Welcome Arizona SFGers!

We have a nice group of Arizona folks growing on the Square Foot Gardening forums here and this is a great place to introduce yourselves and work together to garden in the desert.

So I have to ask: Are there any other SFGers out there crazy enough to garden in 100+ degree weather? Tell us about yourself!

Happy Gardening!
Don
www.sonorangarden.com

OK. I'll start. I began Square Foot Gardening in 2007 and the addiction has grown from there. Our family is really enjoying gardening and raising vegetables that taste better than they do coming from the store! It is catching on and I have had many people over to see how Square Foot Gardening works. I also have the journey chronicled in my blog at www.sonorangarden.com. Check it out and drop me a note if you have suggestions or questions.

Happy Gardening!
Don
www.sonorangarden.com

Hey Don,
Thanks for starting this group. I just started Square footing about 1 month ago. I moved into a place that had a few boxes already made but they were in bad shape. I fixed them up did some research and started on my quest.

Unfortunately I am moving at the end of this month and will not see all my work come to fruition, however, my garden is looking amazing, cabbage, lettuce, onions, and the beginning of squash, carrots, watermelons, and more. I am looking forward to starting from scratch and building up a great garden over time.

I will post some pictures to let you see how it ends up before I head to another section of town!

Aaron

Welcome to the forum Aaron!

It sounds like you have had a small taste of SFG and it has been a good one. If you dont have Mel's book All New Square Foot Gardening it is well worth picking up. Many check it out at the library if they dont want to commit to the purchase. Either way, it is full of great information on getting your SFG started and continuing on with it.

Good luck with your move.

Hi Don and Aaron! I'm a sophomore over at ASU (Tempe), and I just founded the organic gardening club. We have around 30 members and 1,800 square feet that we're going to slowly be converting into SFG space, so I'm really excited! I had a 4x6 box over the cool planting season, and I had vegetables coming out the ears. I have no idea how much produce we'll get as a club...probably have veggies coming out of other places.

I'd offer you good luck with this summer, but we've had such weird weather that I don't think we'd need it!

Arya

Are there any other SFGers out there crazy enough to garden in 100+ degree weather?

I'm one! I have to admit though, I try to get out early in the summer. I have just purchased Mel's book but have been gardening in raised beds for years. I have done grids, not done grids, etc. My raised beds are 3 feet tall so that I don't have to bend down so much. I also have a huge gopher problem (live in Queen Creek). So, I have rocks, chicken wire etc in the bottom portion of the beds. The rest is my own mixture of compost, vermiculite, sand and some potting soil.

Eager to see or read about what others have done.

Hubby and I started our fist sfg this year. We have One 4x8 box and so far its going alright. One of our tomato plants looks a bit sickly, but I think it has more to do with over watering because of all the rain. Hopefully it will perk back up with all the nice weather.

Other than that we have already enjoyed some cherry tomatoes, and even some yummy strawberries!

Can't wait to hear how everyone else is doing!

Hello Fellow Arizonians.
My name is Marc and I live in Chino Valley, just north of Prescott. I wasn't sure if I qualify for SW Deserts or Mtn. Gardening. Last year was our first experiment in gardening. We did it the old fashion way with rows. Some things turned out well like tomatoes, cantelope, butternut squash, zucchini, chard, basil, and parsley. Others didn't--carrots, onions, cucumbers, broccoli, lettuce, spinich, etc. I saw the SFG book and thought it sounded great. My brother-in-law and I have built 9 boxes and I got one already filled my Mel's Mix and covered. I am trying to figure out when I can plant my cool weather spring seeds (onions, broccoli, kale, lettuce, spinich, radishes, carrots). We are supposed to be warming up, but it's been in the high 20's/low 30's at night.
I am excited to start and so are my kids!

Hi- You may want to use the Master gardener dates as your guide to planting.
http://ag.arizona.edu/yavapai/publications/yavcobulletins/Yavapai%20County%20Vegetable%20Planting%20Dates.pdf

Hello everyone! Not in Arizona but only 30 miles from the Arizona border up here in Las Vegas. Trying figure out what can grow good when we hit the high heat this summer.

My parents live in Phoenix and my mom has a small garden. She has this book and likes it. It's Extreme Gardening--How to Grow Organic in the Hostile Deserts. I have looked through it and I like it.

http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Gardening-Organic-Hostile-Deserts/dp/0970501609/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268749225&sr=8-1

Hi Don, and all you other brave gardners who face the heat of Arizona. I'm back to blogging. I've been working hard these past few months to get everything growing before it gets too hot. Posted a new slide show on my blog which you can access here.
http://dssgarden.blogspot.com

Very enthusiastic about starting to SFG, but having trouble finding any vermiculite in Chandler. Been to every Lowes, Home Depot, Nursery I could find. Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Russ

I have purchased it at Summer Winds Nursery. I also saw it at A&P Nursery. I would call them first.

luvs2garden wrote:I have purchased it at Summer Winds Nursery. I also saw it at A&P Nursery. I would call them first.

Thanks for the quick reply! I'll stop by both of them and check it out.

Hi everyone! I moved to Apache Junction in November of last year, and I worked hard to get my SFG set up in time to get a winter-spring garden in before it was too hot. I planted my seeds for peas,tomatos, broccoli, brussell sprouts, lettuce, spinach and some assorted flowers on February 15th. Today, my peas have developing pods, some of the spinach is really ready (it was delicious!) and I have been harvesting my lettuce for my new diet all week. I'm crossing my fingers that the other veggies will make it to harvest before it gets too hot.

Hi Randia, welcome to the Forums.

So many of us are stuck up in the north where the snow doesn't seem to want to stop. So when we read about all you folks harvesting already we get really jealous! But it sure gives us incentive to stick it out and look forward to what we will be doing in just a short while.

Good luck to you with your garden. Keep us up-to-date with your progress and post pictures whenever you can.

Found coarse vermiculite at Sun West Container Co. 4101 W. Washington. (602) 353-9060. They also have a web site. http://www.sunwestcontainer.com
Comes in 4 cu. ft. bags. Can't remember the price.

Dorothy http://dssgarden.blogspot.com

Russtang wrote:

luvs2garden wrote:I have purchased it at Summer Winds Nursery. I also saw it at A&P Nursery. I would call them first.

Thanks for the quick reply! I'll stop by both of them and check it out.

Well, I stopped by Summerwinds mesa location a couple of weeks ago. They had 2.2 ft^3 bags of vermiculite for $17. A&P had 3.5ft^3 bags for $30. The math worked out better to buy from Summer winds.

They also had Mel's premix stuff in 2ft^3 bags for something like $16, which for my size garden was only a little more $, so I just bought the premix.

LINK

Joined the rewards club (for free) and got a 15% discount off the mix! So it ended up costing about the same as mixing it all myself!

Might be a little late for anyone to start a garden out here, but just thought I'd let everyone know for next time.

Russ

I was able to buy Mel's Mix at the local Home Depot. I've got peas, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, etc coming up now.

First summer in Arizona, moved here from CA. First time gardener also. Set up two 8 square boxes that I purchased at A&P nursery. Very easy, no tools, and Mel's mix pre-packaged. Planted strawberry plants, half of them survived and are still surviving this heat. I hear that it takes two seasons for them to produce. Does anyone know if that is true or not?

I have plenty of zuchinni, some tomatoes, bell peppers, Jalepenos. I planted some roma tomatoes in a big planter but they turned red before they got big. Tasted good though. Other than trying to deal with birds getting my tomatoes, I think it did pretty good for my first garden. I planted some green beans and peas in April. The peas have burned up, but the green beans are still surviving.

I water every morning. I am a little disappointed that I seem to have more weeds than I anticipated. I put a weed cover on the bottom of the boxes, so I think either the birds are contributing or the wind. I am going to build some boxes on legs for my fall crop. I'm excited to plant another crop for cooler temps.

If anyone has any suggestions for me, would love to hear them.

I just started my SFG in June basically. It's taken me about 4 weeks to finally plant something. We'll see how it goes in this hottest part of the year.

I have a strawberry plant in our flower bed in the front of our house and it has survived for over 2 years now. It has fruited each spring, however, the fruit is not good and is usually eaten up by pests. To answer your question, it did have fruit on the plant when I purchased it from Home Depot.

Good luck.

H!
My mom introduced me to SFG amd I love the idea - my hubby built me a 3 foot raised box - it is great. Started it in early May, things were looking good, but no production. Between beginning summer sports and activities for my kids, going out of town and temp reaching over 110 - I have COMPLETED let my SFG go - everything is dead!! It is not hooked up to an automatic water supply. I am pretty sue my reasoning is telling me to let it go for now (right??) but then when can I start over?

Thanks!!

Kate

Just attented a class a couple weeks ago for fall veggie garden planning. They were saying that Mid August- Sept is when you want to plant your fall/winter garden. If you want pumpkins for Halloween they were saying plant them asap.

My dogs have demolished my garden, so I am going to replant come Late Aug early Sept when it gets to be in the low 100s or so. Hopefully it will go better. Will also be installing a new fence to keep the dogs out by then.

Before the dogs ate everything I did have some nice strawberries, pepers, chard, squash was still little but coming along. My tomato plants were spared until the tomatoes got large enough for my dogs to easily get them. Now I haven't gotten any tomatoes in 3 weeks. I keep catching the dogs eating green tomatoes though. with it getting so hot nothing is setting now. I was hoping that they would set higher up on the plants so they couldn't reach them, but didn't happen. Looking forward to next planting season!! Love this SFG stuff! I have maybe had to pull 3 weeds so far this year!

Hi everyone! My family just moved into a home in Peoria. I am a newbie to gardening, but have a strong desire to learn. We are short on cash...like who isn't, but it seems like this style of gardening will work the best. We've just planted fruit trees in the back, but we have left 2 nice sections open for gardening. Bye the way, I have been told time after time, "you can't use planter boxes in Arizona because it gets too hot." Thanks for showing me it can be done...and done in abundance! I look forward to it (with everyone's support)!