When it’s hot, it’s hard to muster much enthusiasm for gardening activities. For gardeners, summer in Tucson is like winter for gardeners in cold climates. You don’t want to be outside much, and your creative juices are sapped.
Fortunately, we are lucky to have a year-round gardening season, so even if you don’t feel like being outside much, there are still quite a few things you can do.
Planning your garden. This is a fun activity you can do in the air-conditioned comfort of your house. You can sketch out a current plan of your garden and then brainstorm any changes or additions you’d like to make. Maybe you want a new patio or shaded area? Or perhaps you want to add some vegetable beds? You can use Google Maps to print out a satellite view and also for measuring your space. For more tips, check out my article “How to design a desert garden.”
Adding a water feature. When it’s hot we always wish we had some water around. Even the sound of running water is enough to make us feel calmer. It also has the added benefit of disguising unwanted environmental sounds. It can also provide a life-saving source of water for wildlife. Whether you want a fountain, a small pond, a waterfall or even just a tiny wildlife pond in a barrel, summer is a great time to get started on that project. Check out my article “Choosing fountains for your Tucson desert garden” for more tips.
Planting and sowing native plants. Unlike cold climates, where there are several months of the year when plants just die off or hibernate, we can plant year round. Monsoon is actually a pretty good time to put native heat-loving plants in the ground. Likewise, you can sow native plant seeds before you see the rain coming. The main advantage to this is that your plants will have a year to get established before the next hot season. It’s also a great way to cheer yourself up as you watch your new plants grow. You can get seeds at Native Seed/SEARCH or at Borderlands Nursery & Seed. Visit native plant nurseries like Tohono Chul’s Desert Corner Nursery, Spadefoot Nursery and Desert Survivors for tips on which plants to get this time of year.
Plan out your passive rainwater harvesting structures. When the monsoon rains come, it’s easy to see where the water drains and pools in your yard, or where you might want it to. This is the perfect time to play around with creating some passive rainwater harvesting structures like berms and swales. Don’t go crazy — just make some very small ones a couple of inches high and see how that changes the flow of water. You can experiment with every rainfall and figure out what you will need to keep that lovely, nourishing rainwater in your yard instead of letting it run off. For more details, check out my article “Harvesting the Rain Part 1: Passive rainwater harvesting.” The definitive guide is “Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond” by Tucson native Brad Lancaster.
As you brainstorm about what you want to do in your garden, keep in mind that a few things are best left for cooler weather. This is not a good time to change around your watering scheme (unless you have emergency repairs that need to be done). It’s also not the time to fertilize your plants, or to prune them. Fertilizing adds salts to the soil and will stress out (or kill) plants more during the hot months. Likewise, pruning is stressful and shouldn’t be done during a time when plants need their vegetative cover to shade their trunk and branches. Save this for a time when the plants are dormant or during early spring.
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