We did a 150-mile round-trip photo run Friday through back-country we didn’t even know existed until recently. You’ll eventually see some of those pictures. For the record, conditions were possibly the best we’ve seen to date. But I have a few hundred photos to go through and it’s gonna take some time.
So meanwhile…
Along the Road
In southern Arizona, roadside vendors are a year-round staple. The most common scenario is one person in a pickup, hawking citrus fruits, honey, pecans, and occasionally dates, all locally-grown. Orange-blossom honey is a thing here, and available everywhere. It’s 100% honey, unlike so much of what you get at the grocery store. If I remember right, it’s also less $$ than what you pay at the grocery store for a substandard product.
There’s also a group selling seafood from the Baja Gulf – shrimp, scallops, and lobster, frozen and vacuum-sealed. It’s better-quality and cheaper than anything you’ll find at the grocery store.
In Casa Grande, the medium-big city nearby (50K-ish population), one corner is an unofficial swap meet, where anything goes. Most of the stuff we’ve seen there is garbage. There are people selling junk tools, junk furniture, and general junk, week after week. Now and again, though, we’ll find something worth the trouble. I bought an old wooden Pepsi crate there a few weeks ago; G’s bought tools there from time to time; and last weekend we bought a good part of our fledgling garden there.
The Galvanized Garden
We have a garden!
A baby one, but a garden. The tomatoes and peppers we bought last weekend have been rehomed into large galvanized tubs. (The tubs and all other planters at the house were yard-sale finds from last summer. If/when we find more this year, we’ll snap them up, too.) We filled everything with garden soil from the big box store. watered them, and plunked them down in the yard a few feet from the back door.
Not necessarily in that order.
The savory plant is relegated to a large plastic tub. Savory can grow to bush size, which is why it got its own space. If all goes well, I hope to eventually put out some rosemary, too. I know from experience rosemary thrives in this climate, even when largely neglected. It can also get to be a respectable size, which is likewise fine with me.
And of course there are my second-generation green onions in the ceramic pots near the front door. They share space with baby jade plants, as shown below. They’re the onions I bought at the grocery store, cut off the tops and used in cooking, and replanted the bulbs. As you can see below, it was a successful experiment.
We shall see which becomes the dominant life form over time. I assume it’ll be the jade, though the onions seem pretty tenacious, too. They lived through all our frosts this year and came out without blinking. I cut off and use the green tops – they grow back. I’m happy with the arrangement.
This week I bought string-bean and strawberry plants, and I’ve got seeds for turnips, spinach, lettuce, and cukes.
My only concern is protecting them from a sun-baked death before they can mature.
There WILL be moringa going into each of the two galvanized tubs. A local person told me how to keep them going in this specific area, including how to make them more frost-hardy; so I’m hopeful the whateverth-time is a charm. I don’t care if they take over the tubs, even if it means losting this year’s veggies. In fact, I’ll be thrilled if they do.
We’ve had no luck getting much of anything going in our native soil, for a lot of reasons. With the raised beds, I hope we finally achieve a measure of success. If/when any moringa outgrow the tubs – by which time I’m reasonably sure the bottom of the containers willl have rusted through – they should hopefully be strong enough to withstand the ugly stuff that’s built up in the cement-that-passes-as-dirt here.
While I was writing this, G and I discussed investing in a couple of large galvanized raised beds, and doing things the right way to create weed-free zones between them. It might be our best — or heck, our only — means of defeating the weed factory for good, with the added bonus of growing stuff we can eat. We’ll watch to see how things go this year before spending the money for the raised beds and soil to fill them, though, because they don’t come cheap.
I’m going to probably order a good-sized shade cloth, too. One side can be anchored to the back of the house, but for the other side it’s going to take some support poles, something that’ll likely make G balk, because they don’t come cheap. However, aside from the obvious benefit to the garden, it’ll shade the north (back) side of the house and ease our AC bill a bit, too.
Straggler
The oleander is the only thing we planted directly in the yard, because oleanders are indestructible.
When my parents first moved us to Arizona, oleanders lined our back fence. They were never watered – and they still grew. My mom would chop them to the ground. They grew back. I think she finally got rid of them by means of digging out all the roots (which was quite a job) AND dumping a ridiculous amount of weed-killer on the area for a few months straight. I’m not sure she ever fully eliminated them, but it wasn’t for lack of tenacity.
That’s a lot of plant projects. I hope most of them survive. I’m sure there is nothing like eating from plants you have grown yourself. Good luck.
There’s definitely no comparison to fresh veggies from the garden vs. what you get from the produce section at the grocery store. There’s also no waste when you’re picking from the garden. If something is beyond its prime and you don’t eat it, turn it into compost for next year’s garden.