In the beginning

In the beginning, I made a lot of mistakes. You probably are too, if you’re just starting out as a beginning gardener. I started gardening about seven or eight years ago but I still consider myself a beginner. When I was younger and lived in California, it was a very verdant climate; plants grew everywhere. The houses have lush landscapes. Wild ferns, clover, and garlic grew along the alleyways, and flowers and trees were everywhere. Because of that, backyard gardening wasn’t something many people did back then. Fast forward to today. I live in Arizona now. I finally have my own brown and not green space, which is challenging for a novice gardener. I’ve been trying to turn it into a somewhat native landscape, purposefully and chaotically planting foods native to the region. I’ve learned more than I’ve harvested in the past seven years, but soon that should even out.

I live in planting zone 9b and am now deep into July. This is one of the hardest zones for a beginning gardener to learn. With weeks of triple-digit heat and no rain, getting things going for the monsoon planting season has been rough. Many backyard gardeners rely on the natural rain cycles of the area to help jump-start crops. Monsoons are desperately needed. This is my first year planting sorghum, but without the monsoon’s patterns, my watering isn’t mimicking what it needs. I may be out of luck already on those.

Planting and harvesting in the Sonoran Desert can be tricky, but it’s not impossible. Here’s a list of things that the beginner gardener up to the experienced can plant this month in Arizona: amaranth, beans, corn, cucumber, eggplant, melons, sorghum, squash, sunflowers, tomato plants, and watermelons. Always try to buy varieties native to your region for the best planting results.

https://extension.arizona.edu/pubs/vegetable-planting-calendar-maricopa-county