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What Rainy Season?
The only reason I think it rained in August is my gardening accomplishments for the month were next to nil so my tennis shoes must have been bogged down in all the mud. I'd like to believe my area of town received lots of rain but then I kept choking on all the dust that was kicked up every time I worked in the garden. The monsoon was very stingy in my neighborhood as the area's drought continues.

One day I did manage to hook up two, 10 gallon trash cans to the down spout on the garden shed. The following afternoon it rained a little over a quarter of an inch and to my amazement both plastic trash cans filled with water. I now need larger containers or several more of the same size hooked together with hoses. It's pretty remarkable how much water can be collected from run off. The tin roof on the garden shed isn't much larger than a 12 by 14 foot area but it can catch a lot of water when it rains. I may have to attach gutters to my greenhouse sometime in the future so I can use its small pitched roof to catch water as well.

With the flat, galvanized steel roof and added gutter it was easy to catch rain water. After one light rain it was obvious two 10 gallon containers wasn't enough.
The new 8 by 10 garden shed is nearly completed but it still needs the addition of a potting bench under the porch.

I also managed to complete the finishing details and a bit of painting on the garden shed although I still need to build a five foot potting bench that goes under the porch section. In past years I've used the top of my covered compost bins as my potting bench but I'm ready for a shady place to work and at a bit lower level so I don't have to lift some of the heavier clay pots quite so high.

Change of Venue
As September progresses I'll gradually remove the summer annuals from my containers and toss them in the compost bin. When October finally rolls around, I'll start shopping for healthy looking winter annuals and replant most of the clay pots and add a few hanging baskets of petunias.

I also purchased a bundle of green plastic 12-inch hanging baskets with wire hangers. In Tucson's climate plastic pots fade, crack, and eventually fall apart and I need to repot an awful lot of my hanging baskets because the containers are getting very close to the falling apart stage of their lives. I had a couple drop to the ground over the summer when the plastic rims cracked.

I've already reworked my collection of ivy geraniums and started a few new cuttings. When day time temperatures cool, the hanging baskets will get moved from the greenhouse to a more prominent location near the front door.

New plastic hanging baskets without the metal hangers have ivy geranium cuttings.
Eight containers of alternating green and variegated Swedish Ivy (Plectranthus) received new 12-inch containers.

Many of my summer hanging plants also need to be reworked. They'll get a new container, some slow release fertilizer and a bit of fresh potting soil before they get moved to the greenhouse for the winter.

This month I need to get my dozen or so varieties of leaf lettuce seeds planted in flats and eventually transplanted to six cell plastic packs. Eventually the lettuce will fill most of the vegetable garden and I'll be eating fresh salads until next March. There's always something to accomplish in the garden no matter what season of the year.

Sometimes I think it would sure be nice if I could get the majority of my gardening done in a day or two but it just doesn't happen. There's always something new to plant, move, prune, water, fertilize and enjoy. Certainly by mid summer some of the constant watering, and appearance of heat battered plants seems a bit tedious if not discouraging. But then fall comes around and the garden gets a chance to renew itself and Tucson gardening becomes gardener friendly.

For the avid Tucson gardener, the gardening never ends. And for some of us, that's really not such a bad thing.

The Tucson Gardener
September, 2004