Most classes have recommended morning sun, then shade your plants from the afternoon sun. Which is great, unless you live in an HOA where the light-colored, reflective paint cooks your plants in the morning sun. In that case, shade the lower half or cover with burlap when your plants are trying to get started.

Like I mentioned above, in California I would just make sure the nearest sprinkler / bubbler, was going to cover watering. But that way of watering doesn’t stand a chance in here.

And I made the mistake of trying to grow tomatoes in a shallow wicking grow bed last summer. What the tomatoes didn’t drink was evaporated within a day or two. It was terrible here, but that setup worked really well in California.

Water has to be applied at the ground level, preferably under mulch, I’ll get to that in a minute. Drip lines or drip irrigation works best, I’ve tried the kind you can buy at the big box store and the kind you buy from dripdepot.com. Both work fine.

Pro-Tip: Buy the lines that have pre-cut spots where water drips out and then plant your seeds or transplants next to where the water comes out.

Get a timer so you don’t forget to water, one day can be the difference between continued survival and dying in the hot summer months.

You can get away with a couple of inches or less in the fall, winter and early spring. But you’ll need to bump that up to 3” during the summer.

Mulch helps you keep the soil moist and protects your watering from evaporating away.

Pro-Tip: When you buy mulch, make sure it’s made from landscaping where they weren’t using herbicides or pesticides.

If you don’t, that all makes it back into your food and the herbicides will stunt plant growth.

At Arizona Worm Farm, they sell mulch and compost cheap at their self-serve. Just bring some 5 gallon buckets. Or you can pay a little more and buy it pre-bagged.

The trick is to let the native flora do the dirty work. Think of them like the foundation and framing for a house.

Natives supply much needed shade, don’t take a lot of water and can tough out the weather.

Pro-Tip: Plant native trees & shrubs so they are positioned to block the sun for at least part of the day. If you are growing berries you would want to provide dappled sun, so they should be behind or under a tree.

This is really key to getting anything out of your garden. It’s really two-in-one, but I couldn’t figure out how to separate them because they do hand-in-hand.

Big box stores sell what they can purchase in bulk on a national level. That does nothing for your garden. You need varieties that have been developed or proven to survive the Phoenix, Arizona climate.

I do this in two steps, #1 find out what varieties can be grown here and #2 then either buy the transplants or find somewhere to buy the seeds.

At the top of this email, I provided a list of places you can buy seeds from. There are 3 that already supply climate-adapted seeds and 2 that I buy from because of their wide variety.

Pro-Tip: Grow the plants in your garden, collect the seeds and repeat. This will give you better and better yields and the seeds are from plants that survived in your garden-specific climate.

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Till next time,