Category: drought gardens

Success with Potatoes and how to grow them in a hot arid garden

In a recent post I whined a little bit about not being able to grow leafy green vegetables or tomatoes in a hot dry garden. I even gave examples of a couple of failures and recommended focusing more on the fruit trees that thrive in desert-like climates.

Well, this post is about Success with Potatoes.

Potato plant in pink pot Hot Gardens
This potato plant is a year and a half old and still producing potatoes regularly, even though insects have found the leaves to be tasty.

And for evidence I offer my niece’s pot garden.  She and her husband — actually he is the one who does most of the gardening–planted potatoes in a 8 gallon pink plastic pot a year and a half ago at the suggestion of an English friend.  Much to their surprise, it has been producing potatoes for them continuously.  They have never pulled the plant up; the potatoes seem to rise to the surface where they harvest them.

During this time the potato plant grew big and healthy in its pot in a semi-shady location. Then under the scorching 110+ degree (F)  (43 Celcius) heat earlier this year,  the plant faded back only to revive when the heat cooled back down into the 90s.  Of course, it was tucked back into full shade when the weather really heated up. And they have 2 water monitors in the shape of butterflies in the pot. I suggested they might want to double pot to help control water evaporation.

Potato plant in pot with water measurement Hot Gardens
In addition to the potato plant they grow peppers. The red leafed plant at the lower left is a seasonal addition to the patio. It will not survive hot weather.

When I wrote about the green vegetable failures I mentioned that hydroponic systems were so expensive that they seemed impractical for growing vegetables in desert-like conditions. But for potatoes and other root vegetables, like carrots, there are some very affordable systems, among them a grow bag I found on Amazon. Some have little doors near the bottom to allow you to harvest the potatoes while leaving the plant undisturbed. That seems to confirm my niece’s experience of the perpetually producing potato plant.

So here’s to potato salad year ’round from your shady patio garden!

BLUE UPDATE
In the previous post about the blue bottle garden I asked readers what they thought about the garden. The responses were not positive which was my initial reaction, too. But different people have differing ideas of beauty. I will post some more attractive lawn replacement gardens soon.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
  2. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  3. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  4. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  5. Cover up that naked wall
  6. Nine trees to combat climate change
  7. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  8. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat

Lawn replacement gone wild with blue bottle ornaments

This astonishing landscape design was developed by the homeowner in an upscale neighborhood that is under strict watering limitations. She told me she had no art training so I think of her as a self-taught landscape designer, sort of a “Grandma Moses of garden planning”.

Blue Bottle lawn replacement Hot Gardens net
Encouraged by the water department, this homeowner replaced her lawn with drought tolerant plants and dozens upon dozens of garden ornaments. To one side there is a long row of ornamental  grasses.
Circular Flower Bed in Blue Bottle garden Hot Gardens net
Circles within circles seems to be her main design motif. At night lights surround these plant beds. See below.

Instead of planting an ordinary selection of cactus and succulents, she let her imagination take flight by adding blue bottles, wind spinners and, at night, lights encircling the plant beds. And, from the empty pots and bags of mulch still stacked around the garden it appears she isn’t done yet.

She inspired me to check out garden ornaments on Amazon and I found this attractive wind spinner and some interesting solar lighted lilies.

What do you think of this garden?

Garden ornaments for lawn replacement Hot Gardens net
The homeowner’s love of wind spinners is quite obvious.
Plumeria tree Hot Gardens net
Among all the cactus and succulents is this tropical plumeria tree. It requires more water than most of the other plants. All the plants in this garden appear very healthy.
Blue Bottles fan ornament in Pasadena Hot Gardens net
While the blue bottles are the most conspicuous visually, there are actually many more wind spinners in the garden.
When the homeowner/designer said she had added lights to the garden and invited me to come back after dark to see it, this is what I saw. It is a quite subtle light display.

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  1. Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
  2. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  3. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  4. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  5. Cover up that naked wall
  6. Nine trees to combat climate change
  7. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  8. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat

Before and After: A surprising drought tolerant succulent garden

Just after I earned my Master Gardener certification I saw a low water usage succulent garden while visiting Long Beach, California.  It really stood out because most of the gardens in the area, less than 3 blocks from the edge of the Pacific Ocean, showed a strong tropical plant influence. Well, tropicals with roses.

Naples Island garden
Many gardens near the ocean in Long Beach used to be filled with tropical plants and roses. A small patch of grass as a “front lawn”was common. 

Back then there were no significant water restrictions and most homes had small lawns in front. Long Beach today has some of the most rigorous water restrictions in Southern California and it shows in the changed gardens.

A couple of weeks ago I was back in the same neighborhood and saw that drought-tolerant succulent/cactus garden again and took a photo thinking that I would show the change and maturation of the plants over the years. At home on my computer I looked closer and recognized that many plants in the garden now are almost entirely different from the ones back in 2003.

I realized that I had always thought of drought tolerant succulent gardens as being “eternal”–requiring almost zero upkeep and lasting forever. Not true–as this garden in its 2 incarnations shows:

Succulent garden BEFORE 2003:

Long Beach drought tolerant garden 2003

This garden in 2003 had the tropical giant bird-of-paradise (Strelitzia nicolai), on the left, but most of the other plants are drought tolerant succulents and cacti. The reason I never published this photo on Hot Gardens is because of the many New Zealand Flax (Phormium tenax) plants. These upright grass-like plants seem to simply die in hot, desert-like conditions which is too bad because they come in many sizes and great colors ranging from red to green to black and some nifty striped ones. Agave plants make up another important upright feature in this garden.

 SUCCULENT GARDEN AFTER 2018:
Low water usage garden Long Beach (

The giant bird-of-paradise plants are still in the garden, but now they have tall trunks leading up to the leaves at the top. Gone are the blue-green iceplants (Delosperma) that lined the sidewalk as are the New Zealand Flax plants. The Agaves have survived. And there are some tall tree-like plants in the parking strip that appear to be new. (Sorry I don’t know the names of them.)  It is, in a way, the same garden only different. And to be honest, I really like the 2003 version of this garden much better.

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  1. Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
  2. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  3. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  4. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  5. Cover up that naked wall
  6. Nine trees to combat climate change
  7. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  8. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat

Should you keep water in your garden for wildlife?

As climate change brings more drought and more water restrictions to gardens in arid climates, many gardeners have closed down their backyard garden fountains and small koi ponds.

Fountain with water Arlington garden
Years ago they turned off the water to this solar fountain in Arlington Garden, Pasadena. Now they have begun to keep some water in it because the garden has become an official wildlife habitat.

By doing this, however, wildlife such as birds, animals, and insects which have for their entire lives relied on that fountain or that little pond for their daily drinks of water are suddenly cut off. By this one change the very attractive habitat you created with your garden abruptly becomes a threat to their lives.

The birds, of course, may be able to fly to another source of water. Deer will wander away. Animals such as rabbits or gophers or mice may scurry off to another water spot or simply die out. And insects are likely to decide to join you inside your home.

So the issue of water in your garden becomes a real dilemma. Do you turn your garden into an utterly dry desert garden which is watered only infrequently and let wildlife find other solutions? Or keep your fountain running for at least part of the day?

Or perhaps you make a third choice which is to provide shallow pools of water for the animals which have made their homes in your garden. This would be my recommendation.

One example of a very shallow pool of water for birds and animals is in the photo on this page where a former fountain in a public garden has be converted to a wildlife water station with about an inch of water in it.

Today I saw another example on my Twitter feed – which I can’t find now—from a gardener in the U.K. where a ferocious drought has afflicted the eastern part of this normally damp, rainy, wet country. She had used a broad shallow dish/pot with no drainage hole in the bottom. Then added a handful of large stones in it as perches for birds. Water came next. It was less than one inch deep. While birds prefer to drink from trickling water, I’m sure this mini-pond could be a lifesaver. A variation on this is using a plastic plant saucer with rocks in it.

I’d suggest that you check the water every day when you water the plants you have in pots.  In 90+ Fahrenheit  (32+ Celsius) the water in your wildlife survivor mini-pond may evaporate by mid or late afternoon.

I’ll get back to the topic of waterless fountains in my next post.  It was after I saw what was going on at Arlington Garden, the photo above, that I decided to write about water and wildlife first.

CLIMATE CHANGE UPDATE: A bit of important trivia from the weather website: it has been 90+ Fahrenheit north of the Arctic Circle in the summer of 2018! As I update this post in 2023, the temps at the the Arctic ocean have only increased and ice is almost completely disappearing.

The mixed blessing of the U.S. Southwest monsoon for gardens

 

Desert Willow and agaves
This desert willow is surrounded by agaves in a Las Vegas garden. These plants receive no additional watering during the year. Both desert natives thrive on the meager water that falls from the sky.

Monsoon rainfall season has arrived in the Arizona, Nevada, California — all over the U.S. Southwest.  The infrequent, but intense, summer rains sweeping up from the Gulf of Mexico are, however, nothing like the drenching daily downpour of the South Asia monsoon that trapped that young soccer team in a flooded cave in Thailand. The danger here is of hikers being caught in a flash flood in a canyon or cars being swept away on a road.

 

On the other hand our summer rainfall cloudbursts can add life to your garden if you take steps to retain part of the water falling on your property.  (Except in Colorado. More about this below.)

1.  The simplest method to capture rain in your garden is to dig shallow circular trenches or basins around your trees and shrubs. The basin edge should be at least 3 feet from the tree trunk and not too deep. Be careful not to damage the root crown at the base of the trunk or the roots of the tree.

2.  While most flower beds are raised — hopefully because you add a thick layer of organic mulch twice a year — you may want to consider digging small basins in the center of the beds to capture as much rainfall as possible. The organic material in your flower beds will also retain more water than ordinary desert soil.

3.  Another technique is to dig or drill narrow, deep holes–1 or 2 feet in depth–spaced apart in a circle around trees and shrubs just below the ends of the branches. These holes will fill with rain which will then seep into the soil. You may want to consider dropping coarse gravel or small rocks into the holes to keep them from collapsing. These holes are also good for deep watering trees and shrubs to encourage growth of deeper, stronger roots. And deeper roots mean more stability when winds howl across the landscape in Spring and Fall.

Now for the technique that is more expensive–it’s called infiltration–and it is a problem in Colorado. That State by law owns all the water rights within its borders and individual citizens cannot retain water on their property without permission from the State because it would be denying that water to another person downstream who may have already obtained water rights from the state.  And they actually prosecute people for this! IMPORTANT: THIS LAW IN COLORADO HAS BEEN CHANGED AND IT’S NOW OK FOR HOMEOWNERS TO HARVEST RAINFALL FOR USE ON THEIR OWN PROPERTY.

California has passed a law to encourage homeowners to build cisterns on their own property.

Okay…back to saving summer rainfall.

4. Infiltration involves digging a sizeable pit on your property which will receive water from rain runoff from your roof.  This means installing rain gutters and downspouts, which are uncommon on desert homes. The pit must be lined with a strong, permeable material and have an overflow to channel excess water safely away from your home. Water will seep from the pit into the surrounding soil, thus “irrigating from underground”. If you decide to go this route, be sure to get a licensed soils engineer to draw up plans to avoid a disastrous collapse.

5. Now for the last suggestion: channel the roof rainfall through downspouts into 50 gallon (or larger) plastic containers. This is a modern variation on the old time cistern, a sealed and lined pit to hold water for later use. You can use the water for irrigation later. 

And in between summer monsoon downpours remember to water your plants in pots. They are like animals in a zoo: you have to feed them every so often and water them daily.

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  1. Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
  2. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  3. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  4. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  5. Cover up that naked wall
  6. Nine trees to combat climate change
  7. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  8. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat

Take the “screwdriver test”. Your lawn will thank you.

edge grass, agave, iceplant
Replacing a traditional front lawn with other drought tolerant grasses makes good sense.

Officially, the drought is over in California.  At least Gov. Jerry Brown said so.  But in Southern California and Nevada and Arizona and parts of Texas–even in New South Wales in Australia–drought conditions continue.

So many responsible homeowners are replacing their front lawns which we all now realize are nothing more than giant green sponges.  Keeping a lawn behind the house, however, can make a lot of sense, particularly as a play area for children.

And that backyard lawn needs regular watering.  But if you are not sure if you are watering your lawn too much or too little, here is an easy test:

Take an 8 inch screwdriver and push it into various places in your lawn about an hour and a half after you have watered.  If the screwdriver goes in easily, you are watering enough. You may even want to consider cutting back a bit on water.  If you cannot push the screwdriver all the way in, you need to increase the amount of water for the lawn.

Simple, right?

If you still love the look of a grass lawn, consider planting Buffalo Grass, a native grass of the American Plains. It has been hybridized in recent years so it now looks like a traditional lawn, rather than fodder for roaming buffalo herds.  It greens up in warm summer months, then goes dormant and brown in the winter. If you decide to go this route, be sure you plant plugs — not seeds. A Buffalo Grass lawn needs little or no watering at all.  Not much mowing either. (Note: this is not Buffelgrass, an invasive African grass that now threatens saguaros in Arizona.)

Our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
  2. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  3. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  4. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  5. Cover up that naked wall
  6. Nine trees to combat climate change
  7. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  8. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat

How to prevent death by dehydration with your potted plants

4 pots on patio
Tucked behind a pillar under a patio cover, these plants continued to survive in scorching summer heat.

I’m going to wear my “Captain Obvious” hat for this post–at least for the first 3 items.

First of all, keep those pots  containing plants in the shade. For example, under your patio cover, a big shade tree or on the north side of your home. Even then you may have to water the pot/plant more than once a day in a desert-like garden. It takes almost no time at all for hot and dry direct sunshine to suck all the water out of a plant. And if it windy, the dehydration happens even faster. At that point, the plant wilts and  it is highly unlikely that even generously watering the plant will bring it back.  It is doomed to death by dehydration.

Second: do not plant in metal containers.  A few years back many gardening magazines were touting shiny metal pails as suitable for plants. Some still do, but it is better not to do that in the desert or other hot, dry climate.The metal container heats up fast–even if it is not in direct sunlight–and “cooks” the roots of the plant. It is guaranteed to be another plant death by dehydration.

And third: avoid those shallow bowls that you find filled with plants at gardening centers as instant-gardens-in-a-clay-pot.  Only smallish succulents will survive for any length of time in them. There simply is not enough soil for roots to grow vigorously and absorb sufficient water to survive.

Now for a couple of positive suggestions, including a controversial one

Consider double-potting your plants. Place a larger pot around an inner one and fill in the space between with wood mulch or dried moss. Yes, I know it can be expensive to buy two different size pots for one plant, but it is effective. The wood mulch or moss acts as insulation. If you pour a little water into the space between the pots to dampen the mulch it increases the cooling effect. Do not add too much water, however, as it may end up flooding the inner pot from the bottom up, thus drowning the plant!

Now on to polymers, those water-retaining gel crystals, that are usually used in flower pots to help both cut down on watering and retaining water in the soil for the plants’ use. No question that polymers are effective. Recently, however, we heard a gardener advocate using water-retaining polymers in flower beds and in the soil around trees in a desert garden. It sounded like a good idea.

But a little online research revealed a preliminary study which indicates that polymers may break down in our native soil into chemical components that may not be good for plants and people. So while polymers may be helpful for plants in pots, do not start spreading them around your garden.

Making sure you have a lot of organic material in the pot is a better way to go. Soil rich with organic material absorbs water well and supplies nutrients to plants.

For basic information about plants in pots on our Hot Gardens website, please go here.

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  1. Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
  2. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  3. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  4. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  5. Cover up that naked wall
  6. Nine trees to combat climate change
  7. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  8. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat

Best fruit to plant in a hot, dry desert-like garden

pomegranate fruit on bush (

Shortly after moving to Las Vegas back in the 1990s I went on a hike with the Sierra Club in what is now the Red Rock  Canyon National Conservation Area. Our destination on this hike was an old abandoned ranch about 3+ miles from the pull-out on Highway 159 where we parked our cars. The ranch owners had walked away from the ranch years ago and turned it over to the Bureau of Land Management. (And the BLM had pretty much just ignored the place.)

So about 10 of us tromped off across the wide canyon floor. As a newcomer to desert hiking I forgot to bring water and it turned out there was no water at this old ranch. Just a weather-beaten house, a couple of fences that tilted and sagged…AND a row of pomegranate bushes still producing big red pomegranate fruit. These 8-10 foot high shrubs had survived for years with only the water that fell from the sky. And in Las Vegas, the average annual rainfall is about 4 inches! It might be a bit higher up in Red Rock Canyon, but not by much.

This was evidence that pomegranates grow well even under very dry conditions. And if you add a little bit of care and water they will do even better. Another plus: the leaves turn a lovely yellow in Fall and at Christmas time the fruit–if you haven’t picked it–looks like red ornaments in your garden.

So if you want a low-water usage fruit to harvest from your own backyard, plant a pomegranate. The ‘Wonderful” variety is an excellent choice and will do well even with neglect.

But don’t neglect taking water with you on a desert hike. I have always had water with me ever since that day.

Las Vegas Red Rock canyon (
This view is from the pull-out where we parked our cars. The abandoned ranch where the pomegranates were growing is up against those mountains.

See more suggestions about fruit trees for hot dry gardens.

Our 8 most popular newsletters

  1. Best and beautiful native shrubs for extreme heat
  2. Five fragrant plants for your garden
  3. Where to get free or cheap trees for your garden
  4. Six distinctively different landscapes to replace a lawn
  5. Cover up that naked wall
  6. Nine trees to combat climate change
  7. Four desert trees good for soil, 4 toxic ones
  8. Plants that bloom even in mid-summer scorching heat

Hello hot gardeners!

Aloe blooms in February
These South African aloes are among the early bloomers in a desert garden: their colorful spires rise above a fairly mundane looking plant in February.

Let me start by introducing myself.  My name is Carol Lightwood and I am a Master Gardener who earned my official state certification in Clark County, Nevada.  More specifically, in Las Vegas.

Shortly after completing the lengthy Master Gardener certification program in 2003 I launched the Hot Gardens website to help newcomers to the Las Vegas Valley understand the challenges of gardening in a desert climate. (ProTip: don’t plant pansies!)

Gardening conditions in the Las Vegas Valley and elsewhere in the U.S. Southwest states are horrible! Poor soils and, in Vegas, only 4 inches of rainfall annually. Since I loved having a beautiful garden, I began by planting Mediterranean plants that I knew  were drought tolerant from my years of living in Southern California. With considerable soil improvement, some care and water, most of them thrived in my enclosed patio garden. And I continued experiments with plants that could create the illusion of a lush garden with very little water.

For years I wrote a monthly newsletter about techniques and tips for best gardening results in a hot, dry garden. And hot, dry climates are expanding these days as the earth experiences climate change.The readership for the Hot Gardens site now includes gardeners from Australia, India, South Africa and the countries on the Arabian Peninsula as well as Spain, Canada and the U.K. So I decided to start giving gardening advice again and will be posting to this blog every so often.

I’d love to welcome you as a subscriber!  Sign up today.