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Just a very quick post today with two of my favorite gardening photos. I am hoping I will have enough energy to have a garden this fall which is the best gardening season for Arizona. Cool winter gardening means spinach, Swiss chard, onions [affiliate link], radishes, beets, carrots, cabbage and many more that I can't remember off the top of my head.
My favorite place to buy seeds is from Pinetree Seeds. I love poring over their seed catalog and reading all the wonderful descriptions.
I typically do square foot gardening, and my favorite book on this subject is by Duane Newcomb: The Backyard Vegetable Factory: Super Yields from Small Spaces. I like this book better than the other famous square foot gardening guy because I cannot follow much of that guy's books because we are in Arizona and just can't follow the same ideas.
Mr. Newcomb's book helped me to have my first successful garden – before that I thought I had a black thumb!
So typically I do not have huge harvests throughout the season, but as the end of the season nears and the temperatures begin to rise as the summer approaches, I will harvest everything I can find in the garden and put together some garden art as you can see in the two photos above.
I do great the first three seasons (fall, winter and spring) but by the time the next season rolls around the critters are all highly aware that I have a garden going and even though my garden looks like Fort Knox they find a way in and attack my vegetables. It is so frustrating and such hard work that I give up easily since I don't have enough energy to fight them. It is mostly gophers and round tailed ground squirrels.
Here is a video of round tailed ground squirrels, they are cute little buggers.
Do you garden? What kinds of critters plague your area?
Great photos, Starlene! I will have to check out that gardening book.
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Starlene Reply:
July 29th, 2012 at 4:15 pm
Thanks, Nicole! 🙂
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Starlene,
I love your garden art! You are so creative!
I have to deal with some big pests (moose) and little pests (root maggots and slugs). My husband lovingly helped me put up an 8 ft. tall wire fence to keep the moose out which works wonderfully. The root maggots seem to be a problem for me more at the beginning of the season and I cover all my cabbage family plants with floating row cover. I keep it secured over the raised beds until near the end of July. I just removed it this weekend. For the slugs I just use my fingers and pick them off. It gives me some quiet time in the garden and I can see up close how the plants are doing. Last year I tried small cups of beer buried with their rims at the level of the soil and it worked amazingly well. It was disgusting, though, to see how many of those slimy things there are! Now that we are in our rainy time of summer I need to get out there and start picking because they can eat a lot in just a short time!
I hope your garden does well this year. I too garden intensively. Have you seen the video ‘Back to Eden’? It is filmed in Washington state, but I think the principles would be applicable to all areas.
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Starlene Reply:
July 29th, 2012 at 4:14 pm
Hi Jennifer, thanks! They are fun to put together. -) Wow, moose! I have never dealt with those! I’m glad your hubby was able to put up a fence to keep out the moose. I have not seen the video you mention. I see it is available on Amazon. I will check that out sometime. Thanks! ~Starlene
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I love the pictures! You are so awesome and creative!
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