Alfalfa hay added to the top of our raised garden beds in Arizona

A few days back I added a top dressing of alfalfa hay to our raised garden beds here in Arizona. Since we are leaving our hot temps, sort of, the cool nights will be here soon and the alfalfa hay around the plants will act like a blanket of sorts for our plants. It also adds some nutrients to the soil as it breaks down as well as adding a cool look to the entire raised garden bed. I plan on covering these raised garden beds with frost cloth when the real winter weather gets here.

Here are a few photos:

 This our larger of the two raised garden beds. The large empty looking space closest to us has a lot of herbs, however, yesterday I added a lot of flowers in this area to help bring in the beneficial insects.

The dark brown color of the soil to the left of the raised bed is not run-off or run-under from the raised bed, however, it is from spraying the hose. When our rain barrels are set up I hope to eliminate using the hose from the house and use only stored rain water.

 This is our smaller of the two raised garden beds.

Another picture of our smaller raised garden bed and our wine barrel with some wild flowers and other great looking flowers.

Time to mulch the citrus trees - This time we will use steer manure!

So it's that time of year for all of us in Southwest Arizona to add mulch to our citrus trees.

Today I'm putting down about a 1"-2" layer of steer manure  from Western Organics I bought at Lowe's. I really wanted chicken manure, but forsome reason Lowe's doesn't  carry it here. Just to refresh your memory, we  like  to fertilize cirus here in the valley three times a year; Valentine's day, Memorial Day and again on Labor Day. Now these dates are mostly to help your remember when to fertilize, however  a little before or after is fine. Don't think more is better either when putting down this typeof  mulch. The amount of salt can burn roots if applied to thick at one time.

In the second photo you can see what I had around the base of our citrus trees prior to today. It is a 3/4" rock that looks  really nice, but I only had it as a "rock mulch" for the first year since you shouldn't fertilize citrus until year two. I just  made a ring with this 3/4"rock thes size  of my trees drip line. The drip  line of any tree is where water would fall from the farthest leaf onto the ground. This is just about where your trees roots will be, so this is where you want to have your emitters if your using a drip system. One more thing to mention is that you should have a berm of some type, I used the left over rock mulch, that will keep the mulch about 6"-8" away from the trunk of the tree, as well as a berm at the drip line to hold the water inside the tree well.






I really love how this looks after I finished and had a good look at everything. I mean, I really liked the look of the rock mulch in the entire tree well, but now I look at it and see a very nice, clean look that benefits three as well as our yards appearance.


All finished...well, with these two anyway! I have two  other citrus trees to add mulch to today. The adding of the mulch isn't hard at all, it's the removing all the rocks from the tree well in this 101 degree heat that kicks my butt! It will be all worth when we get to bite into all these great tasting citrus!

For those who wanted to know, the citrus tree in the lower left corner of the last picture is our navel orange tree, the citrus closest to the fence is our lisbon lemon tree. I have two others  on the other side of the yard; a myers lemon tree and a tangelo tree that produces the most juicy of tangelos!

mesquite tree for mulch and bon fies

Here the pile of mesquite tree branches we have after we were able  to get some  mesquite tree trimmings. We are using the mesquite tree leaves as our mulch and it seems to be doing fine. Most of the plants are looking really good even in this high heat we have been expierencing. I truely believe that the seaweed and fish emulsion spray is working.

We will be using these mesquite tree branches for  a small bon fire later this week.