Steve812
I am so busy trimming right now it is hard to squeeze in time to come to this site. I have so many iris blooming right now it is beautiful! None of the dayliles are blooming yet but I am hoping for a few bloom soon. The salvia are blooming and the hummingbirds are fighting over them, All of the Tecoma are blooming too so there is plenty of bird and bee food. I have been visited by the finch too as they love the Tecoma also.
I am busy planning changes in my grass area for the dogs. I am taking out some areas and adding pavers and more shade shrubs. My husband and I are building another 6' X 16' gazebo shade cloth area after the lawn changes.
This spring has turned into a busy one for sure...
Happy gardening!!!

Carla,
A few tulips and late-season narcissus are still in bloom. My first iris of the season opened yesterday. Some animal (a ground squirrel, I think) is nibbling the foliage to the ground, but fortunately only a small portion of the iris have been affected. Observing new damage keeps me spraying Liquid Fence regularly. This is good since deer loooove to eat the roses outside my fenced garden, and when they strike they will often do much more damage. I, too, have some salvia blooming, with lots of bees buzzing them. I planted a lot more this spring and it will be some weeks before the newly planted ones bloom.

We've been surprised by how much difference adding pavers can make to a space. The garden has had three or four paving projects over course of about five years, and the pavers cover places we've already worn paths through, usually. The resulting space has an organic feel. Shady spaces are so important here in AZ. We are lucky enough to have some really mature alligator junipers that provide great shade. We have a hammock underneath one of them. Then there's a swing we bought two years ago at Costco that has a built-in awning. A 6' x 16' gazebo sounds like a lovely space either for sitting or for growning plants that scorch easily in bright sunlight. I just planted a wisteria and when I was finished I realized that it's at the edge of a spot that would be very well suited to a gazebo. I think Gazebos go well with wisteria and vice versa, but I have yet to actually do this in my garden... Always good to have more projects for the garden..

I'm busy here, too, putting plants in the ground: roses, maximilian sunflowers, euphorbia, and daylilies.

Have Fun !

It sounds like you're making a great garden space, Steve. I used to work at the Girl Scout camp there. Is Camp Maripai still functioning? I read that the girl scout council was trying to sell it.

Karen, Thank's for the encouragement. I'm afraid I don't know which camps are still going, although I do know there are quite a lot of them up here.

Yes, at the time I was there, I visited at least 3 of them. It was a good area for camps. Cooler than Phx by a long shot, and never too cold.

Your area would be perfect for growing sempervivums. If you don't have any, give them a try. We have an active sempervivum forum here on the site. They might need protection if you have rabbits, deer or squirrels in your garden area.

Thanks for the tip!

I have rabbits, deer, squirrels, desert rats, ground squirrels, javelina, and gophers, but no pets. Bopcats and coyotes keep us from being overrun by these, but they can ruin a lot of decorative plants. Nearly all of the sedums I've planted have been nibbled to the ground within days of being planted. Yuccas, on the other hand, have mostly been okay, except for the one red yucca that the javelina pulled up in order to eat their roots. I might have an area inside the fence with light soil that is well suited to sempervivums if I can figure out how to protect them.

We have all of those things here in NM, too. It's a battle to be able to grow things. Right now I have everything raised up off the ground on plant stands and potting tables. we are planning a fenced yard so deer, rabbits and javelinas will stay out! It's a real war here, but I'm determined to win. I did get a greenhouse, but it's too small for all I want to grow.

Asparagus in Sunset zone 13 - has anyone been successful with it?

I tried it in Phoenix, Liz, and no luck at all, but my plot was in full sun with a drip system. I have a feeling a good amended soil in the shade might work. I grew it just fine in sun and partial shade in NM.

Thanks Karen! I do have an area that is shade except early morning. Maybe I'll try a small raised bed there. Doesn't work, I can use it for something else.

Good luck, Liz. Experimenting is fun, and we often get surprised at how things work out. This year I got tired of having mostly cactus in my AZ yard. I'm trying out blue Plumbago, plumerias, red geraniums and some salvias. I love the cacti, and especially their blooms, but wanted more color.

Liz, I doubt this is any help...

I grew it in NJ but have not tried it here. As per usual, I ignored all the sage advice about planting it in 24 inches of loose, moist loam that is high in organic material and very rich in nutrients. I planted it in poor clay and rarely watered it. It came up every year for three or four in a row and produced five foot tall stems with tons of marvelous filamentatious strands sticking out laterally. It gave the spot a feathery, almost otherworldly feel. It was a lovely decorative plant; but I doubt it would have endured even a single cutting, so I never did use it for culinary purposes. Looked good with rose Golden Celebration, BTW.

Hi Karen , Liz and Steve,
I am so busy in the yard but sometimes you just need to come up for air...it can be overwhelming!
My Iris (the ones that survived our rain) are beautiful, I do not remember a time that so many have bloomed at once. The early ones are a couple of weeks late but the others seem to be on time. I will have to redo my iris beds in October because our ground rises with the water table and it does so in humps here and there. Where I live the water table has never been below the 7' level even during drought years, I was told we have the highest water table in Arizona by one of the city engineers. So the fall and winter rains really reeked havoc on my beds and my grass area, we are having to level out the areas again. This is the first time in 8 years this has happened. When I redo the beds, I will be thinning out the iris and probably have a few for trade.
Well I have to run it is already 61 degrees in my back yard and I only have until noon to be out there...this south and west yard gets really hot!
Happy Gardening!

I had no idea that AZ had a water table that high! We lived in one spot in NM where it was about 3 ft. Everyone dug their own sandpoint wells.

Hi Carla,
Does your soil have a lot of clay in it? It seems to me that soil could only form humps with increasing water content if there were a lot of clay in it. Part of my garden is in a seasonal stream, so for some time in the winter the 'water table' level is above ground level! When I planted in the arroyo I was afraid everything would get wet feet and die; but I think I've lost more plants to drought than to wet feet.

I have some purplish iris in bloom right now. Their chief merits are that they are very vigorous, tall, and elegant. They are mostly unbothered by gophers and deer. It's really hard to get very excited about the flowers, but they do provide some color at a time when not much else blooms in the garden. Most of the more modern cultivars that I planted are still in the process of forming buds.

A few Blushing Lady tulips are in bloom right now along with some California poppies. I see buds forming on many of my larger rose plants, so I'm starting to feel some excitement about the upcoming flower season.

Good morning Karen and Steve, Karen you can imagine my surprise when I was told that the water table was that high...I lived in Washington state and never dug a hole and found water...lol Steve we are clay and salt, when we get this much percolation the salt rises to the top of the clay and leaves deposits like rock salt. I amend 3 times a year with 2 to 3 inches of compost and when I start a new area I mix lots of compost, soil and try to remove clay. I could make pots from this dirt if I had the time and a kiln...lol It has humped here and there in the 8 years we have been here, but never the entire yard...what a mess!!!
Happy gardening!

Hi Carla. Salt, IMO, is a really big problem. I'm not sure I'd know what to do with salty soil. Dry sun-baked clay is almost as difficult to deal with. Once, long ago, editors of Horticulture magazine interviewed a number of prominent garden design professionals and asked them what their biggest gardening mistake was. Something like seven in ten said it was not importing good soil for their gardens as a first step in building a new garden. And these were people who were not gardening on salty clay. But this can be a big expense.

I have gophers and have recently found myself putting more and more plants into pots.The more I use pots, the happier I am with my garden. First it was tomatoes. It meant I could grow tomatoes on my elevated deck where critters would not eat all the ripe tomatoes before I did. Or the plants. Then it was pinks after I noticed them disappearing down gopher holes! Next it was hyacinths after I caught a squirrel digging up the bulbs and eating them. Next it was confederate jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) which, interestingly, is hardy here in pots but not in the ground. Recently I discovered some animal is eating the greens of my newly planted onions, so soon they will be growing in pots. I keep accumulating pots and I keep planting more and more stuff in them. Of course, were the problem soil rather than furry animals would be more cost efficient to build elevated areas and backfill with really good soil. But pots do allow for an incremental approach.

It seems to me that one of the difficulties of living in a very warm place is that organic materials burn out of soils quickly, so your practice of mulching heavily several times a year is very well advised. I was recently reading about coir and learned that this organic material breaks down very slowly. I wonder if this would be a useful part of soil ammendment?

Good morning,
I am using coco coir with each new planting and am hoping for good results, I too am interested in this outcome...time will tell. I tried raised beds and pots but with the south and west exposure they dry out so fast and if you go one day without water they suffer. I am just happy that we do not have wet years like 2016/2017 very often. When we have the monsoons in the summer the soil dries out so quickly that there is never a worry about humping soil or plant loss, it is only fall and winter...
Oh the woes of gardening, it always teaches us life lessons!

Happy gardening

Hello to all Southwest Gardeners from a New England transplant! I've traded in the family home, snow and cold for a little place in Phoenix. I've gardened my whole life and will miss my big old, curving perennial flower beds.
Looking forward to learning about desert gardening (in a tiny patio lot) from all of you ... I have lots of questions!