Gardening part 2

My initial experience with home gardening went pretty well, so me being me, I had to take well enough and go an extra mile. I started out with 1 flower box with basil and cilantro. I quickly added two more flower boxes with Roma tomatoes and I was off and running. Next I purchased a couple of very large flower boxes and planted cucumbers and bell peppers in one and beefsteak tomato in the other. Lastly I built a fairly large elevated box to try all sorts of things and hopefully keep them away from the rabbits that live everywhere here. I've recently had to add some additional anti-seed thief protection to that and if you look at the pictures below, that's what looks like a chicken coop. I promise, I have not, nor will I raise live chickens.

I've learned some lessons during this experience and although they may not be very helpful to folks who live outside of the desert, they might still be interesting.

Unfortunately cilantro grows up quickly and if you don't use a ton of it in your day to day cooking, growing your own isn't very productive. Only a few weeks from its start, cilantro becomes coriander. However, it seems to be impossible to kill, so there is that. (cilantro = green thumb ego booster!) The basil also did pretty well so long I was conscience of how much sun it was getting, mostly not too much. Living in Arizona creates several challenges with gardening, the greatest of which is the summer heat. Having small planters makes it easy to move pots around the yard to maximize or minimize exposure, as needed, but limit how much you can actually grow.

I've also discovered that some of the indigenous wildlife likes some of the vegetables I'm trying to grow. I've had many days of going to pick tomatoes only to find that the nicest one has a hole in the side of it from some sort of critter. I've also planted a few types of lettuce and carrots and they never made it out of the seed phase. I'm trying them again, only under the wire tent, to see if they'll even grow here.

I've been able to grow radishes and tomatillas so far, but the radish were pretty small and the tomatilla are still growing, so the jury is still out on them. I've added a second batch of radish to the recent upgrade to the garden box and we'll see if I do better. During the initial plantings I was sloppy and almost all of the holes I made had two or three seeds dropped in them. I was much more careful to only put one seed per hole this time.

That second batch of tomato, green pepper and cucumber are still growing and haven't yielded anything yet, but the plants themselves are pretty hardy. I can't wait to see if they give me anything.

I also tried peas. Tried. They got to all of three inches tall and died. I think they just didn't want anything to do with the heat, so I'll try them again in the fall. Since seeds are pretty cheap, I don't feel bad about trying something new and failing. Worst case scenario, I'm out two bucks or less. A packet of seed actually goes a long way and so long as they're stored in a dry place (not hard to find here in Arizona) they keep for years.


Here is a visual tour of what I've done so far. I promise the next update will include the wonderful food I've made from these.

The beefsteak tomato plants, just starting out

Bell pepper on the left, cucumber on the right

The two large planter boxes early on

The tomato and cucumber after some growth, I moved the trellis around a little to help out 

The cucumbers quickly filled the pot and started to spill over

Here are the lettuce and carrots that made only this far before someone started snacking on it

The radishes in the foreground, the tomatilla in the middle and the peas in the background

A few of the radishes I've harvested. They're fairly small but very spicy.

The cucumbers and bell peppers are looking hardy, but still nothing to eat

The jungle of tomato

The new "cage" in the background, the tomatilla in the middle and a few lettuce that I transplanted from where I added the cage

Up close look at the tomatilla forming

The cage added three things: 5 1/2 inches of soil, animal protection (I hope) and slight reduction in sunlight