Deb, Linda whines about it being too hot from, I think March through late September.

I'm not good with heat (at all), so my thought is perhaps to visit during the winter months and enjoy your warm but not scorching temps, then come back home for our summers, which I love. I can barely do 75 up here...but our gray winters can be a bit weary. And we both have osteo-arthritis. I am curious about desert gardening though.

mcash70 said:Deb, Linda whines about it being too hot from, I think March through late September.

That would be thru October Margaret...

Deb ask away about desert gardening. There are desert gardeners here that know far more then I do about it so one of us might have the answers.

quietyard said:

That would be thru October Margaret...

Linda...

Deb, and then she whines through December and January that the frosts kills her plants off and freezes the water pipes.

I love December and January, Deb. Hey, who doesn't love dead plants and frozen pipes, Margaret ???

quietyard said:I love December and January, Deb. Hey, who doesn't love dead plants and frozen pipes, Margaret ???

Hi everyone. I am new. I found you by looking how to grow roses in AZ.

I will probably do more reading than posting. I have not had much time to garden until now and gardening in Arizona is so very different.

Thank you for offering a SW Gardening site.

Willow.

Where did you used to garden ?

I've lived in Phoenix all of my life with the exception of 6 years as a new bride (Oklahoma) so I will be honest with you too! I HATE the heat. The older I get the more it bothers me. I am okay through May but June through September or October are so hot. And then I love our state again for a few months! hahaha

I would ideally like to live in a summer home from June 1st to October 31. Then Phoenix November through April.

I'm in the Pacific NW and would like to get out of here around holiday time (to bypass all that consumerism and yuck) and return in early March - sounds like the SW might be a good alternate location for me.

Hello from Buckeye AZ.
I was raised in the valley but lived in WA for 25 years. When I came back I became very frustrated with gardening here after everything burned up during a vacation because of a watering malfunction. I started again last year slowly adding plants and gazebo's. I grow several cultivar of Iris and this spring I bought several daylily. I grow several salvia, gaillardia and am trying a couple of coneflowers and agastache. I also got a clematis to bloom...I just hope it does okay with this extreme heat we are having! I purchased some Dahlia tubers and found out that they are treated as annuals here...What is everyone growing in this area?

Hi Carla

I grow lots of daylilies in the Tucson heat. We have been as high as 111 this first week of June. Mine are in pots in filtered sun and they have done very well the last few years in this extreme heat. I grow coneflowers in pots as well. I find every thing needs filtered sun. Lots of water for every thing as well. Good Luck!

Good morning Linda,

Thanks for responding. I have had a few daylily bloom but they are under shade cloth and seem to do very well. I am also growing zucchini, tomatoes, cucumber, jalapeno peppers and red bell pepper...they seem to enjoy the heat. I look forward to seeing what everyone grows in the southwest.

Hi Carla

I tried a Solar Fire tomato plant this year. It is growing in a container and produces very large tomatoes but is prone to blossom end rot. I did harvest two very big ones yesterday. The variety does well in our high heat but the flavor is pretty mild. Probably would not plant it again.

Hi Carla, my most consistently producing tomato for a few years has been Indigo Rose. A smaller tomato, but still has home grown flavor. My current favorite pepper is shishitso. I don't do well with bell peppers, but love the Serrano, jalapeño, chiltepin, banana and a few other hot peppers. My bells are always thin walled . Japanese eggplant and zuchinni are doing well as well as trombetta squash. My goodness, that squash is going to take over the back yard! It is like the jack in the beanstalk of squash! Tastes good too.

Also have gazania, salvias, thyme, Malabar spinach, chives, sage, vinca, angelonia, lemon bean, wire vine, marigolds, canna, gingers, turmeric, lemon balm, basils, tomatillo, a few roses and plumeria doing pretty well. I like to try everything. I have a few Epiphyllum and other plants hanging in my citrus trees for shade and they seem to be happy. The secret for me having any success in our extreme climate is just finding the right microclimate in the small space.

Keep us posted on what works and doesn't. Best wishes.

Hi Mary,

Where and which gingers are you growing? I am interested in growing anything that survives a small yard that has south and west heat, the temps get in the 120's at times because of the block walls. I will have to try that tomato, are the seeds available on the market? My husband eats jalapeno like a crazy man, he picks them right off the bush and pops them in his mouth. I like them in food but not alone!
Which salvia do you grow? Maybe I have a few you don't that I can share.

It will be interesting to compare plants with gardeners in this area.

Happy gardening,
Carla

Hi Carla,
Same latitude but different elevation, here in Prescott. Low humidity, low rain, bright sun; but maybe 20F cooler. Hope this helps:

Here's a list of plants I'd consider growing if I were at a lower elevation. Not sure which of these would work.
1) Oleander - if you get the right cultivar it's fragrant. Also resistant to furry creatures. Endures hot weather and some drought, though not so much as agaves. (see logees.com)
2) Agaves - (see Annies Annuals and Perennials)
3) Bougainvilla (Logees) I've seen some planted by the highway.
4) Agastaches and Penstemons are native to western dry climates they are also hardy to zone 5 or 6 (High Country Gardens)
5) California poppies (Wildseed Farms), also cold hardy.
--
Here in Prescott, I have iris, roses, daylilies, yucca, agastache, penstemon, wildflowers, and some herbs. Roses can tolerate a good bit of drought once established. Rosemary is remarkably unphased by drought, IME. Ditto oregano. I grow some lavender, but it does need both good drainage in the winter and ample water to get established. I find that I like artemesias better. There are alliums that go dormant over the heat of the summer that might work. The prickly pear cactus is hardy here and does well in light soil. There's a purple-tinged prickly pear that I find stunning, but have only ever seen in warmer places.

The catmint Nepeta Walker's Lowe grows well here, needing water to establish, but none later. Salvias May Night and Caradonna do well, needing only a little supplemental water. The roots of knifophia are fleshy like daylilies and they evolved in dryish conditions, probably a good bet. Yarrows vary. There's a white that self-sows like a weed here, and a purple from Annies Annuals that I cannot establish. The yellow Moonlight yarrow does well and looks good with gray foliage. Some of these might be good bets.

Curiously, it's just about too cold in my location to grow tomatoes, trying cultivars bred for mountain climates this year.

Hello Steve812

Thanks for responding!!!
I love oleander from afar, I am very allergic to the sap and the pollen but I do love the pink ones and they do very well here. I am not very good with plants with thorns because I get in the zone when gardening and get poked severely...I always wondered if I was the only one who does this?
I grow agastache, gaillardia, gazania, penstemon and poppy from seed. Lavender does not do well for me, I have tried several cultivars with no success. I think it is because our water table is at 6' here year round. I grew catmint in WA but was afraid to grow it here because we have feral cats in out neighborhood, will it bring them to my yard?
I have so many cultivar of Salvia that they are taking over my garden space because they do so well! I just did not read carefully how large some of them got, now I need to weed some of them out! It is hard for me to do this because anything growing is hard for me to remove...lol!
I grow a lot of the yellow bell cultivar because they are great shade for very hot areas and the hummingbirds love the bloom! I grow crape myrtle and it does well in the hot areas too! I grow amaryllis and they too love the heat and are given morning sun only. I love the canna lily but the wind in my back yard shreds the leaves and they look terrible so I am giving up on them.
I just bought 4 bare root knifophia to try, I love the look of them and grew them in WA and just realized this year they have a chance here if given shade. I want to try allium but forget to purchase them in the fall, I will have to try to remember. I also am trying some of the more heat tolerate coneflower under my shade cloth to see how they do, this is one of my favorite flowers so I am hoping for some good growth. I have decided to try the shasta daisy, columbine, larkspur and a few other perennials under the shade cloth and see how they do this year... Gardening is a leap into the unknown in this desert climate, but I find joy in this hobby and seeds are so cheap!!!
I also love corresponding with gardeners, they are some of my favorite people!!!

Hi Carla,
I grow lots of roses, and I come in from the garden wounded quite frequently. Fortunately nobody in my household is much bothered by this; but I'm sure it would be otherwise elsewhere.

Thinking it would be too dry for it to run far, I planted one peppermint plant six years ago but it has run twenty five feet in each direction. Ditto spearmint. I pull it up from time to time, but it runs quickly beneath the mulch. I have grown monardas. They run in the winter, but definitely need supplemental water here to survive summer. The nepetas need supplemental water to establish, but seem to get by without after that. I don't know if the nepeta attracts feral cats. Something like ten times in the last six years I've seen cats visit the garden but I cannot tell if they are checking out the catmint or the pocket gophers. I know we have a few bobcats around here. If I had small children, this would be a concern; but, again, I like to imagine them feasting on squirrels and gophers.

Bees like the nepeta, and it blooms for a long time. At one point I had more than a dozen salvia May Night blooming in the garden and I could hear the bees buzzing around it from fifty feet away. Usually, it's nice to know that one is making bees happy; but this bordered on the scary.

I keep planting coneflowers and they keep dying. I have another order arriving this spring; but when they fail, I might be done with them for a while. There's a seasonal stream running at the edge of my property and I've tried growing hostas in the shade of the alligator junipers there, but the gophers finish them off pretty quickly. I think one survived for eight or twelve weeks. Daylilies, by contrast survive quite well. I manage to squeeze in a few dahlias each year. The hummingbirds visit Bishop of Llandaff religiously.

This year I decided to try growing garlic and onions over the winter because the soil is dampish and these plants seem to tolerate the light frosts we have here. I'm pretty happy with the results so far. No actual onions or garlic, yet.

I've done well with Amaranth Hopi Red, which really is red all over, a very nice foliage plant. The mexican jumping bean Carmencita has bronze foliage and red seed pods. I've been successful with it once or twice, I have some seeds of it sprouting now. For silver foliage, I grow two artemesias, salvia argentea, and moonshine yarrow. I have sunflowers popping up in my garden every year; but they outcompete most of my other plants, so I'm resolved to pull them up this year before they reach the customary 10 ft tall.

In an effort to drive out the gophers, I've planted some euphorbias, foxgloves, and delphinium belladonna. I'm pretty sure I can keep the euphorbias happy, but even when I gardened in NJ I did not try foxgloves or delphiniums because I thought they needed more water than I could provide. This planting, though, was an act of desperation; the gophers have evidently killed one of our prize mature aspens, one apricot tree, and four roses. Poisoning and trapping have reduced their numbers, I think. If I could keep them from moving in, that would be better.