WOW, I just got the new Western Garden Book and it is gorgeous!  So much better than the last edition.  Biggest difference?  Photos galore!   The last edition used illustrations for all of the plants.  They’re good, but dang…nothin’ can beat a good shot of the plant you’re trying to find or identify.

Here’s the other thing:  the cover is boatloads better!  It’s not a paperback cover and it’s not a hard cover, but something in between…like reinforced something or other.  Anyway, it won’t fall apart.  Drop it from a tall building like they do with the Samsonite and it’ll stay intact.  I think.

So if you’re looking for a good general gardening book, check this one out. It’s not specific to Phoenix desert landscapes, and I don’t think they’ve heard of the word “xeriscape”…it’s published in California after all, and they get all kinds of rain. But it has all kinds of information to help you get started and it’s a great plant reference besides!

So, we were hand watering our veggie garden…but only when we remembered, found energy, got back, or simply lost the will to procrastinate any longer.

Actually, I probably had some fanciful notion that I’d build out the irrigation system for our veggies when I converted our turf to desert landscape and installed a drip system over our whole yard.  But I might as well have waited for Hansel and Gretel to drop by.

Anyway, with another blazing Phoenix summer heading our way, we picked up one of those drip irrigation kits and a timer and went to work.  Now, my husband had installed a system before and I’d had a brush with some PVC glue…ie, we’re novices.  But once we’d rounded up all the pieces, it took us about 2 hours to lay it all out and another hour to punch in the drip emitters.  Easy!

The key is to plan it out on paper and make a list of all the pieces you need (the kit doesn’t provide everything) before you start cutting anything.  We also got a timer/controller that hooks up to the hose bib.  That took about 5 minutes to install.

So all in all…4 hours start to finish (plus the trips to the hardware store) for the cost of a couple of good hoses and nozzles.  And watering the soil is much better for the plants, too…helps keep pests and molds away.

My husband has a mad passion for our native desert trees, especially Mesquite and Ironwood.  Because of that, we have landscapers dropping off the trees they remove from their clients’ homes so he can turn them into lumber.

We often get trees that look like this one…and you can see why they were ultimately removed.  See where the homeowner once staked this tree using what looks to be barbed wire?  Of course, it was never removed and the tree grew around it, leaving just these two ends sticking out…and the diseased part of the tree as a result.

The thing is…it’s really not that hard to stake a tree without damaging it.  Just slip some wire through a piece of rubber hose, wrap it around, and tie it off at the stake.  (Old hose, for those of you who still wear them, work well, too!)    Keep in mind that some slippage is good.  The idea is to allow the tree some give so that it learns how to stand up on its own.  And then remove the stakes after a growing season or two.

It’s kind of like putting training wheels on a kid’s bike.  They need to learn how to balance so you don’t want all wheels on the ground at once.  And you want them to ride on their own, not spend five years “training”!  Same with trees…they just wanna learn how to ride!

Next time you see a staked tree, check it out…the ones in parking lots are especially bad.  See how the staking was done and if the tree can stand on its own.  Careful, though…you might start engaging in tree amnesty!