When you’ve barely slept off your Thanksgiving feast, while deep thanks are still in your heart and your significant other is deeply absorbed in TV football, here’s an option that can lead to joy, nutrition, productivity, fulfillment, and calorie burning: planting a little winter-spring garden!
Seasonal seeds and I’itoi onion starts for your winter garden in low desert. Check out the seed-ideas for winter veggie gardens at the NativeSeedsSEARCH store.
Young I’itoi’s onions emerging. Use them this winter and spring for chives or shallots–indeed the gift that keeps on giving!
Peas love desert winters and will give wonderful pods next spring. So easy to grow! O’odham Wihol (peas) have become well-adapted to low desert since their welcome introduction about 350 years ago.
Tia Marta here to encourage you to think FUTURE FOOD! That is, take the simple steps–right now–to envision food from your own little piece of earth. Time to simply put some seeds or starts into the ground. Now–while the desert is rejoicing in rain! Now–before your to-do list or other emails divert your better intentions.!
Your little desert plot of good soil need not be spacious. It can even be in lovely or homely pots on your patio. Hopefully this post will fill you with inspiration, motivation, and access for planting your own food!
Little bulbils from the bloom-stalk now ready for planting….
Begin gardening with the end in sight! We must believe in the FUTURE of our FOOD then take steps to make it happen. Gardening is an act of FAITH and HOPE, so let’s get down on our knees and do it!
For seasonal gratification, try Tohono O’odham peas, either in a pot or a garden edge where the vines can climb a wall or trellis. For the much longer view of gratification, try planting agave clones. It may be 10-15 years before they are ready to harvest but the wait will be a sweet, nutritious gift for you, or your grandkids, or some other hungry desert dweller dealing with global warming.
Hohokam agave (Agave murpheyi) bulbil clones planted in pots for growing out and sharing….
Desert Laboratory Director Ben Wilder and Desert Ecologist Tony Burgess sampling sweet roasted agave heart at Tucson’s Agave Heritage Festival, Mission Garden
Winter/spring is grain-growing time in low desert! Organic heirloom White Sonora Wheat-berries are ready for planting or cooking, available at the NativeSeedsSEARCH Store, 3061 N.Campbell Avenue, Tucson (locally grown at BKWFarms)
White Sonora Wheat kernels –so easy to plant in crowded pots or in small garden plots
Young White Sonora Wheat sprouts enjoying the rain–and ready to harvest for juicing–healthy local food right from your patio!
Young starts of heirloom Magdalena acelgas (chard) grown from seed available at Mission Garden or NativeSeedsSEARCH store or online www.nativeseeds.org
Heirloom Magdalena acelgas will give you sumptuously delicious harvests of greens all winter–as these at Tucson’s Mission Garden.
Colorful rainbow chard in handsome pots grown by herb-gardener-alchemist-friend Linda Sherwood. Isn’t this a stunning ornamental –and edible–addition to the patio?!
These are just a few fun ideas of the veggies suited for planting this season. Find lots more ideas by visiting Tucson’s Mission Garden , the NativeSeedsSEARCH Store , and Flor de Mayo website.
There’s no finer way to express Thanksgiving, or to exercise off your feasted calories, than to be outside in the dirt. So I’m wishing you happy winter gardening on your patio, backyard, or why not your front yard!! Now get out your trowel and pots, and those seeds you’ve been accumulating, get your hands dirty and sing a prayer-song as you plant your future food with faith and hope!
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Just a moment ago, I was looking for yuccas to produce the floral ‘asparagus’ that I remember from college. I will probably go with the common Yucca whipplei, because that is what I remember, and it makes the biggest ‘asparagus’. I would also like to try Yucca glauca for more abundant, smaller and relatively tender ‘asparagus’.
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Dry yucca stalks after flowering could indeed be visual “asparagas”. However it’s good to remember if you cut GREEN stalks you are destroying its flowering process. Most yuccas will bloom again but Yucca whipplei only blooms once in its life then dies. Best to enjoy it in photography or in a desert landscape garden.
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They crept into the landscapes, and accelerated where they found water. Taking their asparagus only angered them. They responded with a profusion of pups as the original rosette died. Removing the original rosette did not eliminate many of the pups, which continued to appear for years afterward. I suspect that they are mostly gone from that garden now. That was decades ago.
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There is space here where they will be nowhere near the garden.
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Hello Tia Marta! On Thanksgiving we went out an harvested the last of mom’s carrots. Some sweet, some bland, some spicy. We got our hands dirty on a cold, crisp PNW day, took the insulative bib off the garden hose to rinse off the dirt, and then replaced it for the winter. We helped put mom’s garden to rest for the season. Future food plans include helping her with a garden overhaul to help combat the weeds and get her set up for another decade of backyard food production. Mucho carino!
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Yea! Happy harvest–go team!
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