Cauliflower flowering in the garden - March 2011

Take a look at the cauliflower flowering in our organic raised garden bed!

This photo was taken during March, 2011

Video of the flowers in our Arizona raised garden

Added more flowers to the raised garden beds

So today I added a few more flowers to our raised garden beds to help attract even more beneficial insects. Even while the flowers were sitting waiting to be planted, they were being visited by strange looking flying insects. Very cool!

I can't remember all the names off hand, but I know some were marigolds, english daisy, cyclamen and pansy. I also was able to find some common sage and a couple globe artichoke's. I started one globe artichoke in the raised garden bed and will put the other globe artichoke into a 5 gallon bucket that I can move around into different locations if I need to.

I'll try and post some photos of the new flowers as well as pics of the alfalfa hay mulch.

Flower images

Pink flower  mixed in with the yellow flowers.

Finished adding the soil to our raised garden beds!!!

We have finally finshed adding the soil to our raised garden beds! I was able to locate some looking anf feeling garden soil mix at a local yard. Can you believe we needed almost 10,000 pounds of soil!!!

I will upload a bunch of photos soon with all the information as to what I added to our garden soil mix. As for now,  I'm installing the soaker hose and will be adding seeds, plants and flowers in the next few days. The best thing about our timingwas that we were hit with a lot of rain last night which thoroughly soaked our raised gardens! Could'nt ask for anything better than that :)

Well stay posted for the pictures of our Arizona raised garden beds!

Make old junk into plant containers!

Thought I'd share with you what we've done for our part in recycling unwanted concrete water pipes from the past.

I found these great old concrete drainage pipes and thought, "you know, a plant would look awesome in this thing!". So next thing you know I used all my strength to put these heavy old relics into my truck, took a short break then moved them into our yard :) They really are heavy and when I look at them I wonder how I got them here...I say the same thing about most of the yard and garden art we have! lol

So here is a few pics of where we put these old water drainage pipes and how we ran drip line up the middle to help water our future plants.

This is where we placed the smaller of the two water pipes. Don't mind the rain drops in the pictures,the rain finally showed up and made it a great day to work outside! This second image shows the tools you will need to complete this project: Something sharp to poke a hole into your main drip line, an elbow connector and some 1/8" drip line tube.

Next, you'll have to lay the heavy water drainage pipe on it's side to get to the main water line that we need to connect to. Once you have room to work, you'll need to dig down and find you main water supply  line. Remember to dig carefully so as not to damage your water line!

Now poke a hole into the main water supply line and insert the elbow drip line connector. Place the 1/8" drip line onto the elbow before inserting the elbow into the main water line to make things easier. You will  also want to push the 1/8" drip line into the hole of the water pipe so when you put the water drainage pipe back up, you can grab it.

Fill the hole back in with dirt and stand the drainage pipe back up. You should now be able to look down inside the pipe and see your dip line tube. You will also want to note that the line should not have any part of the concrete drainage pipe sitting on it. Your new 1/8" drip line tube should be cut off no less than  6" above the opening and capped off until you have a plant to place. I like to leave a little extra drip line, about 6"-10", and coil it under the dirt beneath the plant in case you have to ever make repairs such as adding a different size emitter head. A lot of times once you put on an emitter, the sun will bake it onto the drip line making you to have to cut the drip line just before the emitter, thus shortening your drip line and eventually causing you to use in-line connectors which increases the chance of leaks. (leaks would not be a problem in this set up, however they would be if your doing horizonatal repairs, so it's a good habit to create when installing drip lines.)

Now the job is complete!

For ease of access you can see I've kept the drip line sticking out of the top of this great looking water drainage pipe for now. It's just waiting to water some interesting plant in the near future. The easy part is over, the hard part is choosing a  cool plant to put in it :) You could plant something that hangs down, something that grows up, or even plant both to give an extra cool look!

Going to buy some wild flower seeds

Thinking about making a trip over to desert botanical gardens in phoenix to pick up some wild  flower seeds. The time is right now to throw some seeds out in the yard and garden. Just a heads up on the wild flower seeds from desert botanical garden in phoenix, I spoke with someone there over the phone and was told they charge a flat rate of $12 to ship wild flower seeds! I couldn't believe what I was told when I heard that price. Seriously, that is a total rip off for shipping and handling for wild flower seeds. I guess that how they get you to come down to the desert botanical gardens lol.

Lavender flowers starting to bloom here in Arizona

A few lavender flowers are starting to show up now that the weather is somewhat changing. It's October 4th already and still getting into the 100+ temps. I think the next few weeks we should start noticing cooler temps, but who knows right???

The start of the Arizona Sunshine Garden Project

Welcome to the beginning of the Arizona Sunshine Garden Project!

You'll soon be reading and viewing images about our Arizona garden adventure in which we have started from scratch, with very little gardening knowledge at all. A vision of eating our own home grown, chemical free food peeked our interest and we took off running...

Maybe not the most enjoyable time to plan and build a garden, but what else is there to do mid June in Arizona, lol!

I didn't care about a little hard work and sweat, I wanted to start eating fresh, great tasting produce as soon as possible. The few peppers and tomatoes we had always grown tasted so good, but it always seemed that life got in the way and we went back to the fast food preparation of microwaves and drive-thru's so quickly; not this time however!

Follow our journey and please feel free to comment and ask questions as this helps all of us find answers.

Happy Harvest!!!