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The Tucson Gardener |
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In the Garden Calendar
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Could It Be Spring
All Ready? That doesn't mean I didn't find the time to garden; put together a garden project or two or think about future articles for the Tucson Gardener Web site. And some of the readers that have used the search engine on this site have also helped plant the seeds for future stories. It's just a matter of finding the time and developing the ambition to get something written and photographed. I don't know about you, but when the Tucson weekends are warm and sunny, I'd rather be outside gardening, swinging (with eyes closed) in the hammock, bicycling or maybe playing a little afternoon bridge on the porch. It's been difficult not to rush the arrival of spring. With the citrus trees putting out new buds in early February and the mourning doves already building nests one begins to think you can plant the spring vegetable garden. It would be nice to get the tomatoes in the garden a few weeks early. Maybe get the cucumber and bush bean seeds in the ground. I'd like to think it's not going to get down to freezing again but you just never know. A cold front could dip down and all those plants that have popped their buds will get nipped. It's happened in my garden on more than one occasion so I'm going to wait until the middle of March before I get too enthusiastic about planting my spring vegetable garden. I still have a lot of lettuce, a few aphids, Swiss chard, broccoli, onions and garlic growing so there's no rush to plant something new, although I have a craving for home grown tomatoes mixed with basil and mozzarella. In December I ordered seeds and planted some of the vegetables and bedding plants in flats by mid January. Since the greenhouse was full I started the seeds in flats under lights with better than expected results. (There's a story here, it just hasn't been written and the photos have yet to be edited.)
By mid February I started tossing pots of petunias and some of my other fall and winter bedding plants in the compost bin because they'd put on a pretty good show of color all winter because of the warm weather. They were still flowering but didn't look too healthy and I was a little tired of watering the potted plants. I needed a break from watering before warmer temperatures arrive. The Iceland poppies were nipped once or twice from freezing temperatures and nibbling javelina but they recovered quickly. My hope for a show of wildflowers this spring was shattered by the local wildlife. The rabbits have been very selective in what they eat. My occasional watering of the wildflowers produced a good crop of weeds but the rabbits preferred the poppies and other wildflowers. Only a very few flowers, that happened to be fenced, survived the nightly visits by the rabbits. And some of those were wiped out by javelina that bullied the fencing out of the way.
Plans call for the Tucson Gardener Web site to get a bit more active than it has been in the past couple of months but there are no guarantees. The back yard hammock has a strange power on the weekends and if I get close to the ramada where the hammock resides there's a beckoning like a mythological siren and I have no choice but to give in. And before I realize it, what could be a perfectly productive day of gardening and photography is lost as I unwillingly nap the day away. The Tucson Gardener |
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