DadTalk

Mexican Bird of Paradise

Nothing quite matches the orange intensity of the Mexican Bird of Paradise, which grows well in the Arizona desert. This one is at our community garden plot near Scottsdale Community Garden.

Okra: Gooey yet Beautiful

My daughter, Lael, loves okra. In one sitting, she’ll polish off two bowls of the gooey stuff as long as I microwave, steam or fry it and put on a dash of margarine.

What many people don’t know, is that okra is a handsome plant with attractive flowers. After all, okra is related to hibiscus.

Grapes of Math

A gardener next door to me grows grapes primarily for looks and shade over a garden arch. Who gets to eat the thousands of luscious fruits? The birds, of course!

Tall. Really Tall

I wanted to give readers an idea just how tall the sunflowers have grown at my community garden. I thought the best way would be to lie down on the ground and shoot up, but there was no way to accomplish this feat without killing the okra or watermelon plants.

So while this picture reveals some height, consider that I had to chop out the bottom three feet of the plant from the picture!

What Our Garden Is Producing

Perhaps more than any vegetable, cucumbers represent what’s wrong with fresh produce today.

When we lived in California, we could get all types of (expensive) cucumbers at the farmer’s markets – pickling, Armenian, Japanese, lemon, English and Mediterranean – nearly year round. More importantly, the cucumbers were fresh, with firm rather than rubbery skins.

Then we moved to Chicago, where the farmers market had great, yet even more expensive cucumbers for only a few months a year. And then we moved to Arizona, where finding a decent farmer’s market, much less a cucumber, became still more problematic.

Enter my community garden plot, which I began this spring. As you can see from the picture, cucumbers are no longer a problem. This year, I decided to grow two varieties: Japanese and lemon, the latter which are in the white bowl.

Storm

My garden provides a nice view of the McDowell Mountains where I live. In this photo, a mid-May storm works it’s way down from northern Arizona.

10-Foot Tall Sunflowers

Several months ago, I obtained a community garden plot a few miles south of us. I meant to post pictures as it evolved, but I’ve been waaaay to busy.

For fun, Seth helped me plant some decorative sunflowers I bought for him and Lael. I know the package said up to 10 feet tall, but well, wow. At least they provide sun protection in the hot Arizona sun and may prolong the summer growing season.

For about a week now, we’ve been enjoying cucumbers, but the real haul is going to come in a couple weeks. Today I was able to harvest some green beans and some corn. Ha-Ogen melons should be ready soon, too.

Pictures on the jump: The open sunflowers are the edible seed variety and the greenish fruit is actually a delicate squash. Armenian/Japanese and lemon cucumbers take over the middle part of the garden. A long view of the garden reveals the 20X30 foot plot.

Hollyhocks

A much more experienced gardener than myself lets Hollyhocks run wild around the perimeter of his plot.

Back Yard Blooming

While we might live in the Arizona desert, our back yard is quite verdant. The top picture shows white-flowered, thorny vines growing on top of our neighbor’s Ficus. I am told it’s the only Ficus in the neighborhood that survived a frost from last year.

The bright yellow tree is a sweet acacia that produces yellow puffballs in spring. The flowers emit a perfume-like fragrance vaguely reminiscent of Channel No. 5. Or was that Picasso? Been too many years.

The pink flowers come from a bougainvillea just before a wind storm pulled the plant away from a wall. I had to cut it back to the trunk, but it’ll grow back in no time.

 

Digging Myself Into a Hole

Despite the great weather, Arizona is not the easiest place to garden. Sure, there are two growing seasons, but the soil. oh, the soil.

While some parts of the Phoenix area have nutrient-rich clay that can be coaxed into growing with relative ease, other areas, such as our back yard, is filled more with rocks than soil.

What to do? First, I took a course at Scottsdale Community College where I learned, that yup, I had to dig THREE feet into the ground and dispose of all the rocks. Then I needed to add gypsum to the soil to make it less alkaline. THEN, I needed to dilute the heavy clay with as much humus as possible.

Amazingly, Seth and I managed to get 18-24 inches deep. Since we live in a rental, there was no way we were going to go deeper. Besides, the deeper we went, the bigger the rocks.

Digging also took a bit longer than planned because Seth had to rescue and then observe each and every worm we discovered eking a living from the hardpan. How the little buggers moved through the clay without the Jaws of Life is a mystery to me.