Tag Archive for: Arcadia Edible Garden Tour

Arcadia Edible Garden Tour: Part 3

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If you have been following along with my last couple of posts (Part 1 and Part 2), then you know that I have been showing some of the highlights of this year’s Arcadia Edible Garden Tour.

Well, here is the last installment, showing some of our favorite highlights from the last few gardens we toured.

Boho Farm and Home

I was looking forward to visit Caroline’s garden.  She blogs about growing and cooking great food at Boho Farm and Home.

The first thing you notice as you enter her back garden is that you start to feel relaxed amidst the beauty and shade.

beautiful summer's day

Who wouldn’t want to spend time enjoying a beautiful summer’s day in the shade?

vegetables gardens

Galvanized tubs are all the rage for planting vegetables gardens, flower, etc.  I may need to get one for my garden…

Boho Farm

I love the wire mesh arch connecting both of these raised vegetable beds at Boho Farm.  I can just imagine growing Scarlet Creeper vines up and over this arch.

Arcadia Edible Garden

The vegetable beds were full of delicious vegetables, which Caroline serves to visitors.

Arcadia Edible Garden

I like her fence, don’t you?

Arcadia Edible Garden

Her apple trees are espaliered along the fence.

Arcadia Edible Garden

Throughout the gardens at Boho Farm were artichokes mixed with ornamental plants.  Artichokes are a beautiful plant, so why not combine them with the rest of your garden?

Our last stop was a home where I was inspired to create my own trellises…

Arcadia Edible Garden

This scarlet creeper vine, which are very easy to grow in the summer, is growing up a vine made up of rebar and wire mesh.  

How simple would that be to make?  I think my husband and I are up for it.

Rebar is the hot trend in garden art right now.  I love trends that are cheap – you can’t get much cheaper then rebar.

Arcadia Edible Garden

Of course, we saw more apples growing.  They won’t be ripe until mid June.

Which reminds me – it is almost time for me to haul out my canning supplies and get ready to make peach, plum and strawberry jam. You can read about my adventures in canning here, if you like.

Of course, I will also make some applesauce too using apples from my mother’s trees.  My apple trees are too young to be producing apples yet.  I’ll probably have to wait a few more years.

As you can see, we had a wonderful morning together and I came home with some new plants and a few new ideas for my garden.

Arcadia Edible Garden

Would you like to go on this tour next year?

The Arcadia Edible Garden Tour has been held the past 2 years in early May.  Tickets sell out quickly, so start looking for them on Sweet Life Garden’s blog in early April.

Who knows…we may bump into each other next year!

Arcadia Edible Tour: Part 2

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Earlier this week, I shared with you the first garden on the Arcadia Edible Tour.  It was just wonderful to see the Sweet Life Garden in person.

However, we had to tear ourselves away from the first garden because there were more to see…

Micro Farm

We stopped by Larry’s “Living the Dream Micro Farm”.  

Arcadia Edible Tour

Like many of the gardens we visited, Larry had chickens.

But, what really caught my attention was his row of trash can compost bins.  

trash cans

Each trash can was filled with compost in a different stage.  The trash cans are re-purposed by the City of Phoenix and are available to their residents for $5 a bin.   Other cities offer free or inexpensive trash cans or compost bins.  Check your local city’s website under waste management to see what they offer.

Larry loved talking about his composting.  He primarily uses chicken manure, coffee ground and leaves.  It takes approximately 2 1/2 months from start to finish according to Larry.

tomato plants

Larry had huge tomato plants growing, heavily laden with fruit (yes, tomatoes are technically a fruit).

Bird Cage

After leaving Larry’s garden, my mother asked to stop by Baker’s Nursery, which is her favorite place to buy vegetables.  Baker’s is the favorite nursery of locals and is located on 40th Street, South of Indian School Rd.

Arcadia Edible Tour

The problem with me going to a nursery as nice as Baker’s, is that I become like a child in a candy store.

Arcadia Edible Tour

I always come home with plants and seeds.  In this case, I bought more bush beans for my garden along with some perennial flowers and Angelita Daisy.

Back on tour, we saw some great examples of vegetables being grown.

Eggplant

Eggplant.

Arcadia Edible Tour

Aren’t these cucumber vines impressive?  The trellis is made up of rebar and wire mesh.

cucumber flowers

I think cucumber flowers are so pretty, don’t you?

vegetable garden

I do love the bright colors of blanket flower, which attract pollinators to the vegetable garden.

Arcadia Edible Tour

I think vegetables are beautiful.

Arcadia Edible Tour

This may look like a green tomato – but it isn’t.  It’s a tomatillo.

Arcadia Edible Tour

Zucchini is so impressive in the vegetable garden. They grow so quickly and get so big.  I have them growing my garden too.  Now, I just have to get a recipe for chocolate zucchini cake so my kids will eat it 😉

Arcadia Edible Tour
Arcadia Edible Tour

I haven’t grown strawberries in my garden, although they are my favorite fruit. I spent time in Germany as a child with my grandparents who had a huge strawberry garden and one of my favorite memories is chasing the rabbits away.

I may have to try growing some next year.

In addition to fruit and vegetables, we did see a beautiful lily pond…  

Arcadia Edible Tour

And something quite unexpected…

Arcadia Edible Tour

That’s the thing with garden tours, you never know what you will see…

As you can tell, we were enjoying ourselves very much.

There was so much to see, that I still have one more post showing you some of our favorite parts of a few more gardens.

So come on back….you hear?

Arcadia Edible Garden Tour: Part 1

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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