From My Garden to You

How the corn has grown in a month !! So yesterday I visited the garden plot at SCGC ( Scottsdale Community Garden Club) to see how the corn had grown during my 3 week trip to Europe. As you can see below, it has come on along quite a bit ! The ears are forming nicely.    Probably another week and it will be ready - yum !      The good thing about planting corn in late summer for fall harvesting, is that it does not seem to get the "worms" so much, that often plague spring corn. The "worms" are the larval stage of the Corn Borer - " Helicoverpa zea" - a moth that lays it eggs on the young  plants.   I wonder if this time of planting does not tie in so much with the life cycle of the moth. Anyway, it does seem to not get as many worms - which works for me !!   Another update and harvest time in a week - I hope !   Happy Gardening

Update on my corn This corn was planted about a month ago and has finally decided to start to grow a bit. Might have to do with the fact that I finally got the irrigation sorted out properly !! Anyway, if it keeps up this rate of growth we should have corn ( hopefully) by the end of October. It was planted in the brand new plot - if you look at the earlier blog posts you will see how I started with bare cracked earth (July 2nd) and gradually brought the soil back to life.     It is now about one foot tall. I will let you know how it progresses.   Happy Gardening !!  

Hello Fellow Gardeners, I have been busy this last couple of months making a new gardening video. Water Wise Fall Desert Vegetable Gardening Check it out and let me know what you think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8OKhMSvb94&feature=youtu.be   Happy Gardening !!

Garden Plot update - Third and final part ! So as you saw yesterday, we have just had a lot of lovely rain. I have also just finished the final part of the soil renewal at the garden plot. Luckily for me, I did it before the rain on Sunday (July 23rd 2017) AND I planted some corn, so now I am very hopeful of good and delicious things to come ! Anyway, back to the soil. Here are some photos documenting the third and final stage of the plot renewal and soil improvement. Please bear in mind that it takes 7 years, on average, to make good garden soil. So while this is a good start, it is going to be a continuous process as I go through the seasons. You saw in the previous post about this subject that I had already soaked the soil so that was ready to receive amendments. I amended the soil with steer manure and coffee grounds. You can purchase bags of manure, but at the community garden we get it in bulk. I also added some mushroom compost that I had purchased. This is fa...

Rain, Rain and more lovely rain ! Just had to write about the lovely rain we have had this past week. Those who live in Seattle may think I am slightly mad getting excited about the rain, but us desert dwellers know exactly what I am talking about. We got an inch today and another inch last week, 2" in a week folks - fantastic !!! This is a big deal when our yearly average is only 8". Anyway, the plants are very happy and I am very happy too - both for that sweet rainwater and also because I don't have to go and water anything now for a couple of days. The rain has also stimulated some of the cacti to bloom too. Here's a couple of photos.   Pink Echinopsis Cactus   I have also just planted some cactus seeds. I will keep you posted on what happens with them. This is a new thing for me, never grown cactus from seed before. I am very hopeful !!   Finally, I did go out yesterday and planted some corn. This is the absolute perfect time to g...

Tepary Bean - "The bean that laughs in the face of our desert summers" Tepary Beans are one of the most heat and drought tolerant crops in the world. They are an ancient bean ( Phaeseolus acutifolius) and very tolerant of our alkali soils and our desert heat. So I thought - got to have a go at these ! I got my seeds from Native Seed Search in Tucson and planted them last week as the monsoon season was getting underway. We then had that lovely (rather scary) thunderstorm a few days ago and my garden got an inch of rain - fantastic !! History They are a very ancient bean, having been grown  in the Sonoran Desert for thousands of years. A native bean , which is one of the most nutritious desert plants and some wild varieties still do actually exist in some parts on the Sonoran Desert. It was a prehistoric food crop and was used as a dry bean. Nutritional value They are very high in protein and help control diabetes and cholesterol due to their soluble fibre....

Desert Botanical Gardens Classes I am teaching - Fall 2017 These are the descriptions on their website: Fall Vegetables Tuesday / Oct. 3 / 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Carol Stuttard teaches you how to grow your own healthy, organic fall vegetable garden, including planning, soil preparation, varieties to plant and, most importantly, the right time to plant! Limit 30.   Introduction to Permaculture Tuesday / Oct. 17 / 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. Discuss the principles of permaculture-simulating the patterns and characteristics of natural ecosystems-and how they can be applied to desert living. Topics include broad-scale site design, pattern recognition, structures, rainwater harvesting, and urban and community strategies. Instructed by Carol Stuttard. Limit 30   Pollinator Gardens Monday / Nov. 13 / 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. Attracting pollinators to your garden is both enchanting and beneficial. Disco...

What to do in your garden in July (apart from hoping for rain!) July is hopefully the month when we get some monsoon rains - yay ! The humidity is rising and this actually gives the plants a little bit of relief from the heat, even if it is a lot more uncomfortable outside for you and me. So what should you be doing this month ? July Checklist Watering Check for irrigation leaks. Continue watering schedule as per June, unless it we get a good monsoon soaking. Deep and less frequently is always preferred over shallow and often. Find a wonderful person to water for you if you go on vacation and if you have a battery operated irrigation timer attached to a hose bib, make sure to get them to check if the battery is working. ( I speak from experience here. There is nothing more soul destroying then coming back from vacation to a dead garden, because the battery on your timer decided that this was the week it was going to fail !). Trees This is the ti...

How to start a garden from bare cracked earth like this ! So... I am starting a new vegetable plot and thought I would share with you all how I am going to do this. Hopefully it will be ready for planting in the Fall when it is cooler (ha ha). I get asked this question a lot when I teach classes about soil, so I thought where better to actually show the process, than on my blog. That way you can follow what I am doing and see how the soil is slowly brought back to life during the next couple of months. I am going to show a few different way of doing this as well. Here's what I am starting with -   Garden Plot abandoned by previous gardener at the Community Garden where I garden. Weeds are mostly dead but still have to be removed.   One of the first things to do is just water the soil, I know that sounds a bit crazy, but there is no way you can dig bone dry cracked earth. The soil must be watered even before you lay anything on top.   A...

Another spiralized recipe - a healthy salad So my zucchini are still producing - albeit slowly and now I trying patty pan squash in the spiralizer. This is a very easy salad to make and while I have not grown all of the ingredients, most are from Arizona, so I am supporting local producers, if nothing else !   You can pretty much use any greens of your choice to start with. In this case, I used hydroponically grown lettuce, but I have also used spinach that I purchased at Prescott framers market too. (A good little market to try out on a Saturday morning at Yavapai college.)   I then layered on top the following:   Spiralized patty pan squash (my own) Spiralized cucumber Halved yellow cherry tomatoes (my own) Chopped local figs Toasted AZ pecans Crumbled feta cheese ( Goat Cheese would work too) Chopped basil from the garden.   ( You could also try spiralized carrots, chopped melon and mint, the combinations are many, ...

What’s happening in the garden end of June/beginning of July ? July is a month of hot days and warm nights – how is this any different from June??!! (ha ha) Well, the humidity has increased for a start and fruit production for tomatoes, sweet peppers and summer squash is markedly decreased. My cherry tomatoes are still producing, albeit slowly and the bigger ones have by now either given up the ghost completely or are just ticking along trying to weather the next few months without actually dying ! There is still green growth but it is slow. To be honest, if that is all they are doing, then I am fine with that. All my summer vegetables are mulched with straw to keep the soil and plant roots cool and to try to retain some moisture. You will find that many of your plants - such as squash may be wilting in the afternoon or the hottest parts of the day. If the soil around them is moist, there is no need to water any more. Just wait until it cools down a bit and if the plant p...

Harvest Pasta Sauce with Spiralized Zucchini Having made the pasta sauce as I described in the previous post, you can now choose to either sieve it or use it as it is. If you do sieve it, that removes the seeds and bits of skin. For sieving, I use the method shown below:- Sieved pasta sauce - all organic, sown, grown and harvested in my own garden. Such a delight to be able to do this I must say ! So now I have the pasta sauce, I can either freeze it or use it in the next day or so. One of the ways I like to use it, is with spiralized zucchini "pasta". The good thing about this, is that the "pasta" is completely carbohydrate free. I just heat up the sauce and then throw in the zucchini "pasta". Turn off the heat, stir the "pasta" into the sauce thoroughly and by the time you get your plate out and serve it, the zucchini "pasta" is cooked. Spiralizer and homegrown zucchini Zucc...

Harvest in the Heat   Believe it or not, all these were harvested yesterday morning. Despite the heat, I am still harvesting from my vegetable garden. As well as tomatoes, there are 3 kinds of squash, peppers and just ready - the first grapes.   It is too hot to really plant anything right now, so hold off for a little while. Now is the time to look at those seed catalogues/websites and decide what you are going to plant in the Fall. Another post will include some suggestions of good low desert seed varieties, so watch this space !      

Hot, Hot, Hot !!! What's a Gardener to do ? Over the next few days, we are going to experience some dangerously high temperatures here in the low desert of Arizona. As I write, it is 109 degrees Fahrenheit outside with 4% humidity. Below is a weather link if you are interested in more details. https://www.google.com/search?q=weather+phoenix&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US:IE-SearchBox&ie=&oe=&gws_rd=ssl Tuesday, it is supposed to be 121 degrees Fahrenheit ! Neither I,nor my plants, have experienced anything like this sort of heat before. I am not sure what it is going to do to the tomatoes, but I will definitely let you know.  Watch this space later in the week. In the meantime, watering and any gardening will be done early in the morning, when it is cool(ish), if 80 degrees Fahrenheit can be called cool. In fact it is not necessarily the daytime heat that will kill the plants, but rather the fact that it does not cool off enough at night that ...

Welcome to my Desert Garden, located in Scottsdale, Arizona. Here, I aim to share all the trials and tribulations of being a desert gardener. Hopefully you will enjoy following along, as I share my successes and failures throughout the seasons. As a Horticultural Educator, I love to encourage gardeners of all levels and I wanted to use this blog as a helpful resource for those who are interested in Organic Gardening in the Low Desert.