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The Tucson Gardener |
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In the Garden Calendar
Local Garden Links
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Bad Answers,
Good Intentions For example someone new to Tucson's hot summers might ask how often are they supposed to water their plants in June when radio and television commercials preach "beat the peak" and conserve water. So what's the answer? Well, it depends. Oh, oh you might think. Here's another one of those more than one answer answers. All gardens are not created equal. Soil and climactic conditions can be different. One garden may get a lot more shade than another or one garden may be shielded from the desert's hot drying winds by a wall or hedge. Another garden might make efficient use of a mulch or drip irrigation while another doesn't. Then it really boils down to the type of plants you have in your garden - thirsty ones vs. the ones that can survive on little moisture. Lastly, some gardeners are willing to tolerate less than perfect looking plants so they let their plants suffer from less than ideal conditions a little longer. So with all these variables, garden experts can only give you suggestions and try to think of all the possible conditions that might influence your plants. And that's not always an easy task especially if the gardener asking the question isn't willing to share some of the responsibility in trying to get the best possible answer. Even then the perfect answer may be as illusive as the rain in Tucson this past winter. I've been asking the same question for years and still haven't gotten the answer I hope for. Always a problem in my yard during the summer and fall are the large red harvester/leaf cutting ants that attack my plants at night and strip all the leaves off of the shrubs and some trees. The attacks, although seldom fatal, have a way of stunting plant development. I've been told to pour boiling water down the ant holes, place granular pesticide around the hole so the ants take it down into the colony, pour diluted Diazinon® into the ant hole and I've even been told to stick a hose down the tunnel entrance. I've even tried making a sticky, messy, barrier so the ants can't climb up the a stem or trunk to remove the foliage. Some of the suggestions I've tried and had very limited and always temporary success. (Editor's note: Diazinon® was removed from the market.) Many late
summer nights I've wandered through the desert with flashlight in hand to
find the
I can't win. However there is one nice thing about having a good ant population on one's property and that is they provide a good food supply for all kinds of lizards. I see skinks, zebra tails, spiny, horned and others I can't begin to identify. And until you've had a lizard run up your pant leg you just don't know what fun is. At the bottom of each page of this Web site is an e-mail address for The Tucson Gardener and every so often The Tucson Gardener gets mail from gardeners who've surfed their way onto this site. I've been asked to mail my catalog of plants. There is no catalog of plants; this Web site isn't selling anything except water conservation. The Tucson gardener has been asked when's the best time to come see the surrounding desert in bloom. I claim ignorance to that question and always will. I can't even tell my relatives the answer to that one. Too much depends on how much rain we get during the winter and which month it first starts. Fortunately there are Web sites that track the desert wildflowers and plants blooming dates. As Tucson's chamber of commerce might say, any time is a good time to visit Tucson. Personally, I'd avoid late May through mid September unless you plan to spend a lot of time inside an air conditioned room, next to a swimming pool, or don't mind getting up awfully early in the morning before it gets so hot your armpits drip buckets. Last year's Greenhouse Madness, One and Two (find the links in The Archives) indicated there's plenty of greenhouse envy on the web. The Tucson Gardener fielded quite a few questions about greenhouse materials and general greenhouse questions. As for the The Tucson Gardener, it's a homepage that turned into a Web site where either a writer who gardens or a gardener who writes tries to find some answers to his own gardening questions and at the same time supply information to others. (1999) |
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source of the endless column of harvesting ants as they carry
remnants of my vegetation back to their colony. Once there I find the ant entrance stuck
way back under prickly pear cactus or other thorny vegetation preventing me from doing
anything but admiring the ants' ingenuity. Nothing I've tried works on a permanent basis
and sooner or later some of my vegetation is going to get stripped of its leaves.
