Want more? Study your landscape.  Can you add fruit trees, do you have mesquite trees?  Is there room for a few hens, rabbits, do you live where goats, sheep, llamas, are welcome?  How involved do you want to be in your own food production?  

Make your Garden

Site selection should include an irrigation source and 6-8 hours of sun. It could allow for expansion.  Start small, grow your garden with experience, your needs and interests.  While a goal may be to produce 100% of fresh vegetables consumed in a household, meet your success in increments. The challenges of gardening in extreme climates can overwhelm even the most experienced gardener. If you take on more than you can reasonably manage discouragement comes easy!  The weeds and the bugs and the daily grind will can undermine even the most dedicated soul! Start with a few containers, a small raised bed  or garden; when that is not enough, build on.    Grow the garden along with your skills and the seasons!  The low desert is an extreme climate!  And remember: Grow things you like to EAT!

Garden layout and design. Paths and planting areas should be separate and permanent. Allow space to get tools and equipment in, thru and to the garden!   If you want raised beds, build them. You can use found materials or materials that are aesthetically pleasing and compliment current hardscape. However, do not use treated timbers, recycled rail road ties, old phone/power line poles… anything soaked in creosote!  I have some 2 X 12 pine boxes that were hammered together 10 years ago. They still work.  I do suggest screwing wood together.  You can use cedar or redwood, but inexpensive pine is fine. Either way you should be able to reach the middle of the bed from one side or the other. Use a soil mix at least 50% compost and 50% good old native, desert soil.  Some folks like to add some pumice for porosity.  Procure containers if you want container gardens. 5 gallon buckets are about as small as you should use; 15 gallon tree pots or larger are better…  all should have bottom drainage.  Excess water must be able to exit the container! Install some sort if an irrigation system for your garden.  This may be a nozzle and a garden hose or a sophisticated timer, valve, schedule 40 PVC, 5/8 tubing and emitter operation.  This, too, should be expandable as your garden evolves to include more plants.



Make lists of vegetable crops you like to eat. Then select short season varieties with characteristics that appeal to you from within these crops.  Information on the incredible diversity of all kinds of vegetables and fruits is available in seed catalogues.  Use them for research!  Just a word from experience: do not get too carried away, right off!  There is time to try many, many plants! Don’t let your eyes and dreams get bigger than the garden.  It’s so easy to do!  Talk to friends and neighbors and your local independent nurseries.  They too, can help select great varieties to begin with.

Three unique planting seasons.  The easy one is the fall season. Call this the green and leafy season: lettuce, kales, collards, carrots, turnips, onions, spinach and chard, beets and carrots, oriental greens, etc all thrive during this season.  Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, fava beans, and all kinds of peas are fall planted.  Harvesting begins well before Thanksgiving!  Planting can actually start during monsoon, (that would be now!) but most crops go in September thru November, from seeds or little plants someone else has started.  Find recommended planting dates in the planting calendar available thru U of A Cooperative extension or the Permaculture group.
Fall days are pleasant, the light is not too intense, and the nights are cooler. After the equinox, nights get shorter and shorter, and cool considerably. Plants with maturity dates of 60-90 will be ready for harvest before the solstice, when we experience our coolest weeks, when daylight is very short and plants become dormant.  For this season plant short season, 50-90 days-to-maturity, cool tolerant varieties of crops.

 

 

 

January begins a second cool season, but these days get longer and warmer! Our frost date in Phoenix is generally about February 14, but do not take that for granted!  This season we make a second planting of many of the green and leafy vegetable crops to harvest into late spring. We can also plant what might be described in other regions as ‘summer vegetables’.  Tomatoes, peppers, corn, squash, potatoes, beans, cucumbers all come quickly with produce to harvest!  Day time temperatures get HOT.  Look for varieties that are described as “heat tolerant”.  This is a fun season, plants grow quickly and favorite vegetables are in good supply.  There is nothing like a warm-from-the-sun homegrown tomato!  Again, refer to planting calendars for the low desert for recommended planting dates, and select varities which mature quickly, and are heat tolerant. 

 

 

Then we move to the long…   long…   long….   hot,   summer   season.  Yes! You can plant and harvest thru the summer!  Sweet potatoes provide ever widening seas of cool green in the garden, making tubers to harvest in September, October and November. Yard long beans and black eyed peas love the heat. Pick them tender as green beans or allow the beans to mature for soup and bean dishes.  Armenian cucumbers, melons, and squash take the heat and produce. Basil loves the heat and offers sweet and savory flavors for our summer salads.  Okra, the world’s most maligned vegetable grows gangbusters; eggplant looks great at 118 degrees, and offers a continual harvest. You do not have to settle for that 2 lb aubourgine at the chain grocery; long, slender, green or sweet purple ones compete in flavor with lovely lavender or pink on white skinned fruits.  They are as pretty as they are tasty.  Harvest them small and often. Cultures from Mediterranean climates all have great recipes for cooking this vegetable.  You will need many!   Eventually we run out of tomatoes, slicing cukes, the potatoes need harvest, we consume our corn, squash bugs infest the squash, and we visit the garden early in the morning, and maybe just before a late supper to harvest.



Come monsoon season we can plant again, corn, beans, fall cropping summer squash, maybe a fall bearing tomato plant, “and the seasons, they go ‘round and round!’”

With all this in mind make a planting plan. Pencil in the vegetables you want to grow into the proper time frame according to the planting calendars, and seasonal challenges. Study spacing suggestions…  and design the garden.  Just be sure to keep track of your local planting calendar, when you make your garden plan. Many seed catalogues and garden supply companies are offering interactive garden planning programs on their websites.  This is kind of fun and allows you to get a feel for spacing, and production. 

Go out and dig your soil.  Soil preparation: Ya gotta do it. Go dig the dirt.  Dig. If you are mechanical, and have lots of space, rototill. But only where you plant to plant.  Do not disturb the pathways! Once soil is loosened a shovel or so deep, add 3 to 6 inches of good compost, some manure perhaps, and a sprinkling of a balanced fertilizer and dig again. Rake it level, remove large rocks and general junk.  Use a steel tined garden rake, not a leaf rake. Set up your irrigation, run it, re-level the bed, and you are ready to plant! If you leave the pathways undisturbed, you have less work, much less. 

All this digging helps integrate the compost and fertilizer. It introduces lots of air spaces to the soil.  Plant roots need oxygen as much as they need water. Our native soil is naturally compacted.  Digging helps change this.  If you are making raised beds, the soil mix to fill them should be 30 �" 50 percent native soil. Use compost and perhaps some pumice as the remaining ingredients. 

Good old Arizona soil is full of minerals and nutrients.  We have some of the best, nutrient rich soil found anywhere.  Yes, it is a clay soil; this is the result of eons of erosion.  It holds water well, too well sometimes. It is heavy and dense and hard to work.  Moisten it, but do not let it get soggy.  It is easier to work if it is moist.  Wait and allow it to dry out if you have accidentally oversaturated it.  Soil should feel as moist as a wrung out sponge. 

Our soils lack organic or decomposed dead plant matter. We call that stuff compost. So, we add compost.  Lots of compost.  Pumice or perlite will help aerate the soil, but compost is the primary component needed for soil preparation.  As this organic component is introduced to the soil, the biodiversity of living organisms which brings soil alive begin to evolve and continue the decomposition process, rendering nutrients accessible at the molecular level to the plant roots.

There are many, many products sold as soil amendments. Some as powders, some liquid, all with interesting claims!  Most of these come from other climates, other soils, and may have a positive impact there, but nowhere is there research based, quantified documentation of how they really affect gardens in the low desert. Spend your money on plants. Compost, maybe manure, some fertilizer with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in equal amounts, perhaps some soil sulfur are more than adequate to get the garden growing.  Happy planting!

Irrigation must reflect the season, the maturity of the plants and the soil mix. Raised beds and containers require a different approach than gardens at ground level.  There is no one rule to apply for successful irrigation.  It is ever changing and requires vigilance on the part of the gardener.  But as you go out to harvest, you will learn to observe your plants and make those adjustments as needed for the continued success of your garden. Water should saturate the soil of a vegetable garden 12-18 inches deep, or to the bottom of the container.  As this reservoir is depleted, irrigate to replace the water and keep plants healthy.

Is it possible to become less dependent on the world of mass produced everything; achieve some level of self sufficiency?  Growing your own vegetables and even fruit as an alternative does not necessarily mean doing without! You too, can discover self sufficiency at one level: providing some, maybe more, maybe less, of the food you eat from your own little patch in Phoenix.  Growing a vegetable garden, populated with other plants which offer edible parts falls within the scope of reasonable, which can provide fresh, safe, nutrient dense food.  Knowing what these foods really taste like, fresh from the vine, grown in healthy soil they are great eating and good for you!  Concept.



About those resources: excellent local information is available on line thru the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, Maricopa County at http://extension.arizona.edu/maricopamg This inclusive website offers monthly tips, short publications, and  access to the Master Gardener Training Manual, on line, free. This information is research based, quantified, and developed for our particular soils and climate challenges.  Two particular publications: 10 Steps to a Vegetable Garden http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/az1435.pdf and the Vegetable Planting Calendar http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/az1005.pdf apply to starting and growing a vegetable garden.

Books too are available. Master Gardener press offers Desert Gardening for Beginners, a short, but comprehensive look at growing food plants and landscape care that speaks to both expert and novice alike, whether you are a native, or just recently transplanted to the desert! George Brookbank’s Desert Gardening is a great resource. Out of print for a while, it has been re-released.  Brookbank, a professor at U of A, was at heart a gardener, and there is not much he did not try to grow. He has quantified and summarized a great deal of information for us!   This is a great source for not only vegetable gardening, but home orchards and small fruits as well. “Dave the Garden Guy”, Dave Owens, long a personality on local television has published the Garden Guy and Extreme Gardening.  Strong on organic ideas and suggestions these are great books to help you understand what gardening is all about.  Magazines make great resources.  Folks swear by the classic for small farmers and home gardeners Rodale’s Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine.  Sunset brings us a California attitude. All offer great information, but do make sure you cross reference suggestions with low desert experts.  What works in many places may work well here, just at a different time, or with adaptations! Locally published Phoenix Home and Garden offers consistent excellent gardening information and highlights great local gardens.

Additional information can be found thru the local Valley Permaculture alliance. http://www.phoenixpermaculture.org/ These gardeners are adapting many regional traditions to our particular conditions, with passion.  They too publish a planting calendar, with bright, cheery, colorful graphics indicating not only time for planting but for harvest.  They offer a range of classes and educational opportunities, a website, blogs, posts, classes, seminars, and garden tours.

Square foot gardeners take French intensive gardening to a new level, packing as much into a small space as possible.  A&P, a local nursery, has developed a raised bed square foot garden kit, and a nutrient dense soil specific for the low desert adapted to the requirements of square foot gardening. Couple that with a planting calendar and you are well on your way to a great harvest on a small patch of real estate!

Container gardening is an option for small areas, limited sunshine, and little time. Portable and manageable, a great deal can be harvested from a small space using containers.  Many varieties of vegetables are bush, or dwarf, or determinate, fitting well into small spaces and offering a bountiful harvest. Earth boxes, a self watering container system is similar to square foot gardening.   These can be easily moved by a couple of folks to follow the sun. Should one not have a lot of space or soil to dig, they make great container gardens.  Clever folks can adapt the engineering of the system to 5 gallon buckets and other containers.



Vegetable gardening classes abound in the valley with Permaculture, U of A, nurseries, garden centers, garden clubs, Desert Botanic Garden, other public gardens, and various cities offering classes throughout the year. Master gardeners present seminars every day at each of the 5 Maricopa County home shows held in Phoenix and Glendale each year!  For the next show go to: http://maricopacountyhomeshows.com/ .  You do not have to discover the wheel all by yourself!

Last but certainly not least, with a few key strokes and the click of a mouse, seed and garden catalogues offer a wealth of information about varieties of vegetables, small fruits and fruit trees. They provide gardeners a resource for growth habits, maturity dates, varietal characteristics, disease and pest resistance, taste, flavor, vigor…of any vegetable you might want to grow!  Some have interactive design programs to help you lay out your garden season to season. Many offer helpful videos as a component of the online source, demonstrating soil preparation, planting, nurturing, and harvesting techniques.  Use those seed catalogues! 

Johnnyseeds.com, botanicalinterests.com,   seedsavers.org, seedsofchange.com, rareseeds.com, cooksgarden.com, seedsofindia.com, territorialseed.com, gardenerssupply.com nativeseeds.org are just a few of the many seed sources available to gardeners!  Our independent, local nurseries and garden shops carry good seed selections and young plants ready to transplant into your gardens. Shop often and frequently.