100 feet high, but right now it's probably about 20'.


Just look at this mess I had to rig together to get water to all the plants through the summer. I had to have three outlets coming from one timer.


See what I bought and installed! Isn't it lovely! And it gives me a fourth faucet!


Our little ficus tree is toast. It was nice and green when we left it, and our neighbor said it stayed green all summer. He left for two weeks, and he turned the sprinkler up on it, thinking it might need more water....I think he drowned it. When I checked the drip system, the water was about two inches deep around the tree basin in less than five minutes. I think we'll just get a desert tree to replace it...a palo verde or desert willow.



The palm looks good and healthy. We'll trim her "skirt" off tomorrow and make her pretty again.


This is my "garden" area before cutting down one of the palo verde trees. Quite different from my Washington garden, huh?


With the tree out, I'm thinking of turning these 2 3'x3' beds into one 4'x8' bed. It has proved to be a good spot to grow lettuce and carrots through the winter.



The lettuce seedlings and rosemary are happy in their new environment.


I'm still on line, but I'd better not push it. Fingers are crossed that I can publish this......here goes!