Oops, wrong season..

Well, I feel a bit better about my plants dying. Apparently we didn’t research enough and for the region we live in (region 2, Chandler is at 1200 ft elevation above sea level) we planted most of our stuff waaaaaaay out of season. The few things that still are going are barely going, producing really small fruit, or dead.

I hereby dub this year Infrastructure Year as I’ll be getting all the beds ready, irrigation in place (I’ll discuss in a future post), and shade as needed. Here is a link to the guide that we will hence forth use to schedule our plantings:

http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/vegetable/guide.html

 

In AZ, shade is most important

I’d put up pictures of the plants, but they’ve not been faring well. I’m in the process of building shade canopies for each of the raised beds.

I haven’t really nailed down a preferred design yet, but I’m getting an idea of what I DON’T want.

The thing to keep in mind is this: The simpler the solution, the more effective it is. Try to get too fancy, and it’ll cost you more money and time (and plants) in the long run.

 

Sun as lifegiver, Sun as murderer

The Arizona sun is apparently too hot for just about any plant to grow. A bunch of our stuff is dying off or flatlining.

We water in the early morning typically and have started to shade a couple of plants individually (I’ll show you pictures later, yikes) but it seems a fool’s errand.

I’ll be testing a plan to add shades to each bed with some 2×4′s and such. We’ll keep you posted as we build!

Thanks for visiting and PLEASE, if you’re a master gardener or have experience gardening in Arizona, help us out! Send us an email, comment, twitter message, anything! This year looks like the year we experiment.