Growing Blueberries

Growing Blueberries in the valley seems to be more legend than fact around here. I've heard a few hundred stories about growing these delicious little blue critters but have never once seen an established patch that has been around for even a few years. I myself have killed at least 20 different blueberry plants. Over time though I've figured out a few things and I actually got 4 blueberry plants to live for a whole year, they even made it through the summer. I actually ate about 40 berries, that these plants produced in the June and after they lived through the summer I decided to invest in more soil and half barrels for these perennials. There are a few sure things you have to do 1. the plants you plant have to be Southern High Bush 2. They have to be in containers 3. You have to make up a special mix of soil for them to survive. 4. You're supposed to have  two different varieties of Southern High Bush to ensure pollination. I planted 2 Misties that I bought at Walmart (they were bare root and smaller than a half pencil but they were only five bucks each) 1 Sunshine Blue that I bought at a local nursery (it was in good shape and was my best looking/producing plant it cost nine bucks) and 1 more Misty that I bought at the same nursery (it also cost nine bucks and was a nice growing plant). Blueberries like a soil Ph of 4.5 to 5.0 (acidic) the average Ph of the soil in the valley is 7.5 to 8.0 (alkaline). This is why they'll never survive in the ground, even if you amend the soil, believe me I've tried. I also believe our tap water here which has a Ph of 7.8 to 7.9 (alkaline) is bad for the plants. That being said mine survived for a year on tap water but now I'm using the rainwater from my rain barrel to supplement the watering. If you want grow your own blueberries, you need to watch this video. I followed the instructions precisely except I couldn't find feather mea,l and my plants still thrived. Here's a video of him showing off his personal stash. Once my blueberries started going dormant I transplanted them out of there pots and into there half barrels. Here's some pics of the transplanting that I did Christmas day. You'll notice that my pics are a little bit higher quality than usual, that's because I took them with my Christmas present, an ipod touch thanks Mom and Jake/Audra. All my other previous pics have been taken with my gps. I live in the stone age, and love it, the only reason I have a gps with a camera is because I hunt and geocache. Enough about my Christmas, go plant some blueberries.

My blueberries that made it this year.

The soil stuff, peat moss, medium sized bark, and potting soil (made from forest by products) most forest by product potting soils are acidic.

The whiskey barrels, one of them is actually charred on the inside.

Everything ready to go, peat moss, medium bark, potting soil, fish meal, cotton seed meal, and soil sulfer. I like the tarp it makes it easy to mix the ingredients and nothing goes to waste.

Here's everything all mixed up.

The Sunshine Blue getting ready to be pulled out of it's 5 gallon bucket and transplanted.

The 2 Walmart Misties ready for transplant. Since there still small I put them in the same half barrel together.

All 4 plants finally planted! From left to right, 2 Walmart Misties, Sunshine Blue, and another Mysty.

Stay tuned.

BOOYAH!

Harvest Party

BROCCOLI

One of my favorite veggies in the winter is broccoli. There is nothing better than fresh broccoli, the stuff you buy in the store isn't even close to the flavor of the broccoli you grow at home. On top of all of that, broccoli is easy to grow anywhere in the valley, plant it between the first of October and the middle of December, if you put it in to early in the year it will bolt,and it needs a little room, other than that you can't mess it up . Broccoli needs at least 15 inches between each plant, I planted mine to close in my first crop this year and some of them got choked out by other plants. Some like the picture above/below grew into monster crowns twice as large as what you can buy at the store BOOYAH! Intensive planting has a fine line that I'm still working on the better points of. On top of this crop I also planted a second crop here , this ensures more broccoli in another month or two. This variety is called 'Premium Crop' and was planted from transplants the first of October. The picture below is the largest head I harvested, if the county fair was in town it would have won a blue ribbon. Ha

Blue ribbon broccoli

Now what to do with this monster I like it plain, with just a little salt, or maybe steamed with some butter. Like I said the home grown taste that much better or you can make bacon, potato, broccoli & cheese soup. It's not health food but it is the bomb!

Ingredients:

• 1 package of bacon
• 2 onions chopped
• 5-6 large potatoes peeled & chopped
• 5 cups of water
• 4 cubes of bouillon chicken or beef
• 1 normal size head of broccoli chopped
• 3 cups of cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. In a large stock pot cook your bacon, once bacon is finished remove and place bacon on paper towel and drain off grease, leaving a couple tablespoons of bacon grease in the stock pot ( depending on how much bacon grease you like).
2. Throw your chopped onions into the stock pot and saute in the bacon grease, once done add you potatoes, water and, bouillon cubes and bring to a boil, then turn down and simmer till the potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes maybe a little longer.
3. Then add your chopped fresh broccoli and simmer another 5 minutes
4. Finally add your cheese and bacon and simmer until all the cheese is melted.

This is probably one of the easiest soups you'll ever make enjoy.

BOOYAH!

Rain Barrel Update

It's kinda funny how things work out, I finished building my rain water harvesting system last weekend and then last night Glendale got it's first winter storm. My house received .4 of an inch of rain it was pretty much a slow drizzle of rain all night long. I went outside about 2 hours into the storm to check the rain barrel "WHAT!!! this thing is already full" I couldn't believe my eyes it never really rained hard but the barrel was already full and the overflow was shooting the excess water into the garden. Guess I should have built more barrels. I'm already looking at plans for a large cistern. Stay tuned

Water flowing into the barrel last night.

There it is this morning 55 gallons of water taken off the roof. Filled right to the overflow. 

My overflow pipe going out to the garden.

Rainwater Harvesting

I never gave much thought to rainwater harvesting until this year on the the Tour De coops I met Ryan Wood. Ryan is the Phoenix co-op director of Watershed Management Group. During the tour of his coop I talked to him about his 600 gallon rain water harvesting cistern. I was impressed, I've never thought harvesting rainwater was worth the time or money here in Phoenix. It never rains here or it feels that way. Ryan had some great facts like the valley gets 7-8 inches of rain yearly, like I said it never rains here. Also if you multiply the square footage of your single level house times .623 you'll get get how much water comes off your roof with 1 inch of rain more or less. So my house 1,500sqf x .623 = 934 gallons of water with 1 inch of rain give or take. Now that's alot of water. I started thinking about the fact that we live in a desert and my $ 200 dollar a month water bill in the summer and I decided to give rainwater harvesting a try. Leaving Ryan's backyard I saw some 55 gallon rain barrels he told me "rain barrels are the training wheels of rainwater harvesting". So I decided to get my own training wheels and signed up for a WMG rain barrel making class. It was fun, we built rain barrels in Chip's front yard, Chip was the instructor, he also had some great points on rainwater harvesting. I'm not ready to build the 600 gallon cistern system that Ryan has yet (he told me he routinely fills his). But I'm ready to fill my 55 gallon barrel and if that goes well you'll see a post about the building of my 1,800 gallon cistern. Oh yeah! By the way the class to build the barrel was $75  and the gutters for the patio were $85 so total cost $165. Stay tuned to see if I fill my barrel with free water?

Here's the little pvc nipple that hooks up to the hose bib outside the barrel .

Here's the overflow in case the barrel gets to full you can pipe this out to other areas of the yard.

Installed hose bib turned sideways that way I can hook my hose up to it without having to lift the barrel off the  ground (i.e. placing it on bricks to use gravity to force the water out)

Finished barrel and gutters with screening to keep mosquitos out. 

I put this picture up to show the layout of my roof as you can see the back 1/3 of the roof drains right out onto this patio the barrel is just to left of the ladder. This area has always turned into a mud pit when it rains. Hopefully the gutters and barrel will solve this. 

A view even further back.


I have to say this was a fun project that introduced me to a new group I really like. Thank you WMG. Building the barrel was pretty easy but the class was totally worth it, the real hard part was installing the gutters. This is  a 2 person job that I tackled by myself next time the wife is gonna be out here on a ladder!

Screwin around in the yard on a Saturday

This weekend I decided to catch up on a bunch of stuff in the yard and here it is.

First I put in the watering system for my pomegranate and cape honeysuckle always check  where you're digging to make sure you don't hit anything buried under ground like the water line I hit digging this trench DDDOOOOHHHH!!! 

The pome is for food, the honeysuckle is a hummingbird feeder. I'm really getting tired  of filling up feeders and the honeysuckle is a natural food source for the hummingbird. I'm planting the honeysuckle and some other hummingbird plants through out the yard, so pretty soon no more feeders.

Horseradish, it's one my favorite condiments but it's supposedly not adapted to the Az. Well I'm going to find out. I went to AJ''S and bought a whole root and cut it into 4 pieces. If you look closely you can see it's already sprouting and rooting.

I potted up the horseradish once it sprouts I've got a special bed I'm going to put it into in the yard that gets alot of afternoon shade in the summer. From what I've read the summer sun is the biggest challenge with growing horseradish in Phoenix. Stay tuned. By the way summer sun is the biggest challenge to growing anything in Phoenix.

Found these 2 igloos in the garbage and decided they'd make excellent pots so I pulled out the broken push buttons and  planted some herbs tarragon, basil, bee balm, and pineapple sage. I've slowly started to discover the world of fresh herbs for seasoning my food and they are amazing I plan to have a full blown spice rack growing in my backyard soon. If you're trying to not use as much salt in your diet look into fresh herbs in your cooking then try and grow your own you won't believe what fresh herbs cost in the store $$$$$$$$ and I found this great book just for herb gardening in the desert southwest  The Low Desert Herb Gardening Handbook  give it a shot they're pretty easy to grow

Here they are all planted up.

 I planted another pomegranate in my sheet mulched bed in the front yard with some hollyhocks. I also seeded some lettuce and red onions. I know these pomes are small but I bought them on sale this summer on the discount shelf for 4 bucks at the local  home improvement center. I've been waiting for it to cool off to plant. In a few years I should have some decent pomegranates. I think that's the main lesson in urban farming, it doesn't happen over night it takes planning, patience, some work, and a little luck. I know where's the watering system I didn't plan that out yet.

Finally I just don't grow food I also enjoy growing some flowers (the wife likes them too) this is a bearded iris that popped up in my iris bed a little early this year. I'm tired and ready for a brewski.  BOOYAH!

HARVEST PARTY, THANKSGIVING

This year my wife and I hosted the family Thanksgiving super. We had a great time we drank beers, smoked the best turkey ever, and got alot of our meals straight out of the garden it was great and it gave me even more ideas for the garden and next years Thanksgiving feast. The only bummer to the hole event was my sister and bro both couldn't make it, they have both recently moved to Washington DC I didn't realise  how much I missed you two until I found myself drinking with Aunt Sandy.

Kholrabi and pumpkin we grew we made a coleslaw out of the kholrabi  and pies from the  pumpkin.

A bunch of stuff we picked Thanksgiving day.

Some broccoli that was a little bitter because the plant had bolted already.

Some radishes for our salad the white ones are my favorite they're actually spicey  and you can't buy them in the store.

Big pile o beans nothing better than green beans and bacon.

 Some lettuce out of our lettuce patch that was a great salad.

The bird is cooking.

Finally the pie and it was great fresh pumpkin makes all the difference  the fresh pumpkin was so good this year  that I've decided to dedicate a large portion of my garden next year to sugar pumpkins and not plant any of the traditional jack o lanterns.

Harvest Party

Roasted Tomatillo & Green Chili Salsa                                                                                

 This year we got a real good patch of Tomatillos so we decided to make a batch of salsa here's the recipe.

• 2 lbs. Tomatillos (roasted)
• 5-6  large green chillies (roasted)
• 1 head of garlic (roasted)
• 1 whole onion
• 1/2 cup cilantro
• 1 juiced lime
• salt and pepper to taste

Head out to the garden and pick your tomatillos and green chilies 

 Peel your tomatillos and wash em off then throw them on the grill, roast them till there browned on the outside, to roast the garlic cut the bottom off of a hole head of garlic and pour  olive oil on the cut side place cut side down on hot grill when garlic is done the cloves will slip right out of there husk.

mmmmm roasting green chillies, When you pull your chillies off the grill place them in a plastic bag for 15 minutes this will make them easier to peel. Once peeled you can pull off  the stem and remove the seeds I leave the seeds in them for a little extra heat.

Here's everything all roasted

Throw everything in the food processor and blend

Here's the finished product and man it is good enjoy BOOYAH!!!

My Tomatillo and pepper patch

Intensive Garden Beds, Double Digging

This year I decided to double dig all my garden beds, so I put away my rototiller and bought a flat spade and a spading fork. Double digging is a way of digging your beds down to 2 feet fluffing the soil, so the roots of plants can go even deeper into the earth. The first thing you do is select a site for the beds, I like lay out the dimensions with stakes so I don't get off course while digging. The beds can be as long as you want but don't make them any wider than 5 feet, that way when you work in the beds you can always reach the middle, without walking in the bed, it doesn't do you any good to fluff your soil if you walk through it compacting it right back down.You can see a video of double digging here or you can read about it in how to grow more vegatables.

First you dig a trench with your spade.



Then you go back through your trench with your fork hence the term double digging.

Some bug cocoons I found while digging.



The finished bed.

Here's my watering system dripline with 1gph emitters every 18 inches,

Finally the bed is planted with intensive beds you don't plant in rows you plant on center. For this bed I planted all the cabbage and broccoli on 12 inch centers (the book says 15 inch centers) this means every plant is exactly 12 inches away from any other plant. You'll noticed the front of the bed isn't planted that's because I seeded in turnips.

                                         

Finished bed topped with alfalfa.

This is a double dug bed I planted a month and a half ago bok choy, kolrhabi, brussel sprouts, and broccoli.

Double dug lettuce patch that's a month and a half old,