Nathan Mitchell Realty » Gardening

The garden is coming along! One little victory…

Nathan — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:16:12 +0000

We’ve seen some growth over the past few weeks in the garden, and I finally pulled the first radishes from the garden!

A couple of radishes from our Arizona winter garden.

It’s the little victories that make this rookie happy!

The spinach, brocolli, and cauliflower are looking great! More photos in the future as we progress. For now I’m going to go cook up some radish greens.

Have a great weekend, and enjoy the Superbowl!

Our Garden in January (an update) – Queen Creek Arizona

Nathan — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:05:09 +0000

Peas growing in our garden!

As of January 1st, our radishes and peas are doing well. The spinach is growing, but only a few of what we planted. Just about all of our onions sprouted, they are still very small (they take a long time to grow!). Broccoli, cauliflower and cilantro appear to be growing, and leafing out. Just a couple seeds sprouted of the leaf lettuce (it appears), and no head lettuce is visible at all! Minute sprouts of what we think are carrots are coming up.

Pea plant close up

Cauliflower

Leaf lettuce

Spinach plants

Radishes doing very well!

Broccoli

December was very rainy with at least two nights of hard frost. The temperatures have been fluctuating above and below the ”normals”.

If we’re able, we hope to plant potatoes within the next few days, another new experience for us! We’ll let you know how it goes!

Fall – Winter Desert Garden Update

Nathan — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:16:16 +0000

Queen Creek, AZ desert garden update:

It’s been a few weeks since we’ve planted our garden, and results have not quite been what we’ve expected! We’ve seen the beginnings of what we think are pea plants, a nice bunch of radishes growing, some spinach starting to take off, and MAYBE a carrot or two?? Our pepper plants seem to be enjoying the cool weather, as the bell peppers are definitely producing more, of course they’ve been in since the spring! It seems like an eternity since we planted, and we’ve come to the conclusion that much of what we planted might not make it!

As I have browsed the internet looking to find out how other desert gardens are doing, I’ve come across a blog called A Garden In the Desert - check it out! Judging from recent photos posted, it appears we may have planted a bit too late for this year (which we had already suspected). It’s good to find a site with some photos of what a garden should be looking like right about now, so we can see if we’re on track.

So, we’ll continue to work at it, and see how it turns out! As we learn and gain more experience, I think our garden will grow in kind. I’ll check back in with updates and photos as things progress. We’re keeping our fingers crossed!

Queen Creek, Arizona – Gardening Update

Nathan — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:33:09 +0000

We finally started planting our fall/winter garden! It’s been difficult to fit it into our schedule, but we were able to get it done last Sunday, November 23rd, 2008. We decided to attempt to grow the following:

Carrots – Carnival Blend

Radishes – Sparkler White Tip

Broccoli – Di Cicco

Onions – Yellow Granex

Peas

Spinach – Correnta

Head Lettuce – Tom Thumb

Leaf Lettuce – Salad Bowl Blend

Cauliflower – Chef’s Choice Blend

Cilantro – Sabor (My favorite herb!)

We planted our seeds in square foot sections, and will utilize succession planting (planting at later dates in the remaining squares) to draw out the harvest. See the attached .pdf for a layout of how we planted:

Click to see our garden layout

We prepared our garden with the freshest batch of compost we had available; we certainly had plenty to go around on each section. We didn’t work too deep into the soil, just added the compost on top and worked it into the top layer of earth with a hoe. We planted seeds as directed on the packaging and have been watering lightly ever since to keep the ground moist. As of yesterday, it appears the radishes have already started growing. Radishes are supposed to be quick growing and should be fun and easy. As we are still amateur gardeners, we have experienced quite a learning curve here in the desert. We’re hoping the cooler weather will allow us a little more success with our selected crops!

Our garden in Queen Creek, AZ - November, 2008

Here’s a shot of our garden in all of it’s glory! It’s very basic at this point, although we do have greater aspirations. We visited Boyce Thompson Arboretum (Just outside of Superior, AZ) over the weekend and found a good example of how we’d like to fence in our area.

A small pen at Boyce Thompson Arboretum - just outside of Superior, AZ

I think that would be a nice touch!

Hopefully I’ll have some positive updates on our winter growing progress over the next few weeks. Until then…

It’s time to get out there!

Nathan — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:00:06 +0000

Well, the heat FINALLY broke around here, and it was a perfect weekend for me to get out in the yard and get things (that I’ve been putting off) done! My first order of business was to get my lawn sprinklers up and running again… I’ve had so much trouble with them over the years it’s been driving me crazy! I did get everything under control, thanks to the amazing Pat – the pro – over at the Power/Germann Home Depot. As I learned again (like so many times before) with so many things in life, picking the right product can be a big part of the picture, but SUPERIOR knowledge makes it happen! If you live in that area, and need help with your landscaping or lawn, go see Pat in plumbing, he’ll take care of you!

OK, so the sprinklers are out of the way, and my wife can have her lawn again… Onto the garden… My wife and I have become amateur gardeners over the past year or so, and now that it’s a little cooler we can start planting the fall garden. We had a summer garden, and have had some basic success, but we’re still learning how to manage the heat, and insects – the ANTS! Here’s what we’ve been able to grow in the summer so far:

A Sunflower in the Arizona Desert!

A hot pepper plant!

Corn!

The sunflowers were quite easy, they grow by themselves, really. The hot peppers grow really well in the heat too, we did have to help them pollinate. The corn grew fairly well, and we were able to get a few ears out of it, but those ants just seem to eat everything they can! We’ll have to figure out how to control them at some point (without dumping a bunch of pesticides around the yard).

We had a horn worm on the pepper plant once, and my kids were going to bring it in and watch it cocoon, but it was gone before they could get to it! Here’s an Az gardener’s site where her kids had a successful cocooning experience! Pretty cool! We’ll have to move more quickly next time.

We’ve tried to grow other things, such as tomatoes, beans, pumpkins, and cantaloupe, but as of yet have had no success. We are typically able to get the plants to start growing, but aren’t able to finish the job! We’ll keep working on it, I know success is just around the corner!

We’re going to plant for the fall in the very near future. Hopefully the lack of extreme heat will work in our favor, and we’ll have a nice full garden for me to blog about!