📝 In This Week’s Nutty Goodness
This Might Suit Your Fancy: Seeds, deep raised beds & the best but least expensive compost & mulch.
Where The Roots Meet The Soil: Year 1 Update: How My Garden Transformed Over The Past Year
Inspirational Stories: Restore A Native Woodland, Untrammel Wilderness, and GIANT restoration in Arizona
🐝 This Might Suit Your Fancy
Seeds For Southwest US, True Leaf Market (large selection, heirlooms, etc), Botanical Interest (large selection), High Desert (high desert CO), SeedsTrust (high desert), Terrior Seeds (AZ based), San Diego Seed Company (regionally adapted)
Deep Raised Beds, Vego Raised Beds, deep, beautiful and they have a variety of shapes and sizes.
Pesticide-Free Mulch & Compost, Arizona Worm Farm, this place has been my lifeline and really helped me turn things around. They hold in person classes (sign up online), and sell only veggie, flower and succulent starts that thrive in the Phoenix climate. Plus they are worm composters on a next level scale!😍
🎙️Where The Roots Meet The Soil
From Heat Dried Dirt To Today
It’s been a long journey, to take my tiny backyard from what you see below to the picture above. And it’s hard to believe it’s only been a year, but I’m so glad I made the journey. I’m so thankful my two sons were forced to come along with me, now we look out in awe and appreciate it all the more.
Remnants Of Gardening Attempts
With the help of my sons and friends, we had dug up the entire perimeter of the yard, put down landscape fabric, border and poly tube for watering. For 4 years I had tried but the heat had just cooked everything in its place leaving hard, sun-baked dirt.
In my permaculture class, I learned that sweet potatoes would push through the hardened layer and break it up. So I dug up narrow trenches, through in worm castings, compost, a few sweet potato slips and covered them with mulch and shade cloth.
And as you can see, they started to grow.
🔖Did you miss last week when I talked about 3 Ways Your Garden Can Impact Climate Change For Good
Trouble With Flooding From Rainwater
We had trouble with the grading down the side of the house and earlier in 2025, had started putting in a cement side walk. Dry pour, section by section. Regraded to direct rain away from the garage where it had been flooding.
That meant the water ended up in my back yard and the dirt we dug up had to go some where. Thankfully, the back yard had holes that needed to be filled.
I would realize until later that I inadvertently, transferred much needed clay, from the side of my house to the back yard where it was more sand than anything.
But it came at a cost, we would have to wake up early to dig trenches out into the yard to drain the water from the side of the house.
These were ultimately filled with perforated pipe surrounded by landscape fabric and gravel.
Don’t Plant Everything At Once
My garden was built out in pieces, as we continued to distribute dirt steadily flowing out of the side of the house or from the piles that had accumulated.
I planted natives first to provide an infrastructure that would support the non-native survivors. But every planting meant digging into hardened, packed dirt and my arms gave out toward the beginning of summer. So I needed my sons to help.
Figuring out the watering is part of what kept the work slow. That and the heat, that intensified through the summer. We would have to work in short bursts and during the cooler times of the day.
The Circle of Destiny went in after the weather cooled down and with no plans to put in the large, deep raised bed you see next to it today.
You can see on the ground beyond the circle where the sweet potatoes had been. I planted clover, sweet peas and fava beans to build up nitrogen in the soil. Only to find out they didn’t do much and it would have been better to plant cow peas.
I’ve tried to bring in decorative elements and keep building beauty as much as utility.
What I Would Do Different
I would have been more conservative during the summer or I would have started earlier in the year. Definitely would bring in cattle panel trellising or something sturdy to hold the shade cloth way earlier.
I probably would have taken the time to learn the timing of what needed to be planted and when from the list of fruits and vegetables I wanted to grow. I planted onions and garlic much later than I should have.
There were some shrubs that I supported too long, it ended up weakening them and I had to cut them down. And I definitely wouldn’t have put the sweet potato vines in the compost pile and tried harder to dig their vines out of the ground.
🦋 Stay Inspired
Organizations Around The World Are Staging Eco-Interventions
Native Warm Season Grassland Restoration Project: Stone Barns Center For Food & Agriculture
Native Grassland Recontructions For Wildlife: Missouri Prairie
From Invasive Shrubs to Grassland: UAZ Science
Till next time,
Elisa Navarette
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