Pruning in the winter in AZ

The landscape companies that are roaming around in the valley right now seem to be chopping the bushes down in to small little clumps.  I find this shocking considering the winter is coming.  If we get a really cold night that freezes some plants they have now removed a lot of volume from the plants that could freeze out completely.

Let's think about this for a second, if you have a lantana that is nice and bushy and the night gets to say 30 degrees the outside of it might be damaged by the freeze.  It has protected the core of the plant with the extra growth on the outside.  These landscape companies that excessively prune them back into little flowerless ugly balls are simply ensuring job security by basically killing them in advance and making sure they will have to replace the plants in the Spring and be valuable to the people that they are employed by.

I would never tell anyone to do a severe pruning until Spring. Rarely does a plant ever even profit from any sort of such a pruning. The weather is more conducive to that sort of pruning in a warmer  season. It is such a brutal practice especially out in the outer regions of the valley like Queen Creek.  These large landscapers have really mastered the best business practices that they need to make sure they are in demand at all times of the year.  A little bit of common sense would really tell anyone that you would leave the bushes and trees to have their "winter coat" on just like the animals get in the winter.

Tecoma stans or Arizona Yellow Bells and caterpillar damage

I keep seeing a lot of questions about the damage to the Yellow bells and the Orange jubilee plants we have in the valley and never see a lot of solutions.

These beautiful plants do get a caterpillar that can leave the entire plant looking like it was set on fire.  I live in a neighborhood that has a landscaping company that appears to be totally inept when it comes to dealing with these little worms and they just shave the entire bush down to the nubs in the fall (which is the absolute worst time to be pruning stuff down to the nubs in the outskirts of metro Phoenix but that will be the next blog) rather than just spray some bacteria on them to kill the caterpillars.

The Bougainvillea get the worms also and Bt is such an easy non chemical method to control the infestation I don't understand the people that cut the whole thing down rather than simply treat the problem.  They would be blooming profusely right now in such beautiful color if they were treated a few weeks ago.

Greenhouse and salad time 11/20/2017

The nights are cooling off, not the days but the nights really are so I have begun the process of setting up the greenhouse for the winter.  I love having fresh herbs available and some squash or tomatoes that might not like the cooler nights.  Everything grows so much faster in there and if it ever gets cooler down here I do enjoy going out and spending some time inside where it feels almost like a sauna some days!  I got this little greenhouse from Harbor Freight and its the same type I had set up in Mesa for 7 years.  I did tweak it a little bit to keep panels in better and improve it a bit but for minimal money it has always proven to do its job quite well.  I have even had some success with cukes in the winter so its a definite win.

I have added eggplants and two large pots that I have put some squash seeds in and might try some cucumber seeds after the Thanksgiving holiday is done.  I usually like to get some large bucket of water inside of it too because it seems to help with holding the heat during the night.  If I can't find one that has a screened top I use mosquito dunks to keep those little pests at bay.

The row of salad greens has really taken off.  The warmer weather has really made the arugula rather spicy but it isn't a bad thing, I just add less to the mix of lettuce and spinaches.  The heat will also make my radishes a bit peppery but hopefully it will cool off soon and they will get milder.  Until then I will enjoy the spicy flavors and tell myself it is summer saying good bye.

Beets, cabbages, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, Cauliflower, peas, radishes, onions, arugula, lettuce, spinach, tomatoes and the 1 year old jalapenos are all doing really amazing right now.  I have been using my favorite organic fertilizer (Happy Frog) and this stuff keeps growing nuts!

Fall and winter garden in SW AZ

WORMS

I have had some run ins with worms lately. I use the term worms loosely, I have had more problems with caterpillars I guess.  Worms are not the bad guys.  I just know that I did have a tomato horn worm and this guy was huge!

From experience one of these ugly looking things can clean the leaves off of a perfectly healthy tomato plant overnight.  He should be called a caterpillar.  I love my earthworms and other worms in the ground.  They are beneficial. 

Now on to caterpillars.  They are often the ugly little precursors to beautiful moths and butterflies.  They serve no purpose, do their jobs, go into a state of metamorphosis and emerge into a winged creatures that pollinate and flit about.  I try to tally their checks and balances with what they have destroyed with what they create.  When they were children they ate a lot of shit, but does the positive stuff they do as adults compensate for the damage they have wrought?

I have passion vines that the Gulf Fritillary butterfly loves to lay its eggs on and if I don't catch them in time they will clean the entire vines off, like zero leaves left.  I usually use a Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) sold as Thuricide to combat them but with all of this GMO and Monsanto stuff going on I wonder if even this bacterial warfare I use is going too far?  Maybe the answer is to just keep them in control and let them clean some leaves off and complete their life cycle as long as they don't destroy my plant, I doubt if they would kill it completely because they would have no plants for the future generations to feed upon.

Maybe if I can strike a balance between nature and my garden I can reap what I need and still allow mother nature to collect what she needs to carry on.  She is the one being abused in all of this.  I can allow one ugly caterpillar to eat some of my leaves and go into the ground to become a moth that is in amazing in itself.

The hummingbird moth 

Fall Cucumbers in Queen Creek

The Cukes are going to town!

I have never really had any success with cucumbers in the fall in Arizona but maybe the new found love of the soaker hose is a game changer.  I really was getting home and getting the leaves wet while it was sunny, which is a no no, even though I knew better.  Who wants to get up before the sun and go out and water the garden in the dark before you have to go to work all day?  I would do it when I got home and was sweaty from being outside all day and water everything and then hop in the pool dry off and go inside to the sweet air conditioning where I would spend the rest of my evening.  Nothing was going to get me back outside until time to go to work the next day!  You really aren't supposed to water your garden in the evening either if you plan on getting the leaves wet.  The warm Arizona nights and wet leaves just beg for fungus to appear.

So I had seen some grey beetles around the watermelon vines as I was pulling them out but paid very little attention to them.  I was killing the vines so who cares about the bugs.  Never had two thoughts about them.

The great balance of life being what it is, I noticed a few smaller runts of the cucumber rows were wilting and dying.  I have never had these and should have had bells and whistles go off in my head when I saw them.  I had diagnosed them as the problem a million times at the nursery but never experienced their destruction first hand.

Let me introduce you to my new nemeses...

Squash beetles.  Bastards.

I first went with a soapy water spray and carefully sprayed the cucumber plants while billions of whiteflies swarmed all around me, they appear to be doing no damage, and let it rest for a while.  Went back to check and they just seemed cleaner.  I have never had luck with the soapy water game so I moved on to Carbaryl (Sevin) which did nothing for either bug.  I had hoped at least it would do a little something to the whiteflies, even though deep down I knew nothing really will get rid of them except the cooler temps of Fall.  I don't worry as much about them anyways since they usually don't really kill a healthy plant, they are just annoying.  The evil beetles from Beelzebub however should have shown some sort of distress from the Sevin, but nothing so I tried again being very careful to spray under the leaves this morning to get them where they were hanging out plotting some destructive actions I'm sure.  I went back out a couple of hours later only to find them more clever and resilient than before.  They try their best to hide from you when you move the vine around.  They will scurry to the backside of the vine and tuck in their legs so you might miss them!  This was the last straw, I hate doing this but in the kill or lose your veggie crop world we live in I have become a masterful... beetle smasher.

So far this method has been very efficient.  Its a little gross and time consuming but in two days I am down to only seeing one or two each time I go out there.  I'm hoping any new beetles that approach the cucumbers see the limbs, carcasses and carnage and just figure that its just not worth it!

Weeds

The cucumber seeds are up and growing.  I know the warm soil really makes a difference but its crazy how fast they are growing.  Beans are just starting to pop up too.

I guess I should talk about weeds.  Recently having a conversation with my mother about her alyssum and moss roses that have re-seeded themselves everywhere I flashed back to my Biology and Botany roots.  A weed really is just a plant that is not growing where you want one to grow.  Be it a bindweed or pigweed or cucumber or watermelon, if it is not growing in a place that you have specifically planted it....it is a weed.

I think the best way to rid yourself of this weed is to pull it.  If you get it early enough it won't have any seeds that it will spread from.  Unfortunately the "weeds" we fight have seeds that will disperse when they are very young. The portulaca you pull probably won't have any seeds it will spread all over the place, the creeping spurge you pull out however will.  If it has even a few leaves it seems that it will have seeds ready to jump off the parent plant and land wherever you have pulled it.  Even the portulaca you want ( moss rose) and the weed sometimes called a water weed or purslane seems to have different ideas of when to spread the seeds.

Purslane is a "weed" that is a very edible plant but we spend a lot of time pulling it and trying to kill it in our gardens.  It also tends to have viable seeds very early and when we do pull it we just spread it around. It even goes as far as growing from cuttings. You can drop a chunk of this purslane and it will sprout and grow.  It is very hardy.  I really wish a lot of my garden plants were that resilient.

August Planting!

It's almost August! The end is near! YES YES YES  I have ordered my cucumber, bean, carrot and even some tomato seeds.  The best hope for some cukes in the fall is plant the seeds now since they do not enjoy the soil as it cools down. They always do better in warmer soil.  I ordered carrot tape again since it makes it so much easier to plant and you don't have to thin them.

I have been using a soaker hose for the watermelons and have to admit after all my years of turning my nose up at the weird looking leaking little black hoses I am a fan.  It really makes it a lot easier to water when its still sunny outside.  I have noticed the vines seem to do a little better when you make sure you run the boiling water out of the hose before you hook it to the soaker portion.  Everything about them makes sense if I really sort it out in my head, not sure why I have never really used them. The cucumber rows will all have their own line of this genius hose so as they grow and spread out I can simply connect to the line of soaker hose and water right at the root.

The watermelons have been doing great.  They are now even climbing up the old dill stalks and setting fruit.  The pumpkins have failed for the most part.  I am holding on to the theory that there are just some things I can grow and some things I cannot.

Since August is approaching, I am looking forward to the fall of course.  Not yet time to get the cabbages in for sauerkraut or the radishes or beets but it still gives me hope that the end of summer is near in AZ and everything will cool down and I can get back to my garden...