Zocalo takes a look at the Tucson Botanical Gardens’ once-a-year sale of strange cacti, succulents, and other quirky plants. It’s the “Weird Plant Sale!”
An urban oasis in the heart of the city, the Tucson Botanical Gardens features a 5 ½ acre collection of 16 specialty gardens. Learn more at www.tucsonbotanical.org.
As professional baseball sunsets in Tucson, FC Tucson is reached amazing heights even before a soccer-dedicated stadium is built. FC Tucson starts its second season May 18 as a Premier Development League team, essentially AA soccer minor league. Beyond its own games, FC Tucson has made it a point to pair each of its games this season with games involving champion teams from a half dozen local soccer leagues. The Chapman Tucson Champions League was just announced April 23.
“We want to show what we’re building here is for the community, not just for a set of professionals,” team co-owner Jonathan Pearlman said.
The 2010s are the decade for soccer at all levels in Tucson. Before 2010, exactly zero Major League Soccer teams had played in Tucson. Now 10 teams – half the league – have taken to the pitch in Tucson, as have two national teams from Denmark and Canada, the first time Tucson hosted an international friendly soccer match.
In the past year, the long maligned Kino Sports Complex started transforming into Arizona’s premiere soccer facility. What used to be Arizona Diamondbacks practice fields north of Ajo Way were converted into soccer fields in 2012. Right now, the field closest to the YMCA is FC Tucson’s home field, known as the Kino Sports Complex North Grandstand (Field No. 5). Next year, FC Tucson will play in what for now is being called the Kino Sports Complex North Stadium.
The $2.8 million stadium is a collaboration between FC Tucson and Pima County to build a 1,800-seat stadium with a half roof where Field No. 1 is now. Additional bleachers behind the goals bring seating to 2,480, and the 850-seat bleachers can be brought over from Field No. 5 to take capacity to 3,330. “The stadium is expandable to 5,000 seats. That has meaning at the next level,” said FC Tucson co-owner Greg Foster, referring to the United Soccer League Pro level, the AAA minor league. He said, ultimately, a 15,000-20,000 soccer stadium is not impossible for the Kino Sports Complex, and neither is FC Tucson graduating to the USL Pro level.
The ground breaking ceremony for the stadium was April 25 and Pima County expects to have the stadium done by November. Some 150 soccer enthusiasts showed up, including FC Tucson’s boisterous supporter group, the Cactus Pricks, who got repeated prompts from Pima County Supervisors Ramon Valadez and Richard Elias to give a soccer cheer.
As recently as 2010, soccer in Tucson equaled the Fort Lowell Shootout and community soccer leagues. Today, FC Tucson has deep relationships with MLS and half of its teams. Without much publicity in 2012, FC Tucson had the 12th highest attendance in its rookie season among 73 PDL teams – and the only reason the club didn’t rank higher was the Kino Sports Complex North Grandstand capacity topped out at less than 1,000.
FC Tucson is pioneering spring training for Major League Soccer. Nowhere else has a local soccer team assembled spring training packages for nine MLS teams that includes accommodations, meals, transportation, training fields, weight training facilities and opponents. MLS spring training has typically involved a team going somewhere and picking up a game.
The MLS team Sporting Kansas City was training in Phoenix and was looking for competition. FC Tucson co-owner Rick Schantz’s friend Peter Draksin, soccer coach at Grand Canyon University, suggested Schantz give Sporting Kansas City a call.
Just before the Kansas City connection, City Councilman Paul Cunningham called Foster and Schantz, both deeply involved in the Fort Lowell Soccer Club, to plant a seed to make more of soccer in Tucson. That paved the way for them to be able to offer Hi Corbett Field to Sporting Kansas City, which rounded up the New York Red Bulls for an exhibition game in 2010. “That was the birth of FC Tucson,” Schantz said.
Foster and Schantz expected maybe 3,500 people for the game, which attracted more than 10,000 and forced them to shut the gate with a long line of people not able to get in. “It sent a message to us and MLS that spring training could be a spectator event,” Foster said.
FC Tucson has four owners, who refer to themselves as managing members: Foster, an attorney, as the legal officer; Chris Keeney, the chief business officer building ticket sales and sponsorships; Pearlman, the general manager; and Schantz serving as the team’s head coach. They spent 2010 marketing Tucson as a spring training venue to MLS and the league’s teams, several of whom were sold on Kino even when they saw only baseball practice fields.
The first Desert Diamond Cup in March 2011 featured four MLS teams and the proceeds financed the first season for FC Tucson, which joined the Premier Development League the following year and was honored with Rookie Franchise of the Year accolades.
The four-team Desert Diamond Cup this year was preceded by FC Tucson Soccer Fest, which brought another six MLS teams to town. Half of the Major League Soccer teams played at Kino Sports Complex in one-month span in January and February. The Desert Diamond Cup final was telecast by NBC Sports.
Team owners see only a bright future for soccer in Tucson. Right now, FC Tucson is year-to-year with MLS spring training. “We would like to be in a multi-year deal with MLS to host pre-season games,” Foster said. “We think, given the support for soccer in our region, Tucson might be an excellent candidate market for a USL Pro franchise. We’re reviewing that.”
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Pima County came up to bat quickly and decisively for FC Tucson. First, the county permanently converted one baseball field into a soccer field and temporarily converted four others for soccer in fall 2011. Those conversions became permanent after four MLS teams did their spring training here in 2012.
When talk came to a stadium dedicated to soccer last year, the Pima County Board of Supervisors moved swiftly to approve the $2.8 million project for a 1,800-seat stadium. “Pima County is willing to compete with anybody to bring sports amenities to our community,” Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias said. “We understood the need to act quickly.”
FC Tucson drove home their mission to serve the community and that landed Elias and Pima County Supervisor Ramon Valadez hook, line and sinker. “They learned the meaning of the word ‘partnership,’ not just with Pima County but with the community,” Valadez said.
FC Tucson managing members Jonathan Pearlman, Rick Schantz,
Greg Foster, and Chris Keeney.
Elias added: “They always talked to us about including youth soccer in the deal. That’s it.”
AAA baseball tanked spectacularly at Kino for 15 years, the Tucson community never accepting a stadium far on the South Side. Why should that be any different for soccer?
“We think Kino is very well located for soccer,” FC Tucson co-owner Greg Foster said. “It’s right off a freeway with very good access to the Northwest Side and Southeast and Green Valley and Sahuarita. What we’re seeing is soccer is being played all over the city. Kino really is surrounded by the soccer community.”
More than 5,000 adults play organized soccer in Tucson. Let alone thousands of children. “Soccer has a much more interactive base than baseball,” co-owner and team coach Rick Schantz said.
Plus a crowd of 2,000 is fantastic for an FC Tucson match, while 2,000 at a Tucson Padres games is a pretty empty house. The stadium should be done in November and FC Tucson expects to play its 2014 season there.
Soccer is all about crowd noise. “With the half roof, you have captured sound,” Schantz said. “One thousand people will sound like five thousand. When a youth sees a stadium, that creates excitement.”
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So, what sort of soccer do you get at a FC Tucson match? Pretty damn good, the team owners insist. FC Tucson, after all, tied Sporting Kansas City this January at FC Tucson’s Tucson SoccerFest.
FC Tucson is a semi-pro team composed of college players and former professionals who have regained their amateur status. None of the players is paid at this point, but team co-owner and general manager Jonathan Pearlman insists MLS caliber soccer takes place at Kino.
“If you look at the top 11 players of an MLS team and you look at the next 11, the quality of our players would be comfortable on any MLS team,” said Pearlman, who recruits the team’s players.
The FC Tucson season is equally about Tucson community soccer league. A community soccer match will precede each FC Tucson home game. These will involve the newly established Chapman Tucson Champions League (CTCL), a series of matches that involve the major adult leagues in Tucson and Southern Arizona: Arizona Soccer League, Guanajuato AZ Soccer League, Menlo Soccer League, Tucson Metro Soccer League, Tucson Women’s Soccer League and the Tucson Adult Soccer League.
“Tucson has the potential to be a big soccer town,” said Tucson Women’s Soccer League president Doreen Koosmann. “If soccer players at every level work together, we could put Tucson on the soccer map. TWSL wants FC Tucson to succeed and we are taking every opportunity to assist them with this goal.”
At other times of the year, the Kino Sports Complex will also feature the Fort Lowell Shootout, the Far West Regional League twice a year, and the Arizona Youth Soccer Association stages state league, state cup and president’s cup matches at Kino.
“It’s a true community asset,” said FC Tucson co-owner Chris Keeney, who moved here from Houston to get in on the ground floor of a soccer emergence in Tucson after stints with the NFL Houston Texans and Major League Soccer teams D.C. United, Real Salt Lake and Columbus Crew.
Each event is a double header starting with a community soccer group game, which starts at 5:15 p.m. All FC Tucson games start at 7:30 p.m. Admission to both games is $10. All games are played at the Kino Sports Center North Grandstand
May 18: Chapman Tucson Champions League Semifinal 1
May 18: FC Tucson vs. SoCal Seahorses
June 6: CTCL Men’s Semifinal 2
June 6: FC Tucson vs. OC Blues Strikers FC
June 8: TSAFC Women vs. St. George United
June 8: FC Tucson vs. Fresno Fuego
June 15: TSAFC Women v. Utah Starzz
June 15: FC Tucson vs. Real Phoenix
June 28: TSAFC Women
June 28: FC Tucson vs. Ventura County Fusion
June 30: CTCL Men’s Final
June 30: FC Tucson vs. Ventura County Fusion
July 6: TSAFC Women v. SC Del Sol
July 6: FC Tucson vs. CTCL Men’s Winner
July 13: CTCL Coed Championship
July 13: FC Tucson vs. Los Angeles Misioneros
July 20: CTCL Over 45 Men’s Championship
July 20: FC Tucson vs. BYU Cougars
The beautiful cacti and succulent plants that define our southern Arizona landscape will be celebrated in a Spring Expo sponsored by Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society at Pima Prickly Park, Sunday, April 14 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The 9 acre park is located at 3500 W. River. Entrance to the park and the Spring Expo is free to the public.
According to Spring Expo’s coordinator, Joe Frannea, “There are two major segments to the Spring Expo. We want to bring people to the park to see what we have here. And we want to give them an opportunity to buy cacti and succulent plants, to see the exhibits, and to learn more about the desert.”
Visitors will have an opportunity to walk the park’s trails, and to learn more about the colorful and unique native and adapted non-native plants in the park. Frannea says that there will also be a sales area during the Spring Expo where plant lovers can purchase cacti and succulents as well as products made from cacti such as jellies and jams. The educational exhibits will not only be about the plants, but also include information on desert animals and insects, venomous lizards and snakes and poison control, water harvesting in the desert, and more.
Pima Prickly Park is a joint project of the Tucson Cacti and Succulent Society and Pima County Natural Resources Parks and Recreation department. It is open to the public free of charge from dawn to dusk. The park was dedicated in September 2012.
Frannea explains that Pima Prickly Park came about when the Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society joined forces with Pima County Natural Resources Parks and Recreation department. “Members of the Society had been looking for a site where we could have a lot of cactus, where we could see how they do in our habitat. The county had some land that had been a deep gravel pit where building was not suitable. The county wanted to restore natural habitat.” The county started developing the park a few years ago, but resources were limited. So the Society partnered with the parks department and signed a 15-year operating agreement with the county.”
Since then the Society has worked to develop the park’s trail system and to create special cactus and succulent gardens such as the ocotillo forest, agave forest, and hummingbird and butterfly gardens. Society volunteers are currently working on a cholla maze. A highlight is Saguarohenge where several large saguaro cacti are planted in a conformation reminiscent of Stonehenge in England. Frannea says Saguarohenge is intended as “a place to rest and reflect.”
Volunteer groups such as Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and student honor societies work in the park, too. “We put in a hummingbird garden and partnered with Tucson’s Audubon Society to decide on plants and design. We worked together,” Frannea says.
Future projects are planned. “Because we are all volunteers and have limited funds, it could take only a few months or a year to develop an area of the park,” says Frannea. “We’re thinking it will probably take 10 years for the park to mature.”
A factor in how fast the plantings go, Frannea says, “depends on the rescue program.” He refers to those cacti rescued from sites where buildings or roads are being constructed and where the cacti would otherwise be destroyed. Some rescued cacti will be available for sale at the Expo.
“This really has been an excellent working relationship with the county and a nonprofit group,” Frannea says. “We know the county didn’t have money, but it have a great education program. The primary focus of the Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society is education. So Prickly Park is an opportunity to do something for the community. The park is a great asset to Pima County and a great project for us to showcase our plants,” Frannea adds.
To learn more about Pima Prickly Park, go to the Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society’s Prickly Park page at www.tucsoncactus.org/html/pimapricklypark/index.html There you will find a detailed map of the park’s trails and gardens as well as some great photos of park project development and information about the Spring Expo.
If you’ve been daydreaming about spending more time in the open air exploring our city – and less time trapped in your car – each April a group of people is giving you every possible incentive to take over the streets and celebrate public space. Living Streets Alliance fills the month of April with Bike Fest, bookended this year with Cyclovia, two all-day festivals of car-free streets downtown on April 7th, and midtown on April 28th.
“I look at Cyclovia as a sort of canvas,” says Kylie Walzak, the event’s coordinator. “It’s an opportunity for the Tucson community to come out and participate at an event, unlike any other opportunity that we have. The organizers raise money and provide for public safety, but after that, everything else is a combination of efforts of really passionate people to come out and share what they have for the day.”
Artist Mykl Wells will be rolling around on his handmade recycled tricycle, giving away agua fresca. Walzak says Alecio Lopez is encouraging people to travel “back in time” by harvesting nine historic images from the historical society to print large and hang along the route. Mariah Hoffman, who worked with the recent 3 Degrees of Strangers exhibit, will be pairing up with Cakes for Causes to get participants sharing cookies and stories with strangers. Other activity hubs will have live music and dancing in the streets; a pop-up skate park, obstacle course, rock climbing wall, jumping castle; you can rent bikes, decorate bikes, or just walk each 5-mile course and sample the food trucks – the only cars that get a say in this show.
“The first three years we’ve had Cyclovia it’s been a fun, active event, but this year it has the potential to be a venue for community strength building, and a place for the Tucson community to come out, get together and celebrate,” Walzak says. “I hope that the lasting effect that people take away from the event is that so much of the conversation about our streets is negative: ‘our streets are crumbling,’ ‘our streets are dangerous.’ But we can really challenge ourselves to re-imagine our streets in a different way.”
Cyclovia’s graphic designer Dennis Fesenmyer is putting imagination to paper with three other artists who will be creating limited edition print posters for Cyclovia. Joining him are Matt McCoy, Ryan Trayte, and Richie Brevaire, who will create a set of four 18 x 24 posters in Cyclovia’s colors – wedgewood blue and bright mustard yellow – that show each artist’s celebration of open streets.
The second event on the 28th highlights a new route through midtown using pieces of Dodge, Blacklidge, Mountain and Glenn, and is the first step in the mission to provide four routes in separate neighborhoods to cycle through each year. Courses are built to pass schools, businesses and other attractions along bike boulevards and low-stress routes “that people can realistically feel comfortable using on their bikes or walking the other 364 days of the year,” Walzak says.
It’s a goal that rings true with the rest of Bike Fest. “The more people you get out riding a bike, the safer it becomes for everyone because bicycling becomes more visible and people notice them more,” adds Emily Yetman, executive director of Living Streets Alliance. “It adds to the vibrancy of our streets and helps create a street life and vitality in our neighborhoods.” And for the rest of April, the streets all over Tucson will be humming with pedal pushers as they stop by dozens of events just for commuting cyclists. During Pedal the Pueblo week, Whole Foods on Speedway will be doing a kickoff breakfast with live music and raffles, and way stations will be set along bike routes to supply riders with juice, coffee, bagels, and giveaways.
New this year, Tucsonans can come to a happy hour at Borderlands Brewery with outdoor activities by Playformance. Free food there is sponsored by New Belgium, who is bringing back the Best Beer and Film Festival at the Fox during Bike Fest. BICAS is hosting a ride through the Barrio to Crossroads Restaurant’s happy hour; GABA is putting on the Bike Swap and coordinating rides to Reid Park Zoo with free admission for helmet-toters. Miles of rides all month can be logged online for raffles of gift certificates and bike gear. April’s two-wheeled opportunities are endless.
Bike Fest, April 1-30 – BikeFestTucson.com
Events list and giveaways are on their website, BikeFestTucson.com
Cyclovia, Sunday, April 7th and Sunday, April 28th 10am to 3pm
Route info and events at CycloviaTucson.org
For more information, visit LivingStreetsAlliance.org
Oh, spring! This is not the time of year one wonders why one lives in Arizona. We may not have a frost to thaw, but the balmy spring condones an
ease of sorts, in the guts. This is the time we call in sick to blow off work and find the sweeter things in life–enjoying epicurean delights, or perhaps romance; and of course, the time we get lost in the garden.
As April moves into May, we finally start to see the cool-season crops give out to bolting (going to seed) and bitterness. Some last longer than others, but just because a crop is bolting does not mean you cannot add another succession. You can still squeeze out at least one more cilantro crop. Everything else, you might just be sick of. Lettuces really start to get bitter as we enter May. But since the warm season is here, you should be planting the things that love the warm season. You should be planting basil like crazy–from seed. As it warms up, basil wants to go to flower. Pinch off the flower-heads so that you encourage branching and more vegetative growth. Basil is a heavenly herb. If you only plant one crop, it should be basil.
It’s time to plant the heck out of squashes, melons, cucumber, corn, black-eyed peas, sunflowers, sweet potato, jerusalem artichoke, amaranth and most perennial herbs like oregano and thyme.
Beware, the landscape of your garden is not going to be tidy. Unlike the cool season crops with their predictable sizes at maturity, many summer crops take up huge amounts of space: the vining squashes, melons, and cucumbers clamor about the garden, while the corn, jerusalem artichoke, sunflowers, and amaranth climb high. Plant your tall crops toward the north end of the garden so they don’t unnecessarily shade out other crops. Expect that tomatoes will pull down the cages and ramble about (you still have a good few months of delicious tomatoes, which will give out once June arrives). Peppers and eggplant also misbehave, if only slightly less than tomatoes. But they will continue to produce a little longer into the season.
This is perhaps the most important time to mulch your crops with compost and straw. The compost provides more readily available soil nutrients, which will feed your plants. The straw acts as an insulative layer, slowing down evaporation and keeping the soil a little cooler. This can make a huge difference, helping tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and more last much longer into the hot summer. They will also produce better when the soil surface isn’t being beaten up by the sun. April is gorgeous. Besides cultivation, the garden will be the scene of unintentional meditations sitting in lawn chairs, weekend day drinking and perhaps romance (rekindled or new). Your hard work will not only feed your belly, it will put life into your limbs.
So You Wanna Be a Gardener?
People are really getting into gardening and food right now. And it’s more than a trend. There is a paradigm shift occurring that is driving people out of the big box grocery stores and into their gardens, or at the least, into the farmers’ markets and grocery stores specializing in whole foods. A growing number of people are no longer willing to suffer the hideous first world health ailments caused by being passive consumers. We want to know about our food and we want it to be clean, not just look pretty in produce stands.
What happens when someone realizes how important it is to get closer to their food, but lacks the space to garden?
Community gardens: that is what happens.
Neighborhood cooperative gardens are popping up all over Tucson. For just a pittance (enough to cover costs like materials and water) you can probably find a little plot of your own for the purpose of nourishing your belly and soul. If there isn’t one close to you, you might consider just talking to a good friend or neighbor who DOES have a yard, and say, “Hey, let’s grow some stuff.” If you share a garden with a friend, that is also a community garden.
Community gardening makes everyone happy. And this activity is revolutionary. In urban food deserts all over the U.S. (places where there are no decent grocery stores for miles and miles) urban community gardens are changing lives! These gardens are exposing people to learn to grow and eat healthy food and these positive changes are in our future.
In general, gardens are the best sort of distraction: instead of going out, expending fossil fuels, taxing your body with unhealthy foods, producing waste, or doing one of the various activities you might be doing to entertain yourself. Gardening in your backyard or community garden makes your life healthy, improves the environment, and encourages you to live an active, healthy, outdoor life. Growing things together builds communities, gets people away from their digitized “existence” and educates them about the very building blocks of life. Any future that this author will be participating in will see every school, every neighborhood, and every yard with a garden. It will be weird to NOT have one.
Seasonal Guidelines, March 2013
March is such a wonderful month. What can you NOT plant right now? Yeah, you can pretty much plant anything except long-season winter vegetables. Get out there! Now. If you haven’t planted your warm-season crops (peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, corn, squash, etc.) get your fanny out there right now and start planting your little heart out.
You see, it is the latter part of the cool season but you still have a few months, time enough to get a few successions of your favorite greens, root vegetables and annual winter herbs, that is, your cool-season crops. There is no excuse not to plant.
There is always that possibility of frost. March 4th is the average last frost date. In 1899 it frosted on May 3rd. Nature, and global climate change, will ensure that whenever we get too dependent on an expectation, surprises will humble us and remind us to keep our eyes open. So have a plan for protecting those frost-tender crops.
Jared R. McKinley maintains a gardening and homesteading blog called Arid Land Homesteaders League at AridLandHomestead.com
Jared R. McKinley
Is It Wrong To Grow In The Desert?
Some people reason that gardening in this climate is a waste of water. Others suggest that the desert is no place for gardening at all. The author admits to having a prejudice toward being pro-gardening. But there are some really good reasons we, in the desert southwest, should be gardening.
First of all, humans have been growing food in the Tucson basin for as long as people have been living in this part of the world. The truth is, Arizona is one of the best places to grow plants. The sun, the soil, and yes, the water, enable people to grow a wide variety of plants.
Arizona is indeed an arid land. Global warming is quickly turning a lot of land that humans live on into arid climates. We need to innovate and develop ways to produce food in climates like our own because soon there will be few other choices for places to grow. We must not avoid our low resource problem but rather engage in the issue head-on in a creative and inventive way.
Arizonans are no different than anyone else in the world: we need to be closer to our food. The movement to localize our diet is rooted in the idea that we are spending too much importing our subsistence (using up fossil fuels, money, time and other resources) when we could be much more efficiently providing for ourselves. This means encouraging local farming and it is even better if the food comes from our own backyards.
Backyard gardens have the capability of growing much more efficiently than commercial growers can manage. We can afford the time to mulch the base of the plants–agriculture fields are almost never mulched because they cannot afford to cover acres of land with such material. We can carefully shape beds to collect rainwater, and prevent run-off. We have the ability to pay attention to our garden, and manage them by the square foot, while large-scale farmers must think in acres.
There are many ways we can cut back on water use: switching to efficient faucets and other appliances, altering our daily habits to not be wasteful, using native and drought tolerant plants in the landscape, encouraging our local economy to invest in crops that are more appropriate to our climate (commercially growing jojoba instead of lettuce), and utilizing “grey water” or cleaning up wastewater and using it to recharge the water table. But to suggest that growing food is a waste of water is looking at the issue through tunnel vision and oversimplifying the challenges we face living on arid lands.
Seasonal Guidelines
Pay close attention to the garden as it warms up. We will still be having cold snaps, but the temperatures are increasing, and spring will eventually also bring wind, which can really dry out the garden. Mulch, mulch, mulch the garden. You can start pruning back frost-damaged growth on landscape and ornamental plants. Still be prepared to cover on the cold nights. It is also time to divide plants like mint, oregano, lemongrass, etc. You can plant the divisions in new locations or share with friends/neighbors. Dividing freshens up the plant, and stimulates new growth.
You should be getting ready for the warm season. Make some room . Time to plant tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, peas, corn, squash, and more if you want to get a good spring crop in. Protect them from any frost. Continue planting any winter crops you aren’t sick of, paying attention to how many days your variety takes to mature. It is too late for crops that need a long time to mature. It is time to plant most perennial crops: artichokes, herbs, fruit trees, strawberries, blackberries, asparagus and more. This is the beginning of the best growing season we have, where both cool and warm season plants provide a vast diversity in the garden.
Jared R. McKinley maintains a gardening and homesteading blog called Arid Land Homesteaders League at AridLandHomestead.com
The cool season has begun. It’s time to plant. Like crazy. You may let a few of those warm season crops that are still producing to linger – especially basil and peppers. Hopefully your bed of cucurbits (cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins, melons, etc) is separate and you can let them finish up as well. If your cucurbit bed is not separate, remember next year to keep them in their own space. They sprawl like crazy and are not the greatest companions for row crops.
Prepare your cool-season vegetable garden beds with care. The more you put into those beds, the more they will give back to you in the form of food. I always try to get as much of this stuff for free as possible; manure, shredded newspaper, and homemade compost. Make sure there is a balance of richer material like good compost and manure and more woody material like hay or the woody part of your compost. Too much dry brown material will steal nitrogen from the soil. Also make sure your manure is aged or it will burn your plants. The resulting soil should be easy to work, soft, and not compacted. Make a rule to never walk in your garden beds, and design them so that you never need to.
There is so much to plant right now; greens (lettuces, cabbages, arugula, Asian greens, etc), cool season herbs (dill, parsley, cilantro), broccoli, cauliflower, root crops (carrots, beets, radishes), peas, artichokes, cool season legumes (garbanzos, lentils, fava beans), and edible flowers like calendula and nasturtium.
Once your seeds have germinated, or if you plant out young plants from pots, make sure you add a protective layer of mulch around your crops. This protects plants from drying out too fast, keeps the soil insulated from the elements (both cold and hot) and also breaks down to become plant food. I use a layer of finished compost and a layer of hay. Most plants don’t care to be buried too much with the compost right at the base of the plant so be careful. Always thin out your seedlings so that plants have enough space to reach their ideal size.
For most landscape plants appropriate to our climate, fall is the best time to plant. Fall planting give a plant enough time for plants to get established in the ground before next summer’s heat comes. There are always exceptions to the rule, and frost tender plants like bougainvillea or lantana are that exception. If the landscape plant is frost tender, it is best to plant after the last frost, unless you are willing to protect it from every frost, or live in a frost-free microclimate.
Finally, this is also the time to put out seed of spring-blooming wildflowers (like lupine, poppies, desert bluebells, and firewheel). For optimum germination, prepare your plot by digging down about 8 inches and amend with compost. Though wildflowers don’t necessarily NEED this, you will have much more success if you give them a little boost. When you are finished amending, rake the beds to create little depressions for the seeds to nestle into. Broadcast your seed evenly and cover with a very thin layer of soil. You may use netting to avoid feeding birds with your expensive wildflower seed. For best germination, gently water every day or so until you see germination, then scale back to once a week if there is no rain.
If you have had a rough summer with your garden, don’t let that discourage you. Enjoy fall gardening, which is easier and inspires a lot more confidence in being able to keep your corner of the world a little greener.
Jared R. McKinley is a lifetime gardener and founder of the Arid Land Homesteaders League. PlantFreak.Wordpress.com
Southern Arizona Roadrunners presents “Get Moving Tucson” on October 21, featuring an A-Mountain half-marathon, 5k walk/run and a one-mile walk/run.
The start/finish and staging area will be on Church Street just north of Congress. The Half-Marathon heads west and climbs A-Mountain, so runners can enjoy beautiful Southern Arizona morning views. There will be cash for winners, raffles for all, age group awards, and plenty of post-race food and drinks.
Get Moving Tucson is the third event of the Second Annual Gabe Zimmerman Triple Crown — a celebration of the life of Gabe Zimmerman, lost in the tragic January shooting in Tucson.
Fees: Half-Marathon pricing starts at $40 and 5k starts at $20; One Mile at $10.
Registration Closing Date: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 @ 11:59 PM PST
More information at ArizonaRoadrunners.org
Arizona’s Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP) is now ready for Review by the Public
The Arizona State Parks department is responsible for writing Arizona’s Statewide Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP) every five years. This plan sets the evaluation criteria to allocate the Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund grants, along with other applicable grant programs consistent with the state’s outdoor recreation priorities as identified by public participants in the research. This policy plan is now available online in a draft format for public review at AZStateParks.com and will be available for comment through October 7, 2012. The final plan will be implemented starting January 1, 2013.
Citizens interested in outdoor recreation in Arizona have participated with State Parks staff in the collection of recreation data since last May to build this first draft of the 2012 Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan. For more than 47 years, this offshore oil and gas leasing revenue fund, passed by Congress in 1965, has been used to plan, develop and expand outdoor recreation throughout America.
Arizona has received $60 million dollars from this fund toward the enhancement of outdoor recreation for Arizona communities and those monies were distributed through 728 grants administered by State Parks.
Arizona State Parks is committed to preparing a highly integrated outdoor recreation system for the future. This plan balances the recreational use and protection of natural and cultural resources. It also strengthens the awareness of the public between outdoor recreation with health benefits while also producing opportunities to enhance the economies and quality of life for residents. Recreation managers of cities, counties, the state and Federal government organizations in Arizona use this information for more specific recreation planning and budgeting. The plan also offers leadership opportunities to make decisions about the State’s enhancement of outdoor recreation sites, programs and infrastructure.
For more information call the Arizona State Parks department headquarters at (602) 542-4174 or go to AZStateParks.com. Feedback on the plan can also be submitted by mail at Arizona State Parks, 1300 W. Washington Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85007 (Re: SCORP draft plan).
Information for this post was provided to Zocalo by Arizona State Parks.
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