• Year-Arounders: What would you like to hear about in September/October?

• Snow-Birds:  What are important topics for January through April? 

Winter's end is near and spring will venture out in the desert this month. We are still harvesting cabbage, Brussel's sprouts, kale, cauliflower, turnips, carrots, beets, chard, and broccoli and that should continue for many weeks. But, spring will come and we want to be ready for it. 

If you haven't started your tomato, eggplant, and pepper seeds at home, do so very soon. There is a tremendous potential inside a tiny seed and it is great fun to watch it grow! Use paper cups, yogurt containers, or 2" pots on a tray to grow your own seeds of the varieties you want this summer. Choose a fine textured potting soil and put some in a bucket, stir in water to pre-moisten it then fill the cups. Put one seed in each cup and label it. I cut strips from plastic milk jugs and write on them with a fine Sharpie marker and slip it in the edge of the pot for labels. Pre-soaking the seeds in a little water overnight helps them wake up. Keep the soil moist but not soppy and keep them warm in the house, on thick old towels to insulate the roots. When green shoots appear, give them as much sunshine as temperature allows - keep them always above 60 degrees F (they prefer over 70 when very young). Carrying them outside to your warm brick patio for a few hours then bringing them inside as it cools is ideal. Transplant them into larger pots in a few weeks if roots come out the drain holes in the bottom.

As they grow at home, prepare open sections of ground at the garden for planting by digging in composted steer manure and granulated fertilizer. Major plantings will take place the end of March or early April so pace the work load.

Irish potatoes go in the garden this month. They are not a root at all, but a tuber - a specialized fleshy part of an underground stem that stores food. They produce a better harvest if more of the stem is under the ground! "Seed" potatoes may be ordered for more varieties or found locally, or my favorite source is my pantry. Look in the dark corners for forgotten potatoes from the holidays that are growing sprouts; they will grow and produce tender little new potatoes.

Dig a trench 12-18 inches deep and mix in organic matter with a little fertilizer containing phosphate, then fill it up halfway. Cut the growing "eyes" from a potato, but not too close, and set them in the bottom 6-12 inches apart. Cover with about 2 inches of soil; irrigate. As the green shoots grow up a couple inches, cover them with soil again. Repeat this until the trench is filled or even mounded up a little. The young shoots should do fine even through the expected cold spells yet to come. DO NOT plant sweet potatoes until May.

Try planting pea seeds (English or snap), carrots, beets, turnips, lettuce, and radishes.  Putting a clear plastic or translucent frost guard fabric over them warms the soil a little and speeds germination.

Check irrigation for leaks and coverings over faucets and clocks keeping them dry and secure; it's easier than fixing a broken pipe or clock because it froze.

Those are my plot thoughts for now, Happy Gardening!

A quote: "No time to think what we do not have. Think what we can do with what we do have".

February is a great month for me. We start sliding into the warmer mornings with some brilliant sunrises. At home I love taking my cup of coffee to the back yard where I try to find a place where Kathy has not planted something that sticks me, bites me, pricks me. Once settled I start watching as the day comes alive. What a great time.

January News:

Changes continue at Desert Meadows Park, some anticipated and planned, some spontaneous and pleasantly surprising. The most recent unexpected addition comes from ten members of the GVR Ceramic Club. They created a 'totem' that has been installed in the Hummingbird/Butterfly Garden. Joan Dakin of the GVR Ceramic Club facilitated this project for the park.

 

The Hummingbird/Butterfly Garden of the park is now certified as a Monarch Way-station and by the North American Butterfly Association. Plaques are mounted in the area and the garden is now listed on the web for those interested in visiting certified butterfly gardens.

 

February ends the major 'construction projects' at the park. The final construction has taken place along the South property boundary - separating the park from the Prestige Assisted Living property. Once again, we have benefitted from Henry Garcia's metal artistry and several timely plant donations from members and Green Valley residents. Generous monetary donations from Marita and Hal Ramsay and from Pam and Dick Duchaine funded the raw materials needed to fabricate the metal art and to purchase landscaping material. The area has been a 'beehive' of volunteer activity each Wednesday morning in January - thanks go to all that participated. We will be calling this the 'Memory-lock Garden' - look for more information in the March edition of Sand'n'Seeds.

 

Three years in development! We are now ready to fully introduce the park to the community. The GVG board has approved a fund-raising proposal for April to be held in the park - an 'Art-in-the-Park/Spring Fair' event to take place on April 8th in conjunction with the Spring Garden Tour. Gene Van Dyken will be chairing this event with the help of volunteers. Please see the announcement in this edition of Sand'n'Seeds for more details.

Here is a nice garden photo, and, while beautiful, is from Dubai. While nothing like this is planned for the new Jr House courtyard garden at HCR, work continues with completion of the gutters and water storage tank, the latter donated by Bettye Jo Preis, former GVG president. Ground leveling and irrigation installation are forthcoming via Pima County Natural Resources, Parks, and Restoration. We anticipate these activities can be completed, so that the planting of the project, designed with Jessie Byrd and our team, can begin in March.

A second new partnership project will be installation of a new drip irrigation system at the Grijalva House which will handle the existing raised veggie beds and new plantings along the N wall, to include the Quince near the gate. Most of the plants will be seasonal vegetables, like those in photos of the area going back into the mid to late 1920s and 1930s.

Our February GVG Board meeting, in conjunction with Committee chairs, will be held in the Jr. Manning House and preceded by a special tour. At this meeting, other medium-term projects of NRPR with new agencies will be discussed.

Most of the folks living in Green Valley, and possibly many of our GVG members, do not realize the large number of visitors for tours and special projects at HCR. There are annual reports developed for NRPR, which have been made available to us, to derive the potential impact of visitors exposed to our GVG projects from an educational standpoint and who will be seeing handouts at the front entrance for our forthcoming GVG events of the Plant Sale, Garden Tour, and, now, the new Spring Fair at Desert Meadows Park. Providing handouts has been encouraged by our partnership, along with brochures of the many GVG projects that are provided by our volunteers at the larger events, like the March Heritage Fair where some 350 persons have attended annually. In brief summary, between July 1, 2015 and March 31, 2016, there were 4,365 visitors in attendance.

New special exhibits at the HCR are as follows:

Our GVG volunteer HCR team is planning a meeting in mid-February to go over all of the potential future activities and will send an invitation to all current, past, and new members that have expressed interest in participation at HCR.