Even though temps are still in the low 100s and the pool is still swimmable, it looks like the worst of the heat is over. In Arizona’s low desert, this means spring is here. Again.
Yay! At last plants will start to grow again!
We had the hottest, driest August on record, and several days in July were pretty extreme—in the 118-degree range. Despite my having set the watering system to come on every day, about half the ornamentals died. The cape honeysuckle, first whacked by last winter’s 21-degree nights and then fricasseed in the withering heat, is pretty well done in. I think I’ll have the last four of those dug out this winter. The roses, which usually make it through the summer peakèd but alive, look like they’re at their last gasp. At least two of those will have to go, maybe more. The Lady Banks rose I planted last spring to help hide the pool equipment enclosure did OK—it looks a little tired, but it’s very heat-resistant. Of course, the fact that I covered it up with shade cloth may have had something to do with that. All the little companion plants that went in next to it and formed a pretty pocket garden there burned right up.
This year I’ve decided not to put in a vegetable garden. Most veggies just don’t grow very well out there. The only decent flower bed is bordered by an old creosote-soaked railroad tie, and I suspect it’s probably not healthy to eat food grown in soil where creosote has been leaching. Besides, the nearby lemon tree is now large enough that it casts enough shade to make about half that flowerbed too dark for most veggies.
And further besides, I find I don’t eat them. The only veggies that have truly grown well out there have been chard and lettuce. The chard goes berserk. But how much of the stuff can one person eat? Last spring I reached the point where I just could not look at another plateful of chard. Had to have something else!
Otherwise, edible things grow poorly out there. Tomatoes are pathetic, the carrots and beets puny, the bok choy sad… Toward the end of the season I wondered why on earth I’d put so much work and money into a garden when for the cost I could have filled the fridge with a wide variety of organic vegetables and fruit. If I’d bought the stuff at Whole Paycheck I still wouldn’t have spent as much as I did on the feckless vegetable garden.
So this year the only edibles will be herbs, grown in pots. That poolside flowerbed is gonna be filled with flowers, lots and lots of flowers.
Dropped by Baker’s last week, since it was on the way home from the client’s. There I grabbed a Tecoma x Bells of Fire, which is basically a small (I’m told) variant of Texas yellowbell with bright orange flowers. The excruciatingly frost-sensitive cape honeysuckle is also in the tecoma family, but I do know Texas yellowbells are pretty cold-hardy. I’ve never had one freeze back like the cape honeysuckle does. Every. single. winter.
So I put that into the ground near the blue plumbago, which just now is covered in sky-blue blossoms.
As for the rest of it: seeds. I’ve had it with investing dollars and backaches in plant sets. I just cleaned up the flowerbeds, mixed seed in with some potting soil to scatter the things (more or less in groups) and then mulched the top with a bunch more potting soil, which I’d got on sale at HD.
So, down in the shady area near the porch roof and the Meyer lemon, we’ll have a patch of yellow columbine and some blue penstemon. That’s assuming the seeds germinate.
Then some mixed pansies, with a band of cute little violas in front of them. Then a packet or two of Mexican primrose, which eventually will spread to fill that flowerbed, which crowds out bermudagrass, and which when happy makes a spectacular, endlessly long-lasting spread of blooms. For the continuing nonce, though, we’ll also have a few carnations and some deep red nasturtiums.
Nasturtiums, it develops, are edible. They’re apparently frost-sensitive, so I expect they won’t make it much past mid-December. But a packet only costs a buck, so it’s worth a try.
I found seeds for something called a black-eyed Susan vine. It’s apparently a vigorous tropical weed that, from the sound of it, can grow as berserk as cat’s claw. Before I looked it up and learned just how aggressive it can be, I’d already put the seeds in the ground where the Lady Banks is not covering the pool equipment enclosure well, thinking it would complement Lady Banks’s pale cream-colored blossoms nicely. Well…it may try to eat Lady Banks… We shall see.
At any rate, it could be a nice replacement for the cape honeysuckle I intend to have Gerardo dig up. The four struggling plants there soften the severity of the ugly block wall between my yard and my neighbor’s.
And so, to work.
Images
The Sun, Lykaestria, Wikipedia Commons
Black-eyed Susan vine, Thunbergia alata. Jeffdelonge. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Good for you for deciding not to grow veggies, or anything that doesn’t give enough satisfaction to justify the work involved. I used to have a couple of flower planters on my little Romeo and Juliet balcony. They required lugging a watering can through the house and squeezing myself around the door that opens outward onto the balcony, often on a daily basis during the hottest summer months. Deciding to jettison the planters was the best decision I ever made.
I made the opposite decision – I had to haul every bucket of water my plants got, so I only planted veggies we could eat and enjoy. We got enough Roma tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, eggplants and peppers to pay back the money we put in for straw bales and seeds, but I am still debating whether it was worth the effort of lugging buckets of water through the house and down the porch stairs all summer…
I guess I’ll have the winter to decide whether to try again next spring, or just support a local farm stand.
ahhh the good ole days! When I was a young pup, I also used to haul buckets of water out of the house and out to the balcony or atrium to water plants. Used to haul it all around the inside of the house, too: we hippie dippies were big on houseplants.
You know, you can get a houseplant house that you can attach to the kitchen faucet. With a sprinkler attachment that has a shut-off valve, you can attach the hose to the faucet, turn on the water, and then drag the house out to the balcony or porch to water the beloved plants. Go to Amazon.com and search “indoor hose.”
They have a couple other gadgets that could come in handy. Hmmm…matter of fact, this would be a good time to put up a few Amazon links. There’s stuff in here that looks like an apartment gardener’s dream. Wish we’d had these things in the good ole days!
Stand by for a new post on the subject! 🙂
Do you get fruit from that lemon tree? I’d enjoy fresh lemonade so much. I’d even make and can lemon curd.
Once Abby and Tim get settled I’m going to offer a fruit tree (orange or lime) as a housewarming gift. Mmmm….fresh citrus….If it doesn’t die in the punishing heat, that is.
@ Donna:
Yes, yes, yes, and yes! You never SAW so many Myer lemons! And they make an awesome lemon curd.
If you’re looking at citrus for the kids, the best bet is probably an Arizona Sweet orange. When fully ripe (along about March or April) the fruit is like candy. Be sure to avoid buying at Moon Valley Nursery, however; what they say they’re selling isn’t always quite that. Baker’s is excellent; Whitfill’s is good; Harper’s is also excellent. These are all local businesses and highly reputable.
Lime trees are frost-sensitive. A hard frost will do some serious damage, even to a mature tree. Unless the tree can be planted in a sheltered place, the kids will probably find lemon or orange to be a better bet.