From the good earth..

I have a green thumb, no really I do I’m a gardener. I love plants, indoors, outdoors, in containers or in the ground. I love mixing the soil with my bare hands too; I rarely use gloves when planting. Perhaps I did not play in the dirt enough as a child. For me there is no greater enjoyment than watching a seedling grow. I prefer to grow my plants from seed, bulb or cuttings. The best approach for me is careful planning, lots of researching and studying. There's nothing about gardening that I don't enjoy. Some people say it’s easy to have great looking houseplants and that gardening is not that hard. Well if that is truly the case, then I must be doing something wrong, and have been doing it wrong most of my life. I have always found it fulfilling but believe you me, gardening can be very hard, backbreaking work at times depending on what kind of garden you have.
I have a small raise garden section, and the construction of it alone was hard, but worth it. It has become the centerpiece of my outdoor garden, filled with herbs, plants and flowers. Gardening outdoors in Tucson can be challenging at best, frustrating at its worst. If you are using containers, and you should have about one-third of the plants in some sort of container they have to be repositioned occasionally depending upon what time of year it is. That means at some point you’ll have to pick them and dirt is heavy, just like water.
There are quite a few nurseries, and other places to buy everything you need to be successful, and my advise to you is when you get new plants, don’t just get them because you like them. First things first; an awful lot of foliage is sold here that will not grow properly here. If you read a book on any kind of gardening, consider the geographical location of the author, look for local authors and consider their views first. Again, don’t be fooled by the plants you see in the Botanical or some other specialty gardens, they invest a lot of money ensuring that those plants you see there are ecologically balanced. Remember you live in the Sonoran Desert and summer temperatures here last for about 5 months.
The best gardens, for my money are a mixture of plants, herbs, vegetables and flowers. I get a great deal of pleasure every summer in more ways than one from my garden. I grow my own tomatoes, garlic, onions, peppers [bells, jalapenos,] basil, sage, cilantro, squash [yellow, Mexican grey & Italian] I have even been successful growing avocado’s from seed. These I grow every year and believe me growing theses herbs and vegetables saves me a considerable amount of my food budget. Every year I try something new, like the avocado last year as well as the green beans and eggplant. Honestly I stay away from the melons, because of the amount of water they require, but this year I’ll be growing my own cucumbers as well. As you can see most of what I mentioned are seed bearing plants, so all I have to do is harvest some seeds, dry and store them until needed. You always have to be concerned about birds and bugs, but there are ways around them, there are certain flowers and herbs that bugs and birds don’t like, for instance French marigolds, cotton lavender, curry, tansy, chives, garlic, penny royal and chamomile helps keep your plants healthy [often referred to as the plant physician.] Purple passions or purple hearts I use them as ground covers and in a hanging pot the produce very small pink flowers and thrive in the heat as long as they are well watered.
Since it is February we experience a lot of rain this time of year more than we do with the monsoons rains, I love this time a year not because of the rain so much but because of what the rain brings during the months of March and April everything will be in blooming all of the barrel cacti, the prickly pears, ocotillo and such as the desert comes alive again. To me the desert is the most beautiful place on earth for a couple of months, all around you are bright colors, reds, orange, yellow, blues, white and pink. I can hardly wait to see them. I always have beautiful plants and I always take lots and lots of pictures and strive to improve my garden with a renewed zeal.



Peace,
Loko, Queen of The Night