{Sevilla Soul Garden} The Beginning...or "Phoenix-- We Grow More Than Just Cactus!"

Moving from Los Angeles to anywhere else is setting yourself up for culture shock. But this can be a good thing! My hubby and I moved to the Town of Gilbert, (yes, a "town"!) a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. And although the three months of summers are truely, truely hot (my sister was afraid that she would burst into flames when she visited, and honestly, I was a little afraid of that myself!) 9 months of the year are downright gorgeous! And what most people don't realize about Arizona is that we have an ideal climate for growing many, many varieties of produce! Yes, folks, here in Phoenix, we grow more than just cactus! (That should be our state motto!) So when we were notified that we recieved a Community Garden Plot at Agritopia, we were beyond psyched!! We've got land!! We thought for sure that all of the current participants would hold on to their 400 square foot garden spaces like a prized jewel. That's how we feel about ours, and we plan on never, ever leaving!!

Simple trellis for Beans



Laying pipe! (hee hee)  ;)





We got our plot in March of this year, and had
a nice window to enjoy working in cool-ish weather before the temps shot up to the triple digits in late June. To get started, we had to construct our own watering system. Each plot came bare, just a 20'x20' box filled with soil and an irrigation hook-up. We constructed a simple drip system with PVC pipe, drip tape and an automatic timer. All the supplies for the irrigation system cost us about $75 dollars. We wanted to construct a simple structure to allow us some vertical growing, so with a roll of steel gridding, (which I scored on clearance for $25, regularly $80)and some 2x4's, we made ourselves a trellis. We also used the gridding rolled in on itself and mounted on stakes to make some really sturdy tomato cages. With our last garden, we learned that tomatoes get really tall and heavy and those little tomato cages that you buy for a couple bucks--what a joke! They don't support squat!! The ones we made worked out really well. I'm very happy with them.

  


Home-made, sturdy tomato cages

  

We piled on redwood mulch to preserve moisture








Weeded till we couldn't weed no mo'....

 


And in 3 months, we began to harvest!!








My beauties!! German Pink, Lemon Boy & Green Zebra

 
Spring/Summer 2011 gave a sucessful harvest with tons of heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, zuchinni, green beans, peppers and cantelopes. We did not have such great luck with the corn and eggplant this time. But the experience wa-aaayyy more than made up for our failures. We had plenty to eat and even more to share. We didn't keep detailed records of pounds harvested, but in the future, that's something that I really would like to do.

Now that we've had a chance to feel our way around our new garden, we're ready to get serious! I want this year to go for quality and quantity. I want to grow as much as we can in our little plot, and share so much more. I want to give to our friends and family again, of course, but I also plan to have so much produce, that we'll have to take some to the food bank near us. I've never been to a food bank, so that in itself will be an adventure. I can't wait.....



My goal for the Fall (I mean, Autumn)/Winter season is to become a mini-farm. And our farm's name is .......Sevilla Soul Garden. I love it. And I hope you do too!