Today I will be sharing how I started my Arizona garden. I started my garden at the end of February and it has quickly become one of my favorite hobbies. It’s amazing to go outside each day to see what new plants have grown. I can easily go outside if I need some jalapeños or basil. Talk about foodie goals! #GardenToTable.
This has been one of the most requested blog posts from when I started my quest of discovering if I had a green thumb. It makes me so excited that so many of you want to start gardens or have started already. Hopefully this blog post inspires or offers guidance. I admit I was hesitant to write this post as I am not an expert gardener nor am I claiming to be. So what may have worked for me may not work for someone else. I am a first-time gardener. Everything I know is thanks to the internet, trial and error, and my friend Brandi who helped me get started.
Prior to gardening I rarely spent time outside and my backyard didn’t get much love. Now I can easily spend a couple of hours checking on my babies. Yep, I call my plants babies! I really feel like a plant mom and I feel happy and sad when it’s time to harvest. Gardening can be relaxing, frustrating, and rewarding all at the same time. It is really about finding out what works best for YOU. I encourage everyone to give gardening a try. You don’t have to grow vegetables or fruit. You can grow flowers or succulents.
Why did I want to start a garden?
My interest in gardening stemmed from two Arizona farm tours that I took at the beginning of the year. It was incredible and as a fellow foodie and home cook it was eye opening to see where food comes from before it lands in the grocery store. You can read all about it here.
One of the biggest takeaways was that things could grow in the HOT Arizona heat. It seemed unbelievable to replicate this at home and I wasn’t sold on the idea until I saw one of my favorite bloggers, Radish Mama aka Brandi, post pictures of her backyard garden. I messaged her on Instagram and she kindly said she would help me get my garden started. Yay! She explained that the prime season for gardening in Phoenix was in the cooler months of October to March, but that doesn’t deter her from gardening year-round. You just have to be aware of what will grow well during each month. This made me hopeful and I felt challenged to become a year-round gardener.
Below are some of the most common questions I have received about gardening. I share my weekly progress on Monday’s on my Instagram Stories. If you head to my Instagram highlights you can view all of the stories from when I started! So if you don’t already, give me a follow on Instagram. If there are any questions I missed please comment below, email, or direct message me on Facebook or Instagram. Also if you start a garden please send me pictures. I love seeing them and sharing them!
Best of luck!
My Garden Setup:
- 3 Raised Wooden Garden Beds (4 x 4 ft)
- I bought this at my local nursery for about $25 each.
- I started with one bed. Then my hubby wanted to garden too, so he bought two for himself which really meant I inherited 2 new garden beds! Hahaha!
- 1 Whiskey Barrel Planter
- I bought this from my local Tractor Supply Co for $25
- I used this to plant my corn
- 3 Pots
- I have two large and one medium sized pots from Ikea, Home Depot, and Target
- These hold my herbs
- Soil
- 50% Composted Mulch
- 25% Potting Soil
- 25% Omni Seed Cover & Planting Compost
- Every month or so I add in more Composted Mulch and Compost
- Every week I fertilize with Miracle-Gro and/or Egg Shells
- Sunlight
- All of my plants receive about 8 to 10 hours of direct sunlight.
- If you are unsure what that means. As the sun moves throughout the day, my plants get full sunlight from about 8am to 5pm. That means no shade during these hours. It’s full sun!
- Watering
- In the cooler months, I water once a month. In the hotter months I water two times a day. Once in the morning and in the evening.
- I don’t have any fancy water setups. I have a gallon watering pale and each bed gets one pale of water in the morning and again in the evening.
- This may differ if you don’t live in a hot climate like I do. On average temperatures can range from 85 to 100 degrees where I live!
Tips for Gardening:
- Don’t be afraid to get in there.
- I spend an average of 30 minutes to an hour each day in my garden. I am constantly checking the plants for growth, bugs, and keeping an eye out for anything unusual.
- If I do see something unusual, I research online to see if that’s normal or how to fix.
- Do your research
- Depending on what you grow things could happen unexpectedly. Your plant could one day start wilting or look like its dying. This is common, especially for first time gardeners.
- Some of my favorite resources include YouTube (California Gardening is my favorite) and the AZ Department of Agriculture.
- There will be bugs.
- When I first started gardening my husband was most concerned about the insects that would be attracted to our garden. Luckily there hasn’t been any major concerns. Most are so tiny you have to get down on one knee to actually see them. But they are there!
- You do want bugs, you just have to make sure the right ones are there. I welcome praying mantis and bees. On more than one occasion I’ve been chased out of my garden by busy bees.
- The biggest perpetrators were aphids and cabbage worms that love to feed under leaves.
- How did I get rid of them? I power washed the leaves as soon as I saw them. Sprayed the leaves with a mixture of dishwashing liquid and cayenne pepper every week. If that didn’t keep them away, I would sprinkle flour on the leaves or sprinkle crushed up egg shells to the soil.
What did I grow?
Before you begin gardening, it’s important to figure out what will do best. I use this website here, to tell me which plants will do well in each month based on where I live in Arizona. It’s also a great guide to help you figure out when to start sowing seeds, so you can transplant them into your garden beds. This just makes sure you are successful in growing! You also want to keep track of when you planted your seeds or transplanted your plants so you can keep track of when to harvest.
Since I started my garden in February I was able to plant some cool weather plants.
- Kale
- These were surprisingly easy to grow. I started with 6 kale plants. They were transplanted into my garden and after about 3 weeks. I was able to harvest my kale leaves. For 6 weeks I was able to produce 2 one-gallon size bags of kale a week.
- They stopped producing as many leaves as the weather warmed up. I ended up removing these from my garden to make room for my beets that were growing taller and larger.
- Beets
- I planted these from seed and transplanted them into my garden bed after 4 weeks from when I started in February. These took a lot longer to grow than I expected. These are cold weather vegetables. When I did pull them 3 months later the beet roots were small.
- These are best planted in the cooler months.
- Carrots
- I grew two varieties of carrots Little Finger and Purple Carrots.
- I transplanted these and after 6 weeks I was able to harvest my Little Finger Carrots and 2 weeks later I was able to harvest my Purple Carrots.
- They were not the prettiest. In fact, they kind of looked scary as they curled up. From my research its best to sow carrot seeds directly into the soil, instead of transplanting them into your garden bed.
- Tomatoes
- I planted 3 varieties of tomatoes. Sun Gold, Red Cherry, and a Million Dollar Heirloom Tomato plants.
- Out of the 3, I would recommend any small tomato producing plants like Sun Gold Tomatoes. They take less time to grow and you can harvest a lot sooner than larger tomatoes.
- These are still growing. On average I harvest about a cup of tomatoes each week.
- Strawberries
- I was worried these weren’t going to bare any fruit, but one day I noticed a small strawberry growing. After that these little cuties kept growing.
- They range in size but I’m able to harvest at 3 to 5 strawberries a day. They range in size from really tiny to about 2 to 3 inches tall.
- These are still growing in my garden, but I can that tell the heat is getting to them. The strawberries are starting to grow very small now.
Hot Weather Plants: These plants do well in high heat. I planted some these in February from seed and some were transplanted. These are still growing and I will have to another update once they start producing.
- Peppers
- 3 varieties: Jalapeno, Serrano, and Red Bell Pepper
- My Serrano pepper did very well in the beginning and produced a handful of chilies each week. In May it stopped producing peppers. I eventually got rid of it because it got attacked by aphids and I could not bring it back to life.
- Jalapenos didn’t start growing until May. It produces a handful of peppers each week.
- Red Bell Pepper still growing. Produced one bell pepper in May. You can see 5 peppers currently growing.
- Watermelon
- 2 varieties Sugar Watermelon and Crimson Sweet, 6 are currently growing
- Planted from Seed
- The Sugar Watermelon is the only one that has bared fruit. It is currently 6 inches in diameter.
- Blue Corn
- Planted from seed, 5 are currently growing
- Ears of corn are starting to form. Haven’t harvested any yet.
- Green Chile
- Planted from seed. 2 are currently growing. Haven’t harvested any yet.
- A few are currently growing.
- Spring Onion
- Planted from seed. 6 are currently growing. Haven’t harvested any yet.
