While I'm working on my next blog post...

You can take this awesomely bizarre fruit and vegetable quiz from Mother Nature Network!

(Click on the photo below.)

 

 

Can You Name These Fruits and Veggies?

United States of the Environment

Interesting infographics on each state's best and worst statistics for sustainability and public health, from Mother Nature Network.  Images credited to Russell McLendon.  Full article here.

Winter garden noms

Harvested some winterbor kale and chard today!  And took pictures of the new okra and beet sprouts, because I am a bit obsessed.  But I posit there are worse things to be fixated on than vegetables.

Chard.

Kale monsters.

 

Okra babies!

Beet babies.

Lunch.

A quick update on the state of things, and other garden-ish miscellany

The garden has become a community/house project!

I came home from work at 5 p.m. today, slightly worried because I'd forgotten to water this morning before I left, and the day was quite warm.  I could feel the slightly stifling gust of heated air as I got out of my nicely air-conditioned car, and was really half-expecting to see wilted tomato and pepper plants in the backyard, not to mention the already-struggling peas (more on the peas later).

Pleasantly surprised to hear my roommate report he'd watered around 1 p.m., right when things were starting to get really warm!  We'll have tomatoes yet, I swear.

In my pride and excitement of reporting on the garden's successes (the kale is taking over the world!) I realize I haven't really gotten around to mentioning the failed experiments that have shriveled up before their time.  So here's a little back story:  


The day after I first planted Phase 1 of the garden back in February, two awful and maddening things happened.  One, a handful of my freshly established transplants met their quick ends between the teeth of The Poodle, who I discovered (the hard way) has a fondness for pulling garden plants out of the soil in order to fling them around the yard in joyous play.  The second maddening thing was an untimely and unusual cold front that hovered over the valley for a good week; with daily temperatures in the low 50s and being forced to cover the plants as best I could at night, a few of them just didn't make it.

A (not entirely) comprehensive list of failures:

• Yellow banana pepper plants.  They were the sad, sad victims of The Poodle's destruction.  I found them torn to pieces next to the garden bed the next day, and found The Poodle cowering guiltily in the corner.  I guess he'd had too much fun that day.
• Beefsteak tomato plant.  February is dicey for tomatoes, especially non-vining varieties.  It really can go either way, and I may have overestimated Arizona weather on this one.  Because you never know when a renegade FROST is going to hit.
• Cilantro (batch 1).  I had initially planted these with the basil in a shallow window planter box.  The seeds germinated beautifully, but my guess is most of the nutrients in the compost leached out too quickly.  I really need to get a fertilizer that will keep things healthy and happy.  
• Basil (batch 1 and 2).  See above.  I have a lingering suspicion fertilizer (or lack of it) is also to blame for my peas predicament.  This second time around, the sprout was doing so well for so long, and then promptly folded up and died in the span of one day.  Getting a bit annoyed, because everything I've read says basil should grow like a weed in this climate.  But everything I'm experiencing is telling me basil is just a needy, sensitive little jerk. 
• Lavender (this one is a half save.  The Poodle ate the tops off the plant the day I potted it, and it was pretty tired and sick for awhile, but I checked it this afternoon and saw a ton of new growth!  There's hope.)
• Lacinato kale.  Another close call.  For some reason, this was the only plant in the garden I found consistent chew marks in.  Stupid pesty bugs.  Haven't figured out exactly which kind of pest was feasting on my kale, but I planted marigolds all around it, and now it seems to be doing all right.  They left the winterbor kale alone, and that stuff is huge now.
• Peas.  Oh, the peas.  I just can't seem to keep a pea vine alive after it reaches 4 inches. My

  

  Sad peas.

  plants are turning yellow and the leaves around the bottom are drying up.  I've read this could be fusarium wilt, which, along with stunted growth, describes the current sad state of my pea plants pretty well.  I removed the ones that looked to be beyond saving, and I'm going to try some nitrogen-rich compost fertilizer or fish emulsion and see if I can't salvage the remaining plants.  I was really looking forward to peas, and they way the shoots just popped up out of the soil, I was feeling pretty optimistic.  If you have some good advice, I could use it!

A few thoroughly-welcomed new successes!

The okra has sprouted!  Okra is a warm-weather crop here, and I've developed a love of okra, so I'm super excited.  Pictures soon, nerds.
So have the beets!  Cute little beety sprouts poking through the soil.  I will admit these were more of an experiment; I may have sown them too late, and it might get too warm too fast for them, but we'll see.
The lavender is hanging in there!  I hope I can get it to flower, it might help to cut down on some of the pesty bug action I've seen.
Newly transplanted additions: a yellow crook neck squash, an ancho chile pepper plant, a serrano chile pepper plant, and a yellow pear tomato vine survived the transplanting.  I've got the squash surrounded by marigolds and the lavender to keep it squash bug-free.  Here's to summer garden success!
Potatoes!  I planted a handful of seed potatoes.  Weird.  I've never grown potatoes, and that process is just so weird.  If I gave them enough room to actually produce something, this experiment might result in teeny tiny Yukon golds. 

"Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew..."






Fun garden fashion:

This is mine now!  The link above is to one with a similar fabric pattern. 

Here is the part where I tell you about how I recently found this delightful gardening apron on Etsy, from a lady out of Lake Oswego, Oregon.  It is my new favorite thing.  Please order yourself one, and go dig in some dirt!  

My backyard bounty

Some recent photos of the garden.  The DIY chicken-wire barrier is because I live with an 80-pound standard poodle who gets a kick out of pulling plants out of the dirt for no reason.



The setup.  On the left is the winter crop, on the right is the recently-planted summer crop.

I built the boxes out of scrap lumber a friend graciously donated to my cause.  I'm using an organic soil/compost mix and supplementing with fish emulsion and goodies from our compost bin.  I'm a little worried my winter crop looks rather small moving into March, and I can't tell if it's because the overall bed just isn't big enough, or if I planted some things too close together trying to get maximum bang for my buck.  Either way, what's coming out of it is still tasty!

Lemon thyme (upper right), cilantro (upper and lower left) and my itty bitty basil seedling!

 

These peas accidentally found their way into this bucket, and look where we are now. Accidental peas!

Yellow pear tomatoes.

Unfortunately, the broccoli budded too early.  This may be due to the transplant sitting for too long at the Home Depot Garden Center.  I've learned to be careful about this... transplants that are flowering already (with the exception of actual flowers) = generally a no-no. 

Winterbor kale.  A lot of it.

 

Swiss chard (can never have too much of it).

 

 

The first post...

... is always a test post.  Much like this whole attempt at growing delicious things from the arid desert earth in suburban Phoenix.  I'm beyond excited to share my past and current urban gardening experiences on this blog.

Hailing from Minnesota, and being raised a through-and-through city girl, I was turned on to urban farming in 2008, when I was living with a group of fellow AmeriCorps members in what we affectionately nicknamed The Commune in a tough South Minneapolis neighborhood.  We were all in our twenties, idealistic, and - being AmeriCorps members - we were already predisposed to an uncompromising desire to find cheap and healthy alternatives to most aspects of life all the "normal" folks take for granted (i.e., groceries).  We had cultivated a garden that veritably exploded by late July.  Even though the Minnesota growing season is restricted to the three-month summer window, we were swimming in vegetables; we dined on a new harvest of kale, lettuce, peas, carrots, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and various herbs nearly every day.  At the same time, I was exposed to the front edge of the local food movement that was steadily gaining traction in Minneapolis at that time, and as a result was profoundly influenced by ideas about our food - where we get it, how we raise it, what we do to it during the growing process - ideas that resonate to this day.

After moving to Phoenix, I quickly realized urban farming here is a different beast entirely.  This is actually my second attempt at an Arizona garden.  In my last rental place, my landlord wouldn't allow a raised bed in the backyard, so I was restricted to a few plastic 5 gallon pots for my tomatoes and patty pan squash.  Having little experience with the growing seasons in Arizona, my unfortunate timing (June) and lack of a proper growing area (concrete) resulted in withered brown skeletons of what used to be fruit-bearing plants by mid-July.

This second attempt, however, holds a lot more promise.  My current landlord welcomed the garden idea and graciously allowed me to dump 30 cubic feet of soil and mulch into a corner of my (his) yard .  I now have 2 medium-sized raised beds  (5'x2'x1'), a small 16"x16" planter for herbs, and a few things growing in those plastic pots (some intentional, some not)... more will come in the next post.

Even so, as an amateur gardener from the "wrong" part of the country, I've got my work cut out for me here.  Multiple growing seasons, learning what to plant and when during each, learning what NOT to plant and when, and figuring out somehow some way to keep your plants alive during the unforgiving hell-on-earth that is July in Arizona... I'm still learning these things.  It's all a grand experiment, and I would absolutely love for this blog to be a medium for sharing and idea exchange.  So any and all advice is welcome!