October to March in Arizona - the best weather on planet earth

-

After another VERY hot summer, it's finally October here in Arizona. And that means for the next six months it will be the best weather on planet earth. This is, as you'd imagine, tourist season, and the Chamber of Commerce isn't kidding. I've lived here for over twenty years and it's just glorious. There will be the bluest skies that you can imagine, the cleanest and freshest air, and just plain nice weather. We do get some small gentle rains, like we had early this morning, but they're rare, and they don't last long. Here's the forecast: Nice. And definitely no snow!

This is annual flower season here. In the past I've made the mistake of planting too early, in September, but now I'm gonna wait until Monday (tomorrow, October 5th) to plant annual flowers. And I've already decided that this year will be white petunias. I will punch them in all around the garden.

If you plant annual flowers now, they will be beautiful and in bloom all through the winter and early spring, until it starts getting hot again in late April. For an old Minnesotan like me, that never fails to impress me. It just seems an awful waste of such gorgeous weather not to plant annuals!

By the way, if you're wondering if there's any trick to growing annuals in the Phoenix, Arizona area, there isn't. Go get 'em, plant 'em, water 'em. And buy a LOT of them. I've noticed that six-packs have gone up from 99 cents to $2.19 in my lifetime, but it's still a great bargain.

Did I mention that the weather here is beautiful?! Now go plant some annuals.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to tell if your cycad (sago palm) is alive or dead

-
Image
Cycads are strange plants. They're beautiful, and look like small palm trees, or large ferns. They grow very slowly, and can be very expensive, even common ones like "sago palms". But sago palms, in spite of their common name, aren't palms at all. They belong to a group of plants called cycads. They are wonderfully weird, and grow in strange ways. And sometimes they lose all of their leaves. Of course, if it were a palm tree that lost all of its leaves, you would know that the plant was dead. But it's not true of cycads. So don't dig that cycad up and throw it away! Not yet. If you've recently transplanted a cycad, and the leaves have all faded away, hang on. Take a look at the top center of the plant, at what I call "the pucker". There you will see some stubby, soft fronds, no more than an half-inch or so. At least that's what you should see. That means that the plant is still alive, and has dropped its leaves to focus on building r...
Read more

Rooting sago palm pups for more plants

-
Image
Once a sago palm ( cycas revoluta ) reaches a certain level of maturity, it starts to create pups. Like agaves, these are little plants that are exactly the same as the parent plant, only smaller. And yes, you can trim them off and grow them into new plants. This is how to do it. Cut them off from the parent plant with a sharp knife. If there are any roots at the bottom, try to save them, but chances are there won't be any. That's not a problem. The next step is rooting them. Douse the cut part and the bottom of the plant with some garden sulfur and some rooting hormone powder. Rooting hormone powder is pretty easy to find at your local Home Depot. I had to go to a real nursery to get garden sulfur. Anyway, the idea is to keep the little plant from rotting while giving it time to grow its own roots. Sago palm pups being rooted Bury them fairly deep in some free-draining mix. It should include volcanic pumice, if you can find it, and if not, you can use perlite. I ...
Read more

Growing sunflowers from Pennsylvania in Arizona

-
Image
It's October 21st, and I just received some sunflower seeds from a friend in Pennsylvania. Their season is ending and the season for planting here in Arizona is just beginning, and I'm kinda wondering if the seeds are wondering what's going on? It's spring again already? If you're new to the Phoenix, Arizona area, and are from back east it must seem kinda strange that fall and winter is our flower season, but it is. By springtime it will start to get so hot here that the flowers will die, and of course back east the season is just beginning.  Sunflowers growing in Peoria, Arizona, about a mile from where I live I've seen sunflowers blooming around my neighborhood of Glendale, which is a suburb of Phoenix, in the winter, and although I've never grown them I understand that they're easy to grow. I guess I'll find out - I learn best by doing! The seeds arrived safely, and it's my understanding that they were still connected to the spent flower (I do...
Read more