Harvesting our Washington navel orange here in Arizona - Harvesting citrus

Tomatillo not quite ready yet

I was very sad to see my tomatillo plant in the larger raised garden bed dead from high winds and cold weather. I was able to find a pod that was still in semi decent shape and look at the insides.

There is a small green pea like center that is very squishy and gel like but, never squished or popped open. The pod is a paper like covering that didn't make it in my pocket too well.

Seed packets and what the seeds look like that go into your garden

I recently startedplanting seeds indoors to get ready for the spring growing season here in Arizona. I thought I would post some  pictures showing what the seeds actually look like inside the packets.

Tomatoes growing in the garden during January 2011

A few good looking tomatoes growing in the raised garden bed during January 2011.

Look at my meyer lemon tree now!

So here is our little meyers lemon tree with the new lower shoot growing quite tall. I cut the old main trunk slightly above the new growth...take a look at it now!

Let's grow a pineapple indoors!

We are going to plant a pineapple indoors! I couldn't believe how easy it is supposedto be to gow a pineapple plant on your own. You want to get a pineapple that has a nice green center leaves, when you look down from above.

Next you want to cut off the top of the pineapple and leave only about an inch or so of flesh. Set this top aside in a dark but somewhat warm location. This will allow the flesh to callus over and not rot which is what it would do if you were to put it directly into the soil.

The rain saved our flame grape vine

This here is a grape vine that was on it's last leg due to the heat. This grape is the varity called "Flame" and taste really good picked ight off the vine. This little grape vine though was almost dead not long ago, but as you can see it has grown many new leaves and is now thriving once again.

It was purchased in July at a reptuable nursery and it was in full sun when I bought it. Eventhough it was in full sun where I bought it, it did not like our Western expoursure at all. It only took one really hot day above 115 degrees and this grape vine was fried and dropped all it's leaves. I quickly moved it into afternoon shade on our East side where it started to grow some small and pittiful leaves. I truley thought it was going to die.

The first big storm to hit our area happened while we were out of town not that long ago. We when got back home and looked at the yard and garden to survey the damage, (monsoons can wreck havoc on your yard and gardens here if not protected), we noticed how great this flame grape vine looks.