ARIZONA GARDEN TOUR: Summer Survivors & Fall Garden Prep

The garden was on its own for most of the summer. I was gone a lot. Today I'll show you what survived, what didn't, and what I'm doing now to set it up for a successful fall season. I'm Angela from Growing in the Garden. My garden's in Mesa, Arizona. I want to help you succeed even if you're gardening in tough conditions. Let's start with what survived. This bed is in the perfect spot in my garden. It gets morning sun and afternoon shade naturally, and the plants in this bed are happy. I've got okra growing, lots to harvest, black-eyed peas, and gonfrina all just taking over this garden. They're covering the soil. The black-eyed peas are giving me lots of green matter that I've already cut up, chopped, and added to other beds. I planted these Maximilian sunflowers from seed two years ago, and they didn't do much, but they came back this summer, and they're huge. I'm just about to get the first blooms. This is a perennial sunflower that spreads with rhizomes and tubers, so I'm going to have them in this spot for several years. This bed also has sweet potatoes. I'm letting these vines grow and cover everything. I'm not sharing them with the chickens because more vines, more sunlight equals more sweet potatoes. I'll harvest them a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving so they have time to cure before we eat them. When things are on their own, it's interesting to see what takes over the beds. Marigolds usually die back, but because it's been more mild, this one just tipped over, and it's getting huge. I've got three different kinds of zinnias in here. Ballerina zinnias are beautiful, and I love using them for cut flowers. The zowie yellow flame just pushes out blooms in the heat. It's a nice, more compact variety, and then at the end of the bed, I've got these beautiful Zahara zinnias that are perfect for containers or at the ends of beds because they don't get too big. The marigolds surprised me, but I'm not shocked that the Armenian cucumbers, luffa, and roselle are going strong. Those are three heat-loving plants that don't mind the summer heat. We've been harvesting cucumbers, the luffa is flowering, and we should see flowers on that roselle hibiscus soon. I can't wait. The watermelon looks good now, but when I first planted it, it was struggling and covered in aphids. I finally realized that ants were farming them. I used ant baits to take care of the ants, and the aphids took care of themselves. I'm using cages to keep the birds away from the tops, and cradles to keep the bugs off the bottom. This chiltepin is covered in blooms. This is a native pepper, sometimes called the mother of all peppers. It's a perennial and has survived here happily for several years. The rest of the peppers are looking good. I didn't cut any of them back this year, so they're a little bit tall and gangly. The branches are brittle, but most of them are covered in blooms, so it's too late to cut them back now, but we should have a great harvest in November or December. So if you're growing peppers, all they need is a little bit of food right now. Don't cut them back. Cantaloupe is another one of those heat-loving crops that keeps producing all through summer. This Texas ageratum is a plant that really surprised me. It's a native perennial, and I planted it in May. Typically not a great time to plant, and it has taken off and really thrived. On the other hand, this annual ageratum that looked amazing in late spring and early summer has really struggled. It looks like I'll be able to cut this back and the plant will come back, but it did not like the summer heat. I planted tiny transplants of this gumphrena in late spring, and look at them now. They have thrived in the summer heat. This is definitely a heat-loving flower that you should add to your garden. Other summer bloomers that have done well, even in containers, more of the gumphrena, vinca, angelonia, sweet potato vine. All summer champions. And finally, lysianthus. I've loved this dwarf variety. It stays nice and compact, and it's perfect for containers. All these flowers will keep blooming through the fall until frost, or I can decide to take them out and swap them for spring blooms. And because they're in containers, I'll give them some worm castings and a little flower food to keep those blooms going. If you want fall color now, you can plant geraniums and dianthus. For all the other options, check out my flower guide for everything else you can plant right now. Peanuts love the heat. Unfortunately, the tomatillo that was growing on this trellis didn't. These peanuts will keep going and hopefully forming lots of peanuts underground. The flowers are forming now. I know peanuts will be ready when the leaves turn yellow. I'll dig down and test one to find out. Not everything loved the heat though. Sage, when it gets hot and wet, rots. And that's what happened to this plant. The same okra and basil that's thriving in other areas has really struggled in this bed. There's not much growing. I planted a cover crop. I'll let that grow until I'm ready to plant in a few weeks. The peppers in this elevated bed struggled. Soil temperatures were much higher in this bed than other areas of my yard. The basil didn't seem to mind, but these peppers sure did. I cut them back when I saw new growth, thinking that might spur them on, but instead they just fried. The roses don't look great. They've struggled through the heat, which isn't surprising. Hopefully that prep we did in early summer has kept them alive. As temperatures cool down, I'm going to give them a light pruning, give them nutrient plus, worm castings, and even some fertilizer a little bit later, and they will take off and hopefully we'll get a nice fall flush of blooms. You might be tempted to cut everything back because it looks so bad, but wait until nighttime temperatures are in the 70s. That's your go time for pruning and fertilizing. Two standout roses that have really surprised me are this Coco Loco and this Sunbelt South Africa. They've both pushed out blooms all summer long. The plants don't look great. The blooms don't look like the ones you see in the rose catalog, but they're still blooming and growing and look pretty happy for plants that were just planted this spring. These Shasta daisies that were beautiful in June are alive but struggling. About half of the plants survived. Some rotted completely and some look mostly dead. I'm waiting to see if they come back and then I'll cut those back and hopefully have more plants. As the days get shorter, I'm shifting to fall prep. These sunflowers that have shaded my bed all summer long, I'm taking them out. I'll cut them off at the base, leave the stumps in the ground. Before long, they'll decompose and I can pull out the end of that stump or just leave it in place. I'll leave this big white shade cloth in place until temperatures are consistently below 90 degrees and then I'll take it down. I'm not planting cool season crops quite yet, but I want to get the soil ready. I'm growing cover crops in several of my beds. Black-eyed peas or cow peas are an excellent cover crop. They produce a lot of green matter. Ideally, you cut those off before they flower for the most nitrogen fixation in your soil, but I need seeds to plant next year, so I'm letting these flower so I can collect the seeds. I'm also trying out sun hemp. It's a new to me, heat loving cover crop. It's easy to plant from seeds. They sprouted right away. It produces a lot of green matter, so once I'm ready to plant, I'll cut that back too. Have you grown sun hemp before? Give me all of your tips. Fall is also a time to refresh your in-bed vermicomposting bins. Harvest all of the castings from your bins. I like to use a compost sifter to sift out all of those beautiful castings. It doesn't get any fresher than worm castings from your own garden. Once you've harvested the castings, start over with fresh cardboard, food scraps, and then put wood chips over the whole thing. You don't need to add more worms. They'll find their way back into the bin, and the process begins again, and they'll make more of those beautiful worm castings. Before long, these beds are going to be full of all my cool season favorites. All the brassicas, all the cool season flowers like snapdragons, delphinium, going to plant everything, but before I plant, I'll pull back all of that mulch, cut the cover crops off at the base, layer them onto the soil, top with compost, maybe a few worm castings, and wait a little bit, and then that soil is ready to plant. If you're filling up new beds, use a combination of compost, worm castings, vermiculite or perlite, and coconut coir. Those things all mixed together make the perfect soil for your raised beds. This fall marks five years that I have partnered with Arizona Worm Farm in making the Growing in the Garden Raised Bed and Container Mix. I couldn't be happier to have this soil in my garden. It's made with compost and worm castings from Arizona Worm Farm. If you live anywhere close to them, it's worth the drive. If not, use those ingredients and make your own. Use the freshest compost and worm castings you can. As the days get shorter and the nights get cooler, I'll cut back on watering. Fall is a good time to check all of your watering and make sure everything's still working after that long hot summer. I use garden grids from Garden in Minutes in all of my beds. I got the first one back in 2019 for this asparagus bed, and it's still going strong. This asparagus looks out of control now, but that's exactly what it's supposed to do. It's collecting all of this energy that will go back to the roots. Once it yellows, we'll cut it back and we'll have beautiful harvest next spring. Fall tomatoes should already be planted. If they're not, get them in your sunniest spot as soon as possible. If you've got tomatoes that survived the summer that still look healthy, you should be seeing new growth and fresh blossoms. Trim back any dying spots a little bit at a time to see how the plant tolerates it. Feed it, give it fresh mulch, and hopefully you'll get a fall flush of tomatoes. This fall I'm feeding any new transplants or struggling plants with Nutrient Plus. It will help them recover from this hot summer. I'm also feeding plants in containers and heavy feeders like watermelons and tomatoes with a fruit and flower fertilizer. This will give them the nutrients they need to push out fruit so we can get a harvest this fall. The tomatoes are planted. I'm going to add some Itoi onions and other companion plants to this bed. Need the rest of this month's what to plant and what to do lists? Grab the Garden Planner. It includes planting dates, step-by-step to-dos, watering guidelines, a planning grid, and notes pages to track your progress. There's some obviously dead plants I'm going to start taking out, but some of those damaged ones with new growth, I'm leaving that damaged area in place. It's protecting the plant just in case we get more hot weather. Once the weather cools, I can't wait to get planting. Want a thriving desert garden? Join my monthly online classes, live or on replay, and get instant access to past classes and journals. Bring your questions and let's grow together in Growing in the Garden Academy. Let's start with what survived. Okay, yeah, tempted. There we go. That's all I had in me. Too much. Sorry, foggy glasses. Oh, that's it. That's all I'm going to say. Okay, fall. Oh, so do the whole thing again. Okay. Thank you for watching.