Arcadia Edible Garden Tour: Part 1

,

I love visiting other people’s gardens, particularly if they have fruit and vegetables growing in them. So, I was thrilled to be able to go on a tour of local ‘edible’ gardens earlier this month.

Arcadia Edible Garden

This is the second year of the Arcadia Edible Garden Tour, which is made up of a collection of residential gardens in the ‘Arcadia’ area in east Phoenix.  I used to live in this area and it is one of my favorite regions of the Phoenix metro area.

Because my mother loves gardening almost as much as I do, I decided to buy her a ticket too and take her with me as a Mother’s Day gift.

Our first stop was to see Jill’s Sweet Life Garden.  I made sure to visit there first because I had been following her blog and couldn’t wait to see her gardens in person.

Arcadia Edible Garden

As we entered the garden, We headed straight for the raised vegetable beds.

Arcadia Edible Garden

My mother and I love to grow leaf lettuce, so we had to see what varieties were being grown.

Arcadia Edible Garden

One of the reasons that I was excited to go on this garden tour, was to get ideas to use in my own garden.

Like, using regular wire mesh over the garden.  This would be great to use as a support for shade cloth in summer or frost cloth in the winter.  It is much more attractive then PVC supports.

The trellis is made of rebar and wire mesh and provides an attractive support for vining vegetables.

Arcadia Edible Garden

As many of you know, I love to grow nasturtiums alongside my vegetables.  They aren’t only pretty, they help to keep bad bugs away from my veggies.

This bed had a variety of nasturtium that I was anxious to try ‘Cherry Rose Jewel’ (I found seeds at Botanical Interests).  I will definitely be planting these next year.

Arcadia Edible Garden

As I was busy admiring the raised beds, my attention was drawn upward by a massive trumpet vine that was growing up a Phoenix date palm.

Arcadia Edible Garden

Talk about an unexpected support for a vine – I loved it.

I have been growing a special variety of corn in a half wine barrel.  

cucumbers

Sweet Life Garden had cucumbers growing in a barrel with a beautiful trellis.

Baker’s Nursery had these wine barrel trellises available, but I’m not sure if they still do.  You could certainly make your own.

sunflowers

In addition to cucumbers, sunflowers were also growing in a barrel.  I may have to try this.

Arcadia Edible Garden

I love growing herbs in pots, but I think Jill’s look better then mine because of the half barrels.  I think I need to get more for my garden.

beautiful heirloom

Tomatoes were growing like crazy with some beautiful heirloom varieties ripening.

Arcadia Edible Garden

Wouldn’t this look beautiful on a sandwich or on a salad?

Arcadia Edible Garden

I think it is important to have seating areas scattered throughout the garden, which invites you to sit and enjoy your surroundings.

Arcadia Edible Garden

Here is another example of the wire mesh being used as a trellis.

Arcadia Edible Garden

For those of you who mourn the fact that they cannot grow leafy greens for their salad in summer – let me introduce you to Malabar spinach.

Okay, it’s not exactly a spinach but tastes great in salads and tastes like spinach when cooked.

It loves hot temperatures and needs a trellis for support.  I have seeds, but will probably wait until next year to plant mine.

The seeds can be a little hard to find at your local nursery, but you can buy some through Amazon.com for under a $1 – just type in Malabar spinach in the search.

Arcadia Edible Garden

Why limit yourself to growing just vegetables?

Fruit on shrubs and trees is also fun to grow as you can see from the large peach tree, above and the espaliered apple tree, below.

I especially enjoyed seeing the peach orchard. My peaches are almost ready for picking 🙂

Arcadia Edible Garden

I have been busy picking the blackberries off of my vines and have been thinking of adding more next winter.  

Arcadia Edible Garden

After seeing the berries at Sweet Life Garden, I will definitely add more to my own garden.

Did you know that there is a thornless variety?  I have one thorny blackberry bush and the rest are thornless.  Guess which kind I like best?

Arcadia Edible Garden

It was time to wrap up our visit because there were more gardens to visit.

Arcadia Edible Garden

Did I mention that they have chickens too?

On our way out, we enjoyed seeing a variety of products offered by Sweet Life Garden and local vendors.

Sweet Life Garden
Sweet Life Garden

I had already eaten breakfast, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying a few samples.

Sweet Life Garden
Sweet Life Garden

The three-cheese black pepper bread came home with me.

Sweet Life Garden

We had a great time visiting Jill, at Sweet Life Garden.

But, our adventure didn’t end there.  There were more gardens to visit.  I will give you the highlights of the other gardens in my next post.

**You can find information about the Arcadia Edible Garden Tour on Jill’s blog, Sweet Life Garden.  Be sure to order early next spring, when tickets are available.

Arcadia Edible Tour: Part 2

The Secret to a Bountiful Vegetable Garden

As you know, I enjoy growing my own vegetables.  Many people ask me what the secret is to a healthy vegetable garden.

Well, what if I told you that the secret ingredient is a natural fertilizer that improves your soil, is plentiful and very cheap.

Would you want to try it in your garden?  Chances are that you are already familiar with this secret ingredient and farmers have been using it for centuries.

What is it?

MANURE

secret of healthy vegetable garden

Secret of healthy vegetable garden, Manure along with compost are the backbone of my soil in my vegetable gardens.

Manure along with compost are the backbone of my soil in my vegetable gardens.

I blogged about using manure when creating my newest vegetable garden early last year.

I recently wrote an article “The Poop Scoop: Enrich Your Soil With Good Old Manure” for Houzz.com

I hope you enjoy it!

*******************************

The most recent update on our daughter, Rachele, who is in basic training for the Navy is that she has to pass her last running test in order to graduate.

She is quite nervous about passing because she still hasn’t recovered from her twisted ankle and also has shin splints.

I would appreciate your prayers that she will be able to pass 🙂

A Beautiful Flower and a Failed Vegetable

beautiful flower

White Onions

Isn’t this flower beautiful?

You may be surprised that a vegetable produced this flower.

This is the flower from a onion plant.

onion plant

You would expect that the onion plant that produced this flower would be equally impressive, like the one in the picture above.

But sadly, the onion that created the flower in the top photo looked more like this when I pulled it out…

White Onions

White Onions

Kind of disappointing, isn’t it?

This was the first time that I tried growing regular onions in the garden.  I have had a lot of success with green onions, but evidently, my white onions need some help.

While there are only about two onions worth eating, I can chop the greens of my ‘reject’ onions and use them in the same way one would use green onions (scallions).  They have a mild, oniony flavor.

Every time that I try some thing new in the garden, I learn something.

I have learned since then that many of my fellow area gardeners, have had similar disappointments when growing bulb onions.

However, there is one variety that many have told me they have had some good results growing.  It is called ‘Texas Sweet’.

So, next fall, I will be growing ‘Texas Sweet’ onions.

White Onions flowers

In the meantime, I will keep my remaining onions in the ground and enjoy their beautiful flowers.

**Check back soon for a fabulous giveaway that I will be doing where you can win a great TroyBilt tool that has many uses.  I have been having so much fun with mine.

*********************

I haven’t mentioned how my daughter, Rachele, has been doing while in basic training for the Navy.

It has been much harder than she expected.  She has had some injuries to deal with and a cold that has been present much of her time in basic training.

She has been homesick, but as her time in basic training has progressed, we sense her toughness and determination to get through.

On the home front, the first few weeks were very hard because we missed her so much.  But, as time passed, we have adjusted to her absence although we miss her terribly.

What has been so hard is the fact that our main way of communicating with her is by letter. She only gets to send us one letter a week.

Phone calls are sporadic and you never know when they will come.  It has been 3 weeks since we last talked to her on the phone.

I cannot wait for her to graduate from basic training and will be flying out to Chicago soon to see her become a sailor.  We will have one day with her before she flies out to her ‘school’ where she will learn her specialty.

Please keep her in your prayers as she is going through her last tests that she must pass.

Thank you!

Vegetable Garden Transition

About this time of the year, I am busy helping my vegetable gardens transition into summer.  

That means pulling any remaining leaf lettuce.  Yes, it hurts to know that I now have to buy lettuce until next fall when I can grow it again.

Even though not all of my lettuce had bolted, none of it was edible.  Once the temperatures get up to 90 degrees, the lettuce turns bitter.

vegetable garden transition

vegetable garden transition

For the past 4 months, I have been harvesting a few carrots every few nights to include in salads or soups.

Now that it is getting hotter and some of the carrots are beginning to flower, it was time to harvest the rest of the remaining carrots.

I didn’t use the carrots that had flowered, since they had become woody inside.

vegetable garden transition

vegetable garden transition

You know, one of the things that I like about gardening is how unpredictable it can be.  The two carrots, above, were growing just 1 ft. away from each other.

The garlic was already harvested and I concentrated on pulling out cool-season annuals that were serving as companion plants.

I love my crocs

I love my crocs!

These nasturtiums were still blooming, so I will leave them until they begin to fade.

vegetable garden transition

vegetable garden transition

A quick check of my warm-season vegetables showed that my zucchini plant has its first fruit (yes, zucchini is technically a ‘fruit’).

You really have to check carefully for zucchini because they can be hard to spot.

I will have to get my mother’s famous zucchini bread recipe.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are hanging from the vine and will soon be turning red.

In my side garden, I have two new peach trees growing.

peaches

This one has 18 peaches on it.

I planted this peach tree in January.  Now, normally, you would want to ‘thin’ fruit so that there is only one fruit every 6 inches – this creates larger fruit.  But, I was so happy to see so much fruit on my new tree, that I just left them.

Since I won’t have enough to make peach jam, this year, I will use them to make peach vinegar.

I don’t just have peaches growing in my side garden…

blackberries

My blackberry bush has ripe blackberries!

Originally, I hadn’t planned on growing blackberries in my garden, but my mother had an extra blackberry plant that she gave me last year, so I planted one.

I decided to go ahead and add more this year and planted 5 more bushes.

I only have the original blackberry bush covered in fruit because blackberries form on 1-year old growth.

blackberries

My family wants me to use some of our blackberries to serve over ice cream.

I was thinking of using them for making blackberry vinegar, which I’ll use to make salad dressing.

What do you think?  Ice cream topping or fruit-flavored vinegar?

A Tiny Investment And a Huge Harvest

,

I love getting a great deal, don’t you?

Back in October, I spent $2.40 for eight heads of garlic, from my local grocery store.

I planted them and 7 months later, it was time to harvest them.

vegetable garden

As I stepped into the side vegetable garden, I took a good look at my garlic.  It was a lot bigger then in previous years.

vegetable garden

I started pulling and realized that it was a lot harder to pull out then last year.

It was the biggest garlic that I had ever seen in my garden and I was thrilled.

Until I realized that I had planted twice as much garlic as last year and still had to pull out all of the remaining garlic.

A couple of hours later, I hauled in my garlic harvest…

garlic harvest

All this for an initial investment of $2.40!

I had so much garlic that I couldn’t carry it in one load.

harvest garlic

harvest garlic

The larger heads were almost 4 inches wide.  However, the garlic that I grew in containers was quite a bit smaller – more like the size you find in the grocery store, which was fine with me.

Now all I have to do is to let my garlic ‘cure’ for a month in a dark, dry spot.  That usually means that I put them on top of my large freezer in the laundry room.

Garlic will last about 8 months if kept in a dark, dry spot out of the heat.  I don’t think we will be able to use all our garlic.  Thankfully, I have plenty of people to share it with.

For more info on how to grow and ‘cure’ garlic, you can check out my earlier post “Got Garlic?”.

Overwintered Pepper Plant

There are few types of vegetables that don’t always survive winter in my zone 9a garden without protection when temperatures dip below freezing.

In the past, I have protected my San Marzano tomato plants with success by covering them completely with frost cloth.

This year, I decided to protect my bell pepper plants.  The reason was because they were producing so well up until December and I didn’t want to have to wait a long time for new peppers.

I believe I’ve told you before that patience isn’t my strong suit.

bell pepper

Of course, this was the winter when we broke records with temps in the low 20’s for five days in a row.  I wasn’t sure that my peppers would survive, even with protection.

The upper leaves did suffer frost damage and had to be cut back.

I wasn’t sure if the base would form new leaves.  I have been checking every week now that the temperatures are warming up.

Guess what I saw last week?

bell pepper plant

Bell Pepper plant planted among garlic and nasturtiums.

There are new leaves growing from my pepper plant!  I can hardly believe that it made it through the coldest winter we have had in over 30 years.

How about you?

What warm-season vegetables have you been able to over-winter?

Look At What I Grew From Kitchen Scraps…

, , , , , , ,
houseplants

houseplants

Who knew that you could grow ‘houseplants’ using kitchen scraps?

I was inspired to find gardening projects that could be done indoors, for those gardeners who are stuck inside during cold winters.

The photos below were taken over a 14 day period from planting, to what they look like just 2 weeks later.  I must admit that I am quite impressed.

I started with growing a radish…

houseplants

I am hoping that my radish plant will flower at some point because I have heard that radish flowers are quite pretty.

houseplants

My garlic cloves grew quickly and I will use the greens as a garnish, much like I would use green onions.  Garlic greens have a mild garlic flavor.

Kitchen Scraps

My lentils are quite pretty and delicate looking.  I am waiting for them to flower, which will make them even prettier.

Kitchen Scraps

I realize that many people have grown a vine from a sweet potato – but I hadn’t tried it.  After it grows, the vine will be a pretty addition to my kitchen windowsill garden.  Now that the roots are growing, I will hopefully see some green sprouting on top.

Kitchen Scraps

I did have one plant that didn’t come up.  The book that I was inspired by said that you could plant fresh green beans, but mine didn’t grow.

**You can also plant dried beans after soaking them overnight and they should come up.

The goal of this project wasn’t to grow ‘food’, but to enjoy the foliage of the plants themselves and brighten up a dreary winter for those who live in cold climates.

I really had fun with this project.  I think it would be a great activity to do with kids, don’t you?

What’s Happening to My Green Tomatoes…

The temperatures outside are not just chilly – they are COLD (21 degrees outside yesterday morning in my garden). You may recall that I wrote about picking the green tomatoes off my vines a few weeks before the first frost appaeared.  

I had quite a few.

My Green Tomatoes

Well, I decided to let them ripen indoors. So, I placed the tomatoes on a cookie sheet and left them alone.

And this is what they look like four weeks later.

My Green Tomatoes

They are starting to ripen!

Every day as I check on them, I find more starting to turn yellow and then red.

I love that you can pick unripened tomatoes and let them ripen on their own.

If I had left them on my tomato vine, they would have frozen during our first freeze of the season.

Now, we can enjoy them in salads or even in making pasta sauce 🙂

Vegetable Garden Before The First Frost

This morning, I spent some time outside in one of my vegetable gardens with my granddaughter, Lily.

cool season containers

While I worked, she had fun with the plants in my containers.  

cool season containers

cool-season containers

My cool-season containers are in full bloom.  Leaf lettuce, petunias, garlic, parsley and nasturtiums are growing very well.

cool season containers

My 1-year old tomato plants are huge.  They extend over the fence between my containers.

There is even a small tomato seedling coming up in front of the yellow container.

vegetable garden

They have taken over this part of the vegetable garden.  I admit that they aren’t particularly beautiful with the dead, brown area in the middle (the result of sunburn before I got my shade cloth up this summer).

There are a few green tomatoes on the vines, but they won’t have time to ripen before the first freeze.  So, I plan to keep an eye on the weather report and pick my green tomatoes just before a freeze is scheduled.

The green tomatoes will ripen indoors in my kitchen.

bell peppers

My bell peppers are doing just fabulous.

Last summer, I treated them with epsom salts, which helps to promote fruit production.  (You can read more about my experiment with epsom salts and my pepper plants here).

bell peppers

The epsom salts did their job.  I have over 6 bell peppers ready to be picked.  I’ll pick them before the first freeze, dice them and freeze them until I need them for making my Mexican rice.

Both tomato and pepper plants are damaged or killed in freezing temperatures in my zone 9a garden.  I will protect my pepper plants from frost by covering them with old sheets.

I will not do the same for my tomato plants because they are very large and it would be hard to cover them all.  The other reason that I won’t bother to protect them is that many gardeners report that the size of tomatoes decreases as the plant gets older.

I will start again with new plants in late winter.

*****************

I hope you are enjoying this holiday season.  You might have noticed that I haven’t been posting as often.  Partly this is due to the fact that I get busier in December preparing for Christmas.

The other reason is that I am having tendon trouble in my thumb.  I wear a splint, which helps somewhat – but it is very hard and laborious to type one-handed.

I do have some new posts coming up though, so stay tuned 🙂

One-Year Old Tomato Plants

My tomato plants are turning one-year old this week.

tomato plants

I didn’t plant them.  They sprouted up from fallen tomato seeds from a stray tomato that was unpicked the previous year.

When I saw the little seedlings coming up, I decided to protect them from the winter frosts in hopes that I would have a jump start on the growing season in spring.

I covered them with sheets when temperatures dipped below 32 degrees and even put a light bulb underneath the sheets to provide additional warmth.

In the spring, I did get a jump-start on the tomato growing season.  They performed very well.

In May, as summer temperatures arrived – I put up shade cloth to shield them from the sun and keep them from burning up.

My hope was to be able to enjoy a fall harvest of tomatoes once the temperatures cooled.

Now that November has arrived, my tomato plants are covered with flowers, just waiting to form into new tomatoes.

I checked over my tomatoes today and this is what I found…

tomato plants

A single ripening tomato.

I’m not too sure I will see any more tomatoes form because soon we will be getting too cold.

I must admit that I have mixed feelings about working hard to help my tomatoes survive another winter.

I’m not sure why I feel this way.  It was worth it because I did get a jump-start on the growing season and as a result, got more tomatoes.

Even when working to protect tomatoes from the occasional freeze – there is no guarantee that they will survive.  A colder then normal winter will kill them no matter what protective measures I try.

Oh well.  At least I don’t have to make a decision for a few weeks.

**How about you?  Have you raised tomato plants for over a year?  Was it worth it?  Or was it easier to start off fresh with new tomato plants in the spring?

*********************************

Grand Canyon University is getting ready for their third Run to Fight Children’s Cancer, which is a 5k/10k run that will raise money to support children and families dealing with childhood cancer.

The run will benefit the Children’s Cancer Network & Phoenix Children’s Hospital (a wonderful hospital – our son, Kai, had surgery there on his hip).

Please take a minute to check out the video link

which shows childhood cancer survivors in an honest, heartfelt way that will leave you inspired. 

Popular Classes and Membership Club

desert gardening 101 class logo

Shop for My Recommended Garden Products:

Sign-Up For My Free Guide to Gardening in the Desert!

I promise not to sell or share your email with anyone ever!

*Please note that I cannot answer individual gardening questions.

Privacy Policy

Order My Newest Book!

The Water-Smart Garden Book

My Award-Winning Book!

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.