Early Spring Gardens - Watching a Garden Grow

We moved to Arizona. We are in a real hot and dry area. Average rainfall is 3 inches a year.
There is so much sunshine and heat it's nearly impossible to grow anything.

But we love it here.
No gas, just electric.
Winter lasts about a week.

i'm a fan of short winters.. being canadian i've seen my fair share!

wonder if you could grow some pots on the patio, if you kept them watered every day?

Picked a gallon of green beans, 6 cukes, a few peppers and lots of cherry and plum tomatoes this morning! 2 12 foot tall sunflowers just bloomed, too. Squash and big tomatoes aren't far behind. Zone 7a...Ozarks.

most excellent, glad you're getting some veggies out of your garden already!

planning to do an update on these gardens sometime in the next week.. out of town for a few days, just giving this thread a gentle nudge so it doesn't vanish out of my active threads.

peace!

I picked my first summer squash from the garden yesterday. It was small enough that I threw it on the charcoal grill along with a bunch of chicken wings. The zuchinni will be pickable may tomorrow. Couple more weeks for any cherry tomatoes. I could pick a few Corno De Toro peppers but I'll wait until they get red. Red sweet peppers have enormous amounts of vitamin C and A.

When I had squash or zuchini I would slice it thin & put it in with the raw kale leaves salad. It was so good I would eat it as I was massaging it.

The recipe was easy:

Fresh lemon juice (or apple cider vinegar)
Olive oil (or hemp oil)
Agave/honey/sugar to sweeten
sea salt (pepper, cayenne...optional)

Mix that all up & then put in the kale leaves & massage the leaves. They turn dark & get soft/limp as they absorb the dressing. The bitterness of the kale goes away.

I put broccoli leaves in it a few times along with spinach & lettuce, everything was so good.


The only thing you DON'T want to put on it until you eat it is hemp seeds. For some reason they get bitter if they sit in the dressing.

That sounds great, so rewarding and tasty eating from your own gardens!

thx for the recipe, that sounds tasty!
also, great tip on the hemp seeds, i did not know that.

Oh and nutritional yeast gives it a great cheezy flavor.

Interesting, I’ve never tried using nutritional yeast.
Is it like a powder you sprinkle on top?

Yeah and they sell it at main stream supermarkets & walmart now.

An update video to the gardens progress is coming soon!

Sorry for the delay, but I’ve been working a lot more lately and haven’t had time to edit video.

Stay tuned!

WONDERFUL!

early summer gardens update..

COOL



I think your basil might be oregano.

The mystery plant kinda looks like Iceland Poppies.

Does your cat get into any of the plants?

thx for watching, Half Past Midnight!

you're right, it's oregano, not basil.
the mystery plant is definitely white poppies!
yes, the cat likes to dig up the dirt around some of the plants.. bad cat!

Lol Did you ever grow cat mint? Do cats really roll around in it getting high?

No, but I should, they’d probably love that!

Harvested my cherries yesterday, they were half the size of normal and basically half sun-dried on the stems.. relentless heat this year in BC Canada, never seen it this hot here in my life!

That sucks but at least you got SOMEthing.

I am getting ready to place an order from Vitacost and just added Morello cherry jam to my cart. Then I saw they have seedless blackberry, wild blueberry and some others.

Love me some cherry jam, it’s the best!