Growing Season

A more successful and much larger garden than mine at The Farm at South Mountain. This photo was taken in late September.

#8 How long is the growing season where you live?

Growing food in Phoenix is a year round affair, as long as you have water, which, thanks to humongous water projects by CAP (Central Arizona Project canals) and SRP (Salt River Project reservoirs), we have been conditioned to believe we have an abundant supply of. With no significant frost, an attentive gardener can nurture veggies right through the winter solstice here. Diligent growers can also plant and harvest two seasons of annual crops, starting in August and January, according to "Desert Gardening for Beginners" by Cromell, Guy and Bradley. Most gardeners in the area take a break during the hot summer months, from June through August, to let themselves and their land restore themselves.

Timing is everything, as with most anything we do, but especially when it comes to gardening. Last year I attempted to grow squash from seed starting in October, which is way off, since these are one plant that wilts at any hint of frost. Although rare, frost does happen for a few early morning hours during December and January most years, and one morning hovering around 30F is all it takes to put an end to a hearty thirty-foot squash vine. Had I consulted the handy gardening calendar in the above mentioned text, I would have learned that planting in any month between January and July will work for squash to grow to fruit, but forget it after August. I also would have escaped the tragedies of my spring planting of frost tolerant lettuce, kale, broccoli and spinach, which all prefer the fall growing season beginning in August.

So now I'm keeping it very simple, and planted six zucchini transplants yesterday. The book says seeds should go in no later than mid-April, so I'm crossing my fingers that the month old seedlings will be okay. Since the cats have become accustomed to using the fallow garden beds as a "powder room," each plant is protected with a vine cage. I estimate that we will be blessed with an abundant supply of zucchini within a couple of months. We also have a potted herb garden with spearmint, basil, oregano, sage and rosemary to season it with. And a strawberry plant that, if we are lucky, will produce a few succulent snacks by late summer. But that one isn't even listed in the desert gardening book, so we and our suppliers, Home Depot, may be hopelessly optimistic. Thank goodness Safeway is less than a mile away!

Breathing

A good day looking north from the top of Deem Hills

On the long list of things we take for granted that I've mused upon in this blog, including water, waste management services, and food supply, I probably think more about breathing than anything. On the two mornings a week that I hike to the top of Thunderbird Mountain with my faithful hiking partner, Caroline, we are able to take a 360 degree survey of our air shed at 6:00 a.m.

Some mornings, especially after a light rain coupled with wind, the view to the south is blessedly clear enough to see the silhouettes of downtown Phoenix's skyscrapers. All around, layers upon layers of desert hills circle the city. Early morning light gilds the green urban landscape. I feel good about taking a deep breath. Other mornings, we gaze out in horror at the brown smog that has settled in the valley, obscuring silhouettes, dimming distant hills and casting a ghastly haze over everything. What we see is what we are breathing, and this cannot be escaped.

A scary day looking north from the top of South Mountain

According to a recent study published by the American Lung Association in their State of the Air Report (http://www.stateoftheair.org/), Phoenix, Arizona is the 9th most polluted city in the U.S., with over 100 days a year declared "unhealthy" to breathe. This is mostly from ozone, the low level smog that is created from burning fossil fuels, although many locals want to believe it is "just dust." Ground level ozone is produced when nitrous oxides combine with atmospheric oxygen in the presence of sunlight. Cars are the largest emitters of the nitrous oxides, which is why large urban areas tend to have the highest levels of this type of ozone.

I experienced the toxic effects of ozone this winter when I had a chronic cough that was not associated with any infection. My doctor prescribed an inhaler loaded with steroids to reduce the inflammation, and the condition abated within a month. But I can't help wondering what long-term effects are going on deep in my lungs. I have never smoked cigarettes, but that may not matter. Just breathing in Phoenix may create similar effects!

What can be done? This is another one of those "Tragedy of the Commons" issues that requires a cooperative effort to solve. Less driving. More walking and biking. More fuel efficient vehicles. The cumulative effects of each of our miniscule efforts does matter. So now that I'm finished writing this, I will ride my bike, rather than drive, to the grocery store to buy the organic milk and free range eggs that I need to make dinner tonight!

Trash

#7 Where does your garbage go?

Today is pick-up day for the recyclables. We fill up that bin about twice as fast as our "trash" bin. This can be a good thing, by the fact that perhaps the materials actually do get recycled. Or it could be regarded as a bad thing, since we are obviously overwhelmed with disposable packaging. But the answer is that, ideally, about 2/3 of our garbage goes to a recycling center in downtown Phoenix and gets separated out to be made into more disposable packaging, paper and other products like carpets and fleece.

The other quarter of our garbage goes to a landfill west of Phoenix. Our local landfill used to be just a mile to the east of us, but was declared full and closed about two years ago. Now we deliver any excess, especially yard waste from pruning the ever expanding trees, to a transfer station about five miles away. We actually visited there yesterday to deliver nine giant hefty bags full of weeds (in photo above) that I plucked from a community clean-up project I've adopted near our home. From there the waste is appropriately separated (green waste in one area, metals in another, "real" trash in another, etc.) and loaded into huge trucks to deliver to the new landfill.

I used to compost, but did not enjoy the side effect of a burgeoning population of cockroaches, crickets and mice that ensued. The cats were great at keeping the mouse population down, but much as a I love insects, the cockroaches creeped me out. I used to put out sticky traps, which would collect dozens of roaches each night. We finally turned the compost piles in with some soil to create two big raised bed gardens. Composting sounds really great, but the reality is better suited for a community garden or farm setting where the pile can be well separated from the home. So now our compost goes to the landfill, where I'm certain it will play a useful role in bio-degrading the rest of the trash.

The good news about our landfills is that the old full one is planned for restoration to create a regional recreational park. And I recently read that the new one will be teamed up with windmills and solar arrays to produce sustainable energy for the city!

Waste disposal services are one of those under-appreciated city services that if suddenly halted, would rapidly result in even greater urban chaos. Be kind to your dumpster drivers!

Storms and Seasons

#6 From what direction do winter storms generally come from in your region?

This question in the "Where You At?" series (see April 10th intro., "Agua Dulce") clearly comes from a climate other than the Sonoran Desert. "Winter" and "storm" don't really go together down here. But if you want to see some really phenomenal summer storms, come visit in July through mid-September when the monsoon season kicks in. Huge piles of cumulonimbus bring moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and Sea of Cortez, erupting into massive downpours and lightning storms that are awe inspiring entertainment for any skywatcher.

What the question is really getting at is assessing one's awareness of general weather patterns where we live. When I moved to Phoenix 7 years ago (Yikes! Seven years!) the notion of seasons, as well as weather patterns, was transformed for me. Having lived all of my previous life in four season climates with leafy falls, snowy winters, and balmy summers, moving to Southern Arizona was like landing on a different planet.

Here we are blessed with five seasons, according to "A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert," published by the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum in Tucson. Here they are:

1. We have fall, or so it is called, in late September through November. But our falls have very little color, since the landscape is mostly lacking in deciduous trees. It's more of a dry break between the torrential summer season and the drizzley winter. You can actually plant a veggie garden in September to harvest sometime in December. Snowbirds arrive.

2. Winters are mild with gentle rains blowing in from the west and northwest in December through mid-February, if we are lucky. These are the rains that set us up for spectacular wildflower displays come spring.

3. Springs are pretty dry, from late February through April. A blissful time of year when nights are cool and days are warm. Once the soil warms up, you can plant a second season of veggies to harvest in June.

4. Dry Summer starts in May, when things heat up into the 100's. By mid-June it is pretty much time to put the veggie garden to rest until September, because it is so hot and dry. Sane people migrate north to more reasonable climates.

5. And then we have the fifth and most famous Wet Summer or Monsoon Season that drenches the desert with torrents and flash floods. Winds that knock over hundreds of trees. These are the leftovers of hurricanes that devastate communities closer to the ocean. Even though it is hotter than heck, this is the most vibrant of Sonoran Seasons, the one that defines the region, the season of myths and legends. Our stormy season.

I think about this seasonal awareness every year when the schools and stores dutifully decorate for each according to, not the local five season reality, but the four season climate of northern deciduous forests that is defined by fall leaves, winter snowflakes, spring bunnies, and summer flowers and flip-flops. In summer here, the flowers are dried to a crisp. There is no snow. We do have plenty of spring bunnies, but we wear flip-flops all year round. That's where I'm at!

Bring on the summer. I'm going to Colorado!

Sex in My Garden (X-rated!)

After being transplanted from a pot in our front yard to soil in the backyard last fall, this Argentine cactus is two weeks out of sync with the full moon, having bloomed closer to today's new moon rather than the full moon as is usual for these flowers. As always, a breath-taking spectacle with intoxicating pheromones wafting from deep in the corolla. These photos were taken over a period of five days. Enjoy!

Munchies

#5 Where You At?
Name five native edible plants in your bioregion and their season(s) of availability.

To address this part of the quiz, we need to first define what our "bioregion" is. A bioregion is different than just drawing a circle with a radius of some random diameter, which is one popular approach to trying to eat "locally." While the distance limitation is valid, the bioregion differs because it may extend further or may actually constrain the definition of "local" by being smaller than the hundred-mile radius.

In the case of living in Phoenix, AZ, I'll define my bioregion as the Arizona Uplands subdivision of the Sonoran Desert, which is quite huge. The Arizona Uplands are the highest part of the Sonoran Desert, extending from north of Phoenix into northern Mexico, covering the eastern part of the Sonoran Desert. This encompasses mountain ranges up to about 4500 feet, which receive an average of up to fifteen inches of rain per year, down to about 1000 feet, where the landscape transitions to the much hotter and drier Lower Colorado River Desert subdivision of the Sonoran. Compared to the rest of the southwest deserts, we live in a rather lush bioregion here in the Arizona Uplands.

Edible plants are abundant in the Arizona Uplands. There is a ton of great information on what and how to harvest plants in a book called Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert by Wendy Hodgson, which is compiled from oral histories by indigenous people of the area. The Sonoran Desert at large has supported over 70 different cultures, many of which still exist today, subsisting in part on traditional native foods. My five favorite native edible plants around here, ones that I've actually harvested and eaten on my own, are saguaro fruit, mesquite pods, wolfberries, yucca pods, and miner’s lettuce.

We actually gathered miner’s lettuce on a hike last weekend and had some for a trail snack. Orion said he “love’s it” and even brought some home to have in his school lunch the next day. Miner’s lettuce can be found any time of year in shaded canyons.
Yucca pods can be sliced and fried when young and green, usually in the spring. Wolfberries are abundant in the spring, from February through April, after a good rainy winter. This year, not so plentiful. Mesquite pods can be gathered in June, and ground into flour and stored to make cakes and gruel throughout the year. Saguaro fruit ripens in July, and can be harvested for both the seed and the pulp. This can also be dried and stored.

Supplemented with quail, rabbit, deer and javelina, one could subsist nicely in the Arizona Uplands. But I’ll stick with my two favorite store bought staples, granola and yogurt. Maybe I’ll add a handful of saguaro seeds to the next batch of granola in honor of my bioregion.

Signs of Summer

Warmer winds blew over the weekend, tipping the season into summer. Some biological signs that mark the transition are the emergence of rattlesnakes, blooming desert willows, flower buds on saguaros, an explosion of crickets, and nighthawks cruising the washes and streetlights at dusk. At home, I take note of the first official swim of the season in our solar-heated pool, which has warmed to a balmy 76 degrees. A favorite flame-flowered cactus blooms in the backyard. I now put away the down comforter brought out for cooler nights back in November.