Gardening Practice

Jim and I had moved to Arizona from Santa Barbara, a place where outdoor ficus could grow three stories tall, cutting off the light to the upstairs bedrooms, and front yard poinsettias grew ten feet tall, blooming their heads off in season or out.  Coming from this experience, we planted trumpet vines, landinas,  citrus trees, and various ground covers to round out the prickly pear, agaves, mesquite, palo verde and saguaro on our property. They initially did well, although in no way shooting up as explosively as in Central Coast California. We thought we would learn from our gardening mistakes exactly which plants worked best and where.
That first summer, I planted tomatoes and vincas in a patch of yard that I commandeered. The vincas sprouted bright light blossoms in profusion.  The tomatoes grew well, flowered, fruited.  Surprisingly, no worms found the tomato plants, but every other garden pest did. I built wire cages with progressively smaller mesh fencing, until I could no longer reach in to harvest my tomatoes; but alas, the snakes had no problem at all.  The second summer, I planted in earthen pots, and raised thusly above the ground, the tomatoes did fine. The third summer, I was pre-occupied with the community garden for our church pantry, and experiments with local seeds in my garden pots. Did you know that carrots when transplanted put their energy into developing incredible Rip-van-Winkle-class beards! But broccoli plants gone to seed make a beautiful arrangement.

The winter of 2012-2013, has been experiencing some abnormally cold nights with hard freezes. The first spell lasting three or four nights in succession took me by surprise. I did not realize that the late fruiting tomatoes would be transformed into ice cubes even when the plants themselves were covered up. The citruses were next. They had never recovered from the first frost three winters ago, the new foliage that came each spring and summer couldn't make up the losses from the freeze. This despite placing yard lights under the frost covers and large rocks to radiate heat captured during the day. The lemon tree fared a bit better, so perhaps it was its location in the windiest part of the backyard that doomed the orange tree.  Between wintertime frosts and summertime grasshoppers and orange dog caterpillars, what's a citrus to do?  In the meantime the almond is flowering and demanding to be put into the ground. Its fragrance is heady and we will plant it once spring is officially here.