Welcome to Arizona's Spring Landscaping and Gardening.
I'm Bruce Miles.
And I'm Lisa Millay.
We're coming to you from the Desert Botanical Garden in East Phoenix.
Spring is a wonderful time in the desert.
It's a time of cool mornings and warm afternoons.
Winter rains have awakened colorful desert wildflowers and produced a bumper crop of
weeds.
Spring is a time to enjoy our gardens and to take care of garden chores before the summer
heat arrives.
During this series, we'll show you how to take care of some of those necessary chores
like pruning.
We'll also demonstrate ways to attract friendly birds and bees to your garden.
And we'll see how you can save water and reduce maintenance by using plants that are adapted
to our desert climate.
We'll also take you to visit six botanical gardens in Arizona, where you can see examples
of flourishing desert landscapes.
We'll begin by touring our host site, the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix.
A few days ago, Mary Irish, Director of Public Horticulture, showed Lisa some of the magnificent
displays of desert wildflowers that make the garden a very special place in the spring.
Mary, this is a beautiful use of wildflowers, but it's unusual in that it's in such a contained
area.
Normally you think of meadows when you think of wildflowers.
Yeah, often people do.
They mix a whole lot of plants together or a whole lot of seed together and just throw
it out and let it be a very naturalistic planting.
But this time we chose these colors a little more carefully and planted them right together
in a small area, like you could use in a backyard.
Right.
Uh-huh.
And this is bladder pod, the little one, the little bladder pod.
And this is Arizona poppy, but it often comes in white.
And so the white and the gold plus the yellow bladder pod together is really a nice effect,
real soft, nice thing.
And it is something that you can visualize using in your own yard.
It's a scale that would fit.
Precisely, Lisa.
Exactly.
Most people have at least this much room or a nice corner or a little spot like that.
Right.
Exactly.
If you want to keep going out of here, we can go on down the path and we'll look at
somewhere you use just one color.
Great.
A little bit different way.
Let's take a look.
Well, this is a spectacular use of the wildflowers.
Yeah.
This is what happens when you plant all the one species with a real bright color all together.
You get these real color pops.
This is red flax.
It's really nice.
Really very nice.
Isn't that beautiful?
With all there is to see here at the garden, the wildflowers attract so much attention
from the visitors that are here today.
Oh, yeah.
They really love to come and see the flowers and the color, and it's really a great pleasure
to have them out here.
This is another idea.
This is desert marigold, and it's a big pop of yellow.
This is pretty long-term wildflower, too.
It blooms for a pretty good two, three months.
Nice long period of time.
Really.
And a different height, too.
Yeah.
Something else to consider if you want something to come up a little higher for you.
Precisely.
Now, I got another bed down here I want to show you that's really a colorful thing.
Wow.
Someone really got carried away with the color here.
It looks wonderful.
It's really great, isn't it?
Yeah.
They just have all these different colors together.
There's that red flax that we saw again.
Nice and high here, though.
What is it?
Is it a different variety?
Different soil.
When you have a little richer soil, it gets up bigger, it gets up taller.
Amazing.
Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?
And these are some African... This is our aloe beds, and so these are some African wildflowers
in the genus Arctotus.
A bunch of different... And then most people are familiar with African daisies.
Sure.
A little bit of them.
And then this beautiful thing, this is scorpionweed.
Weed.
This is an annual...
Very nice.
You saw the desert bluebells.
Sure.
You know, you've seen them around.
Right.
This is the same genus, and you can see how it curls like a scorpion.
Oh, sure.
See?
And that's why it's called scorpionweed.
Do they all need this much sun?
I mean...
No, not necessarily.
I think we can see this full sun.
Yeah.
As a general matter, wildflowers do better in full sun, but we're going to go look at
some that can grow real well in the shade for you, too.
All right.
Mary, everywhere you look in the garden this time of year, there is color.
It's so pretty.
Isn't it lovely?
Yeah.
This is a nice bed planted in blues, in blue tones, and it's in the shade, partial shade
and in eastern exposure, and here we used baby blue eyes, which is a nemophila, and
it's real close cousin, just as cute as it can be.
This little white, it's a five spot, and it's got five purple dots right on those petals,
and then some Chinese houses, which is a colin's ear, all from Western Arizona.
Really interesting plants.
And it's also interesting that the different colors, this gives a more restful feel.
Definitely.
It's a more peaceful color scheme.
Yeah.
It does that.
In the shade.
Really nice.
Sure.
Bruce is in southern Arizona, and he's looking at some wildflower displays there, so we'll
go to him now and see what he's found.
Great.
Thanks, Lisa.
Well, spring is busting out all over here in northwest Tucson at the Tohono Chul Park,
and we have a beautiful garden here that Roberta Kropp's going to tell us about, some of the
lovely spring wildflowers.
Right.
This is a lovely area here in our park, and what you see is the beautiful gold Mexican
poppy, which gives instant color to a garden.
And then we have two of your penstemons here, your Eaton's firecracker penstemon and your
pretty lavender peri-eye penstemon.
And that is a gorgeous color on that lavender peri-eye.
Right.
I notice a lot of netting here over this portion of the garden.
Uh-huh, yes.
We also attracted a lot of critters this year, in particular the white cottontail rabbit.
Great.
Well, let's go hopping on down the bunny trail here and take a look at some more spring colors.
Over here on the left, we have a nice example of your desert blackfoot daisy.
Along the side of the trail here, we have a lot of verbena.
Yes, this is your Gooding's verbena.
And also over here, we have the sand verbena.
Yes, which is a more brilliant color than your Gooding's verbena.
I noticed a lot of sage and salvia.
Now, that's not technically a wildflower.
No, you wouldn't classify it as a wildflower, but we have planted that to attract humming
birds here in our gardens.
Great.
And here's a great garden stand by.
Right, your desert marigold.
You see that throughout the desert.
And then down here lower, we have our bladder pods.
And then a staple you see along the highway a lot is the brittle brush.
That's not technically a wildflower, but the...
No, but it blooms at this time of year, and it brings a lot of yellow color to the desert.
Speaking of timing, what's the time we need to be preparing our garden for wildflowers?
Well, in order to ensure a nice crop of spring flowers, you have to do your work in the fall.
And usually around October is when we plant our seeds.
Well, great.
Well, for some more tips on how to get a wonderful wildflower garden in your garden in the spring,
let's take a look at this.
Planting wildflowers can be as simple as scattering seeds along a highway or trail.
But this kaleidoscope of desert wildflowers did not appear by accident.
For a truly spectacular display of color, sometimes nature needs a little help.
You need to start in October or November.
The first step is to prepare the ground where you want your spring bouquet.
Michelle Winters at the Desert Botanical Garden uses a heavy rake to break up the soil.
At the garden, wildflowers are planted in beds of granite.
They provide drip irrigation in case the winter rains do not arrive.
When the top few inches of soil are loose, Michelle switches to a light rake to level
and smooth the planting area.
Now she's ready for the seeds.
Wildflower seeds are tiny.
They need to be mixed with sand to make sure they will be distributed evenly.
She spreads the seeds lightly over the prepared bed.
The garden uses a seed mixture called Sonoran Wildflower Mix.
It includes flowers that will bloom from early spring through summer.
It's a good idea to lightly rake the seed into the soil.
It keeps them from blowing away and makes it harder for birds to make a meal out of
the flower garden.
At gardens where birds and rabbits are plentiful, wildflower beds are covered with netting or
lightweight material for extra protection.
For several months, the entrance to the Desert Botanical Garden looked like it had a light
dusting of snow, but it was simply a wildflower nursery.
A few weeks after the seeds are planted, tiny seedlings begin to sprout up.
By January, wildflower beds are crowded with lush green plants.
In early March, the first desert bluebells and lupine will begin to bloom.
And with just the right combination of water and sunshine, and not too many rabbits, you
can enjoy a changing rainbow of wildflower blossoms throughout the spring and early summer.
Joining me now to tell us more about perennial wildflowers is Rita Jo Antony, owner of The
Wild Seed.
She specializes in the collection of native North American seeds.
Rita, if we didn't plant wildflower seeds last fall, is it too late to add some spring
wildflower color to our gardens?
Certainly not, Bruce.
You can still add some color to your garden by planting either containerized species or
you can plant perennials or some annuals from seed to get some summer and fall color.
And perennial again means it's year-round, every year.
Yes, every year it comes up from the same plant.
Well, let's see what you have here for some examples.
Here's a bright yellow flower right here.
Yeah, this is desert marigold.
It's Balea multiradiata.
It's a perennial.
It's very commonly seen throughout the Sonoran Desert.
Right now you see it in full bloom all along roadsides.
And it normally will have probably 10 or 20 different flower stalks that come up from
this flowery base.
Great.
This is just a young specimen, we've only got a couple here so far.
Yes.
Great.
Let's see what else we've got here.
This is a very small, delicate plant here.
Yeah, this is Dysodia pentaketa or golden Dysodia it's called.
This is also a perennial that's very commonly seen throughout the Sonoran Desert.
You can see this in mass on disturbed sites.
A lot of times it will just come in and fill right in on disturbed sites.
You can plant this now from seed and it will bloom later in the summer.
Great.
Okay.
Let's ask some pink color for the garden.
This is a very popularized perennial that you see throughout Sonoran gardens and actually
throughout United States gardens.
This is a very popular garden plant throughout the United States.
And this plant, you can see it has gorgeous pink flowers when they're open.
It's a little bit wet right now but they're usually about two to three inches across whenever
they are open in full bloom.
And you can plant this seed right now and it will bloom when the weather cools off a
little bit in the fall.
So it will grow over the summer if you give it sufficient water and then it will bloom
again in the fall.
Right now it is in full bloom in gardens and it's a very pretty plant.
It fills in, it makes a nice mass and you can use it as a ground cover.
Great.
And you can buy it as an established plant now.
Yes.
All of what we're seeing you can buy as containered plants and set them right in your garden or
you can plant them from seed right now.
Yeah, here's a desert perennial as it were.
Yeah, this is called a firecracker penstemon and you can sort of see why.
It's a very bright red plant up on stalks.
It's very good for hummingbirds.
Hummingbirds really enjoy this plant so if you want to attract hummingbirds to your garden,
this is a good species to go with.
Like the long trumpet type flowers.
Yes.
And right now this is in full bloom.
You can see it out in the desert, usually at a little bit higher in elevation.
Great.
And we have another color of the penstemon here I believe.
Yeah, this is the pink penstemon, the desert penstemon or Perry's penstemon and this you
see growing a lot on roadsides, especially down on the Pinal Pioneer Parkway you see
a lot of these.
You'll see them throughout washes in the desert and this also attracts a lot of hummingbirds.
It's an easy to grow species and it's a delight for any gardener.
Yeah, and if you saw the earlier segment that we had, they had a beautiful one down at the
Tohono Chul garden that we showed earlier.
Huge example.
What's this one here?
This is one of my favorites.
This is desert verbena and it's a perennial also native to the Sonoran Desert.
You'll see this growing out in many places throughout the desert.
It blooms in the springtime.
You can plant it now from seed and it will establish a plant and then bloom again next
spring.
And this plant when mature forms a very large mass about two to three feet high and about
three to four feet across.
And the flowers are very fragrant and they attract a lot of butterflies.
And again an important thing to consider is the eventual plant size when you're designing
or planting your garden.
That's correct.
All right, let's see what else we've got here.
We got anything else here?
Basically I just want to talk about the spring flowers and again you can go out in springtime
and get some color immediately into your garden.
They've got a really nice sale here now at the Desert Botanical Garden today and we welcome
people to come down and take a look.
But again the care and feeding of these plants, anything in particular we need to know about
is starting this garden?
Well, if you're gardening with seeds what you want to do is you want to prepare your
site by roughing up the soil and then cast out your seeds evenly across the soil and
then lightly rake them into the top quarter inch.
You really don't want to put them down too far.
Great.
Well thank you very much.
Sometimes the best way to enjoy wildflowers is just to go out into the desert and see
what mother nature has created in her own garden.
Let's take a look.
Here we go.
If you want to find out where in Arizona wildflowers are blooming, you can call the Wildflower Hotline
at 481-8134.
Because wildflowers are short-lived, it's updated weekly from February through April.
Each year the crop of desert wildflowers is dependent on fickle winter rains.
Some years the blooms are abundant, other years they're scarce.
That's right, Bruce.
And the water we depend on for our gardens and our homes is also subject to the erratic
desert cycles of droughts and floods.
That's why water conservation is so important in Arizona.
It takes a lot of careful planning to provide our desert cities with a reliable water supply
and it all begins far from the desert.
In winter, snow blankets the mountains of northern and eastern Arizona.
Warm spring days melt the snow and hundreds of creeks and streams emerge to bring the
precious water down the mountains.
It flows into the Verde and Salt Rivers and heads towards the desert communities of the
Salt River Valley.
To capture this water and to protect against times of drought, pioneers in desert towns
surrounding Phoenix formed the Salt River Valley Water Users Association at the turn
of the century.
Along the Salt and Verde Rivers, they built a series of dams with lakes to store the water
and a complex system of canals to deliver it to cities and farms.
Today we know this organization as Salt River Project and we now take it for granted that
water will flow when we turn on the faucet, but a lot of work goes on behind the scenes
to make that possible.
How much snow is in the mountains?
How much water is flowing into the reservoirs?
This information is constantly monitored by SRP.
Workers in the field measure snow depth and sophisticated electronic equipment keeps track
of water levels in the reservoirs.
In the desert, snow, rain and river flows can fluctuate wildly from day to day and year
to year.
The valley's needs don't change much from year to year, but the supply sure does.
Modern computers help to predict short-term water supplies, but long-range forecasts are
still iffy.
John Keene is an executive water policy analyst for Salt River Project.
We have had really long wet periods in our history, relatively wet, and actually this
is one of them.
From about 1978 until now has been wetter than average with a couple of really extraordinary
dry years stuck right in the middle, but kind of a wet period.
All during the 40s and 50s, extremely dry, really big drought.
Period from 1905 to 1920 was very wet.
Period from 1898 to 1905 was the worst drought we ever had, so you get these big strings
of dry years and wet years that come together and we're lousy at predicting them.
We just don't know.
They don't come all that regularly.
It may look like a lot of water is stored in the lakes behind SRP dams, but our growing
metropolis consumes an enormous amount of water, and in the desert, we can never take
next year's rain or snowfall for granted.
We've only got a year or two's worth of water storage in those dams, and if we can conserve,
we can leave more up there to handle the next year, which may be dry.
If we just use it like, hey, there's no problem with the water up there and use it until it's
gone, then what do you do when the drought hits?
Well let's hope we never have to find out.
Luckily, some of the most interesting desert plants do not need much water.
At the Tucson Botanical Garden, they've created a very unique display designed to awaken all
of our senses.
Horticulturist Cecily Gill gave Bruce a tour.
Cecily, tell me about the sensory garden.
Why did you put one in here?
Well, if you've been to a botanical garden and seen all the parents saying, don't touch
that, don't go near that, we needed a garden where people could get up close to plants,
and this garden is accessible to anybody, and we have five ramadas where you can touch,
smell, feel, and listen to plants.
We left out taste for obvious reasons.
That's for the restaurant.
We're in the smell section right off the bat, and here's definitely a classic juniper here.
And everybody's neighbor's yard is a juniper.
It's holiday time.
But how many times have you stopped and put a juniper to your nose, a piney fresh scent
or the dusty smell in the summer?
Kind of a little bit of sage here as well, that's a very distinctive smell.
This is a southwestern sage, chaparral sage.
It's one of our stinkers.
Be sure to rub the leaves on this one.
Smell will stay with you for a long time.
Smells almost like a men's cologne.
It's one of our manly plants.
This one's a little worse for wear here though.
Yeah, because this is a garden where you can actually touch the plants and stick your nose
in there.
We have replacements, so we'll bring one back if this one gets too beat up.
This one is a little herb that grows out in the desert and has a wonderful kind of heavy
parsley smell to it.
Here's something interesting, I guess this is a pepper?
Yeah, Jara peppercorns, that's from the monk's peppertree or the vitex that's from southern
Europe.
It was used for a tea to keep monks chaste.
I like coffee myself.
That's a blessing.
Here's a very familiar one from the herb garden, rosemary.
Yes, familiar to us.
You know, we can pick rosemary down at the local bank or grocery store growing as a landscape
plant.
But it's not so familiar to some of our visitors from back east.
Here's a cute and small one.
This is one of my favorite times, this is carroway scented thyme, it's a creeping thyme
that has a strong scent of carroway, rub the leaf and smell your fingers, you can pick
up that smell.
Let's go look at some plants that we can listen to.
So we have here is a barrel cactus, how do you listen to a barrel cactus?
It speaks five languages.
Now listen.
Great, that sounds like one of those little African thumb instruments.
Let's move on to the percussion section over here.
What kind of gourds are these?
These are little ceremonial gourds, and honey locust seed pods, oops, there's a better one.
Now we have a potted palm over here and I think I know what you're going to do with
this.
Strum.
Then over here we have the leaves of autumn leaves, we're making music over here.
What is this plant over here and how do you get noise out of it?
This is a little kitten ears, listen, I don't hear anything, that's the idea, it's quiet.
It's a lovely fountain but it serves more than just decorative purples I guess.
Yeah, it's a very pretty fountain but the noise helps mask some of the city sounds that
surround us, we're right in the middle of Tucson.
Right, we're in the touch section now and I guess it's the only section we'd find a
sign on a potted plant that says rub me.
Yeah, we had fun with those signs.
What's this?
Oh, this is a cycad, it's a cardboard palm and the leaves literally feel like stiff,
like cardboard.
Wonderful.
Here's a soft cactus.
This is a feather pincushion cactus where the spines are actually soft and you can see
where it's been rubbed away by lots of touchers.
There's a cool plant here.
This is an aloe, it's very smooth, very smooth to feel.
It doesn't have the sharp spines either.
No, some do but not this one.
Here's a fun looking plant.
This is a totem pole cactus, this is a cactus you can really get your hands on, it's very
bumpy and smooth.
You have an unusual but fun garden here, have you had positive reactions to it?
We have, I've noticed that people are a little shy about being allowed to touch something
now, takes them a couple of ramadas to get loosened up and of course the kids are right
in it.
Wonderful.
Thank you very much for giving us a tour.
Thanks for coming.
So are you inspired to start your own sensory garden?
Well joining us now to show us some of the plants that we might include is Carol Crosswhite,
she's curator at the Boyce Thompson Southwest Arboretum near Superior, Carol thanks for
joining us today.
What are some of the special plants that we might want to put in our own sensory garden?
Well let's start with perhaps the ultimate touch plant here.
This is lamb's ears and feeling it is a whole trip in itself.
This is a drought tolerant plant but the leaves both upper and lower surfaces are covered
with fine soft hairs that give a lovely color change.
And did you say this is a ground cover?
Yeah, you can use this as a ground cover or as a puffy border plant and it also has beautiful
soft lavender flowers in the early summertime and you can pick the leaves and use them as
an element like in a dried wreath or bouquet.
So this can last for a long time not only in your garden but as accessories in your
home.
It's very nice, you have a couple of other samples in this heavy tube to bring along
with you.
What do we have here?
We looked at something nice to touch now we'll look at something nice to smell.
This is salvia clevelandii, blue sage, has lovely blue flowers, it's flowering now actually
on large plants.
This one has fragrant foliage and when a large plant of this is in your garden you can smell
it just by walking past you don't even have to touch it but if you go ahead and touch
a leaf, bruise it a little, an intensely minty fragrance rises up.
It's a beautiful plant.
Is it a blooming plant?
Pretty blue flowers and it blooms through most of the spring months and again in the
fall.
Many of the southwest gardens are, they look but certainly don't touch.
So this is a whole different aspect of gardening in the southwest.
This one is a shrub that actually gets pretty tall, it gets to about 8 feet tall if you
allow it.
This is fragrance from the flowers, sweet aloisia or sweet lippia both names and the
flowers are not really flashy flowers but they're intensely fragrant with the smell
of honey.
Oh really?
It can almost be overpowering if you have several of these bushes.
I know a garden that has this around the doorway of the home where you enter through a cloud
of fragrance for most of the warm months of the year.
Does it grow pretty dense in the bush?
Yes it does and it's a truly very drought tolerant plant, this is one of the toughest
plants you can have as far as low care goes and it rewards you nevertheless with this
beautiful fragrance.
The great fragrance, that's wonderful.
What do we have here?
This is a lot of color.
We've had touch and smell and this is touch as well as auditory.
I don't know if we can pick this up or not.
This is sandpaper verbena and when you cut it you can actually hear the raspy noise that
the stiff hairs covering the leaves make and as you see we've got a bonus with these intense
purple flowers that cover the plant in the warm months of the year, it makes a great
ground cover.
This is nice also if you have children and you want to get them into gardening, give
them something to look at.
Speaking of children, let's see, let's take that out so we can see it better.
This is the petable pincushion.
Try it Lisa.
Oh sure.
Oh of course.
Kids love that.
That's great.
And it's even sort of mushy, you can press down on it without hurting it.
A little spongy.
Uh huh.
And it feels just great and it doesn't hurt the plant.
This cacti you really can't do that to.
No.
This is a nice landscaping plant for a shady area.
Okay, well thank you Carol, you brought us some wonderful samples here and we certainly
appreciate that.
And that's all for today.
Next time we'll look at some of the spring chores you need to take care of in your garden.
I hope you'll join us for that.
Okay.
Welcome to Arizona's Spring Landscaping and Gardening.
I'm Lisa Millay.
And I'm Bruce Miles.
Spring is a great time to get out and enjoy the beauty of your garden.
It certainly is, Bruce.
But it is also an ideal time to take care of some of the necessary gardening chores.
I recently visited the Boyce Thompson Southwest Arboretum where Carol Crosswhite showed me
some of the work being done at their demonstration garden.
Carol, spring is a wonderful time of year, but very busy for gardeners.
What are the kind of things we need to think about getting done?
Well, George is just finishing an important job here.
He's cutting back last season's growth from the Mexican Primrose.
If you don't do this, the new leaves down there don't get enough sun, and the beautiful
pink flowers that will be there in about a month now that George has done this will be
just a real showy thing in the garden.
Absolutely.
Now, this needs, this area needs quite a bit of work, actually.
Is this because it's out in the open, real frost sensitive, so?
Yes, this is a low depression for water harvesting, actually, when, but the lowness also makes
the cold collect.
And we've got some bushes out here, right in front of us is a fairy duster, that shows
you the leaves that got damaged by the cold.
And we're going to have to work that over once it's evident what needs to be cut back,
it's still alive.
Then we also have the necessity for weed control that moves right on through as we get occasional
showers.
One option is planting ground covers, and we've got a beautiful example here of sun
daisy that blooms in the winter and spring.
The theory is that the ground cover takes up space where the weeds might thrive, or?
Right, it just outcompetes it for everything, sunlight and moisture, and a weed doesn't
have a chance of staying alive in that area then.
We have to hand weed out there where some of the wildflowers are beginning to make a
showing because the weeds are so much more vigorous than they are.
It's that time of year, not only are the plants growing, the weeds are taking off too.
And you have to keep up with them on an ongoing basis.
Well, we also need to look at the trees as well at this time of year and do some maintenance
work there.
It's a good time because no leaves.
We can really see everything very clearly, and you can see where structural problems
like it might exist, like branches crossing over or rubbing against some other structural
element.
And then you can plan how you're going to treat the tree for pruning as the year progresses.
Take a look before you get started.
Right.
Also a good time for planning or redoing gardens if you're not real happy with the way your
garden is going.
Do some renovating this time of year, is that so?
It's a perfect time for that, Lisa.
You guys are in the midst of doing some renovation on a garden.
Let's take a look at that.
Sure.
Lisa, this is our new perennial garden that we're just now planning and starting to put
in.
This is the time of year then that you're ready to put the plants in, but the planning
actually started a couple months ago, maybe.
Yes, because first of all, we had to decide where we wanted it.
We had to look at the location within our whole garden and say, perennials need lots
of light and heat in the mornings.
And perennials are leafy plants that are very long-lived, like penstemons and columbines.
And the leafiness means they need afternoon shade.
So this site gives them just what they need.
And when you do get to this stage, you've got your markers laid out for your bedding
and your irrigation?
Yes, because the irrigation's already in.
Okay.
So we need to know where to put the flowers and where to put the path.
That's a real handy way of marking that out.
Yeah.
How much the plants go in?
According to the planting plan that has been developed to consider the leaf color, the
height of the plant, and where in the garden it will do best.
Now that's a good thing to do during the winter when there's not a lot going on, because by
the time we get to spring, it's a little too late to start that kind of planting.
You need to be a few steps ahead of that.
Right.
Springtime, when they start to grow, is when they need to go in the ground.
And there's so much else to do.
So again, we're back to our pruning with this plant here.
Looks like it needs some help.
It does.
This is a bougainvillea, which has nice orange flowers when it's in prime shape.
The cold got to this, and this is an instance where gardeners have to live with untidiness
for a little while.
The plant has to show us, as warm weather progresses, how much of it is still alive.
I would come in and say, now it's time to cut this back, but you're saying it's not
quite ready yet.
We have to wait just a little longer, maybe a week or two, because the leaves are just
beginning to break on the branches.
And as soon as we know how much of the branch is alive and how much to cut it back to achieve
the effect we want, which is new growth going along the wall to show us that tracery effect,
we can come in and make the final pruning.
Again, there is a lot to do this time of year.
There really is.
As Carol said, pruning is often an intimidating task, even for the most experienced gardener.
If done properly, however, it can be relatively painless for the pruner as well as the prunee,
the plant.
In fact, pruning not only improves the plant's appearance, it also safeguards its health.
Cesar Mazier, superintendent of horticulture here at the Desert Botanical Garden, gives
us some pruning tips.
In many instances, the trees, when they are growing, they happen to have what they are
called cross-branches that in time they touch each other and when they touch each other,
they can get diseases through those points.
Also they have dead branches and dead branches are places where insects and some of the microorganisms
can hide and therefore the tree can get sick through it.
So the lifetime of the tree can be reduced by not removing those dead branches and so
forth.
Before starting to prune, an inventory of the necessary equipment should be taken.
Make sure each tool is clean so as not to spread disease, sharp and an adequate size
for the job.
The first thing you do is open in space.
Get underneath the tree because you don't start pruning the tree from the outside, you
start to prune the tree from the inside.
And it's best to, when you're not used to do pruning, it's best to remove small branches
because you can make a mistake and if you make a mistake, you take a big branch right
at the beginning, you can't glue it back, basically that's what it is.
So it's best to start with small branches and little by little start to take more and
more gradually until you get to the point where you can see the frame of the tree.
When pruning branches, avoid making flush cuts.
Leave about one quarter to one half inch of the branch in place.
This will help minimize any damage to the surrounding area and promote quicker healing.
If it is necessary to remove a large limb, experts agree that it is best done in stages.
It's not advisable to make one cut because most of the time the limbs are heavy and they
are so heavy that the bottom part of the branch can tear.
So what is advisable to do is to take some weight off from the tree or from the branch
that you are planning to remove and then make what is called three cuts.
The first cut goes underneath, the second cut on the top and the third cut is the one
that goes close to the main stem of the tree.
When severing any size limb, it is important to make the cut as smooth as possible.
This is another precaution that will minimize the period of time required for healing.
Because pruning is a cause of stress to the tree, ample water should be provided when
finished.
Another aspect to be considered is the season in which the pruning should take place.
For most desert trees, the best time to prune is in the spring when your garden has once
again begun to come alive.
Pruning is not only important for trees but for all sizes and types of plants.
Some pruning is best done even before the plant is planted.
But here to show us examples is Mary Irish from the Desert Botanical Garden here in Phoenix
and this poor little tender thing fresh out of the pot, we are going to attack it with
a pruning shearer?
Sure.
When plants are growing there is a balance between what is on the top, which is the leaves,
and the root system.
The plants are making transpiration and photosynthesis possible so that is sort of the food as it
were for the plant.
And the roots are bringing in the raw materials, the water, the minerals and nutrients.
They get out of balance, things go wrong with your plants.
So in effect when you are planting, the root system is not there, until the root system
establishes it is not bringing things up.
So what you want to do when you plant is reduce some of the plant material on the top in order
to kind of bring that back into balance with the root system you have got.
And all you need to do, as a general matter, you don't want to take off more than about
25 percent.
But anything like this that is dead, yeah it is dead or it is really looking grim, you
know, you just sort of get right out of there, exactly, and that was a really tough cut.
You have also got a little bit of an eye to how your tree is going to go.
This is actually a tree.
It is going to go in the end, so you bring out anything that is in the middle, if that
is part of your choice.
So basically open up the middle, yeah look at that.
And then things like this that look like they are going to start crossing over, no good.
And then this is kind of just an adventurer from nowhere.
Alright off he goes.
That is not very hard, and he cleans close in if he can.
Now you have got a little bit, now you have got this kind of sucker looking thing here.
You want to get rid of him.
And that is probably enough mass to take off in order to, yeah, it is enough mass to get
rid of it, you know, and kind of bring it back down into balance with its root system
a little bit.
And you are going to start having a tree eventually, see how it is kind of split up, you have got
one, two, three nice branches, that will give it plenty to start growing with it as it continues.
You keep pruning and you keep pruning, kind of just shaping it as it goes.
Once twice a year, spring and summer.
Well it kind of depends on how fast your plant grows.
Once a year is fine.
Some years perfect, you know, the spring and into the late spring, and most desert plants
you can prune them either all year round in most cases, but certainly in the warm weather.
They are very hardy.
I know I just attack my rose bushes and they are fine.
Yeah, whap, you know.
And they do not have that strong seasonal dormancy, you know, that a lot of deciduous trees have.
And so you can keep a sort of continuous pruning on them as they go through the year, but the
heavy pruning should be done when they are growing, which is the late spring and early
summer.
Any concerns about frost?
Should we wait until frost is absolutely over?
If it is a frost sensitive plant, you should never prune it until all danger of frost is
over with.
Now most of our desert trees, that is not really a problem, but if it is another kind
of a shrub or a tree that has some frost tenderness, you should not prune it until frost damage
is evident and then danger of frost is over with.
Can you temporarily weaken a plant?
Should you take any safeguards or most of these plants just peel off?
You do not take off too much, they are fine.
Yeah, you do not need to treat the wounds, you do not need to do any of that sort of
business.
Great, nature has been taking care of itself.
Yeah, exactly.
Let us move on to another plant here.
Let us move on to another one here for a little bit different idea.
This is going to be a, this is a gorgeous thing, it smells terrific, but this is going
to be a shrub, not a tree, it is a great big shrub.
Now again, the first thing you want to do is get rid of all this little dead stuff,
see?
See all that little dead stuff, and really, would not Julia Child have a ball, this is
just her kind of thing, but so you kind of clean it up, okay?
Now here is a crossover here too, would you like to pull that back?
Precisely, see you want to get rid of that, open it up just a little bit, you might want
to actually take out a little bit, now you are going to croak because there is a little
bit of bloom here.
Oh no, you are taking a lot of flowers.
Yeah, take it out and just kind of clean it up, shape it up, shrub, see like this, and
then you have a little bit better plant to go with.
Once it is in the ground, and it is going for say a year or so, on a shrub, you can
even cut like here, like that, bring it back down and bring it into kind of a more shrub
over a ball and thicken shape.
Shrubs, see how it tends to make, I am going to do it over here, how it brings up branch,
branch, branch, branch, that is what makes a plant full, eventually those will grow
up and that is what will make it big and full.
But you can actually adjust this one to be a tall slender plant if it works better with
your landscaping.
Sure, you know you can do it this way, bring it up for one stem if you wanted, but this
one is better as a shrub, honestly.
And again, if you have been planning on it being a three foot high bush and it wants
to be a five or six foot high bush, boom, down it comes.
Now, don't do this, but you shape them into that size, exactly.
Anything we should know about nutrients as far as this, should we be feeding these plants
as soon as we have to replant them?
It is usually not a really great idea, certainly not to put fertilizer or anything like that
in the planting hole, that is just a little too much shock and your roots are real young,
real tender, they are just getting established, but say three or four weeks after the plant
has been planted and it has really established, a good shot of fertilizer is a good idea.
And speaking of pruning, depending on how long the plant has been in the pot, you may
need to actually cut back on the roots a little bit if it has gotten balled up a little bit.
If they are really deformed, if they have become in the shape of the pot and they are
deformed, you can kind of gently pull them out.
If they are really, really long, you can prune them a little bit, but yeah, if you need to,
you can do it.
So don't be afraid of your scissors or your pruning shears and all that, they can become
your friend.
They are your pal, you bet.
Absolutely, great.
Well thanks, Mary.
You know, another important component for a healthy garden is compost.
Yes indeed, it is really quite simple to make yourself.
We visited the Maricopa County Cooperative Extension where Carolyn Chard gave us a quick
lesson in composting.
Compost is basically plant material that has decomposed until it is in a state that looks
like probably the richest soil you could ever find.
It's not soil, but it looks like deep, rich soil.
It's crumbly.
It has a wonderful earthy type fragrance.
And when it gets to that stage, which we call a finish stage or finish compost, it's ready
to go into the garden, or it's ready to go into potting soil, for instance.
It's going to help feed plants, it's going to help make your soil so alive and so vital
and a healthy environment for your plants to grow.
For desert soils, which are generally lacking in organic material, compost provides a number
of benefits.
It improves the water holding capacity of sandy soils, as well as drainage in clay soils.
It provides a slow release of nutrients for plants, and feeds the beneficial microorganisms
and earthworms, which make any soil a more fertile medium for plant growth.
Composting is probably one of the easiest things a person can do, because you're almost
guaranteed success.
It's not hard to do.
Many people will use a bin, using some type of material, and it doesn't have to be any
one type or another.
Gardener can use their imagination.
You don't even need a bin, actually.
You can just make a big pile in the corner of your fence, or just a big freestanding
pile in the middle of your yard, if you wish.
As long as you have a mass of plant material, plant parts that used to be alive, of course,
and now are dead, you can have a compost pile.
The essential elements that create a successful compost pile are carbon and nitrogen.
Carbon can most readily be obtained from dry leaves and grass clippings, also from straw
and newspaper.
The materials which provide nitrogen include green grass clippings, manure, and kitchen
vegetable scraps.
One of the important things to do is to think about how much of the carbon-rich material
you want to put in, and how much of the nitrogen-rich.
Most sources say one part of the nitrogen-rich for every three or four part of the carbon-rich.
So the ingredients are added together.
Traditionally they're layered, so you know how much material you have.
You have a layer of nitrogen-rich and then a thicker layer of carbon-rich.
But if you do the layering, which is fine, then you want to mix those immediately so
that the microbes can get to those materials faster and the pile will start off better.
The composting process can take anywhere from two weeks to eight months or more.
The amount of time involved depends upon the speed with which microorganisms can digest
and recycle the compost material.
A fast or hot pile is one that generates and holds the heat of intense microbe activity.
It is not uncommon for temperatures deep within a hot pile to reach 160 degrees.
To obtain this level of efficiency it is necessary to turn the compost thoroughly and often.
This increases the amount of oxygen available to the microorganisms and helps to neutralize
any objectionable odors.
It is also important to provide ample sources of nitrogen and maintain an adequate moisture
level, which would be similar to that of a damp sponge.
In the desert this can be most easily achieved by placing compost in a shady area.
Another consideration when building a compost pile is to add microorganisms right at the
beginning.
These can be obtained from a commercial compost starter or simply from several shovels full
of manure, backyard soil, or previously finished compost.
It is useful as well to keep compost material small in size, a practice which helps to speed
up the natural process of decay.
So the compost is invaluable.
It makes any soil better and I guess that's the point.
You almost can't add too much.
There are many different ways to use it.
You can even put the finished compost on the surface of the soil and leave it as a mulch
to protect the soil from drying out from the hot sun during our summer months.
And then as you water through it, the water will carry bits and pieces of that compost
down through the soil to feed the roots as a compost tea for instance, which again is
very nutritious for the plants.
If you want more information about composting or other gardening questions, you can reach
the Cooperative Extension's Recorded Information Service at 255-4980.
With us now to answer some questions about common plant problems is Patrick Quirk, a
horticulturist for the Desert Botanical Garden.
Patrick, thanks for joining us again.
Now tell us, what is the problem with first this agave right here?
Well all three plants share a similar problem in that they're all more yellow than they
ought to be, but each is yellow for a different reason.
The agave to start out with has been made yellow by insect attack.
It may or may not be visible, but there are little yellow mottlings on this plant and
that's been caused by insects basically sucking the juices and the chlorophyll out of the
plant.
What can we do to correct that though?
The correction is basically you have to control the insect problem.
You have to check to see who's doing it and either remove them physically or with a pesticide.
I think we're going to cover that more in another segment here coming up.
This poor thing looks like it needs some serious help here.
Well yes, it needs one of two things done for it.
It's yellow because it's overcrowded in the pot and its soil is becoming exhausted
of nutrients.
So repotting is one good solution for it and this particular plant will spread to fill
any pot and fertilization may also be very much a benefit for that.
The dead tips are also a part of the problem, but also occur sometimes with this plant even
just by nature.
And what is the name of this plant again?
This is an aloe of some species.
And would you want to lop those off, those dead ends off the top of that?
It's not necessary for the health of the plant, but it may be necessary because of your aesthetic.
I might like to look at it a little bit more.
What about this little one?
This poor fellow has received too much sun.
It's a plant that normally grows in about 50% shade by nature and it got a bit more
than that.
So it's had its color changed to kind of a reddish-yellow, which may be fatal if it continues.
It would eventually turn brown, which would be like a third degree burn on a human being.
The solution here is to simply raise it in a bit more shade and be conscious that the
sun can burn plants as much as it can burn you.
It starts looking like that, you know, that's what your problem is.
Precisely.
We have a little prickly pear here.
Now, is this going to make it, do you think, Patrick?
This pear is actually in relatively good shape because this lovely new growth is coming out.
But around here on this side, we have a common problem with prickly pears.
And that is this white fuzzy material here, which is known as cochineal scale.
It's natural for prickly pears to pick it up.
It does it all the time.
And it's rather, if you have prickly pears, you will probably come up with it.
The way it kills the plant is mostly by two means, sucking out the juices, the scale does
that, and covering the plant so thickly that it can't receive sunlight.
The best solution is simply to wash it off with a jet of water.
Soapy water is even more effective.
Pretty simple then.
Yes, it is.
Thank you.
We have a sample of desert grass here and it looks like it's dying.
Well this is one of these deceptive plant problems.
This plant is actually having no problem of any description whatsoever.
It is dormant.
It grows in the summertime and remains dormant in the winter.
This growth here is just last year's now dormant growth.
The plant is already beginning to break dormancy.
As you can see, there's green showing up along it, being this is springtime and the weather
is warming.
That's natural.
If you just let it go, it will continue to awaken and look fresh and green in the summer.
If some of this material, like with grass, you often times come up with stuff that doesn't
come back, you can remove it or leave it, whatever you wish.
So the key here is knowing your plant and not trying to doctor something that doesn't
need doctors.
Right, don't overdo your doctoring.
Know the plant and only treat problems that are a problem.
Okay.
Well, are we having problems here?
Yes, just a few.
You may notice these plants seem a little eaten around the edges.
That's very simply because they are.
This has been done by rabbits.
Oh, okay.
We're familiar with that here.
Rabbits and the ground squirrels also will cause the same damage.
They simply are eating the plants because they're hungry and your best solution is to
somehow keep the rabbits and ground squirrels and the plants separated from each other by
whatever means necessary.
And netting works well with that, the light weight?
Fencing, netting, the ground squirrels can climb fencing, so to prevent them you have
to cover the whole thing.
With rabbits, a fencing is usually sufficient.
Okay.
Well, you've helped us very much identify some of the problems.
Patrick, thank you again for all your help.
For certain.
Let's hope we don't have to see too many of these problems in our own gardens.
If you want to see some healthy gardens at their best, spring is the perfect time to
get out and visit the botanical gardens around Arizona and there are five major desert gardens
to see in our state.
If you're looking to add low water use plants to your garden, Arizona's botanical gardens
are some of the best places to begin.
The five desert gardens give you a chance to see full grown plants in natural settings
as well as offering small plants for sale.
Boyce Thompson Southwest Arboretum is the oldest public garden in Arizona.
It was founded in 1927 by Colonel W.B. Thompson along Queen Creek in a canyon below Pickett
Post Mountain.
A two mile loop trail showcases a wide range of desert adapted plants from around the world.
Located about 60 miles east of Phoenix, you can get there by taking the Superstition Freeway
to US Highway 60.
Continue east to the Arboretum just west of the town of Superior.
For more information, call 689-2811.
Tucson Botanical Garden is located northeast of the University of Arizona.
It also houses the native seed search.
To get there from Phoenix, take Interstate 10 south to the Grant Road exit and go east
to Alvernon.
Call 326-9255 for more information.
The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum is also in Tucson.
It's well known for its exhibits of desert wildlife as well as plants.
You can get there by taking Interstate 10 to the Speedway exit and following the signs
west to the Saguaro National Monument.
Call 883-2702 for more information.
The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix is just east of downtown.
Located in Papago Park, the garden spreads over 145 acres.
It was established in 1939 to preserve a desert oasis in the city.
You can reach the garden by taking either Van Buren or McDowell Road to Galvin Parkway.
For information, call 941-1225.
Our state's newest botanical garden is Tejonachule Park in north Tucson.
It was created in 1984 around an old adobe home that had been a winter retreat.
Today, 36 acres with winding paths and shady ramadas are devoted to preserving the small
part of the Catalina foothills.
To get there, take Interstate 10 south to Ina Road and then east to Paseo del Norte.
For information, call 742-6455.
I visited several of these gardens recently and it is a fantastic way to spend a day.
So, Bruce, what's on our next program?
Well, next time we're going to learn more about water-saving landscape techniques known
as xeriscape.
It doesn't mean just granite and cactus, it can be actually very lush and colorful.
Hope you'll be here.
Welcome to the Desert Botanical Garden and our Arizona spring landscaping and gardening
program.
I'm Bruce Miles.
And I'm Lisa Malay.
Spring is a beautiful time in the Arizona desert, but actually when you learn to live
in harmony with the desert, it can be a great place to live in all seasons.
Here at the Desert Botanical Garden, they've created what they call the Center for Desert
Living.
The garden's executive director, Dr. Robert Bruni, gave us a tour, beginning with the
desert house.
Robert, first, let's talk about the purpose behind the desert house here at the Botanical
Garden.
Well, the desert house is the keystone of our Center for Desert Living and this is an
area at the garden devoted to trying to show some principles of appropriate living in a
desert setting.
And the house itself demonstrates water and energy saving strategies.
And outside here, we're trying to show how we can save some water, because in Phoenix
about 60% of our water is used out of doors in a residential context.
And so if we have low water use plants that are adapted to the desert, we can cut down
our per capita water consumption quite a bit.
Now these plants are somewhat immature, but as they grow, they'll fill in and to be a
very nice example of desert landscaping.
There's other strategies, though, other than just that the plants require little water,
there's placement involved as well.
It's not only the plants themselves, but the design that's important.
We're also trying to show some energy savings features with plants, because as you can see
over here, we've got a sweet acacia against the wall.
It's the wintertime.
And of course, we're trying to encourage energy to go into the house in the winter months.
But conversely, in the summer, that tree will be full of leaves and will reduce the amount
of energy going into the house, and therefore reduce the need for cooling the house.
This gives us a really good idea of what to do with the southern exposure.
Let's walk around the front and see on the northern side of the house what you've done.
OK.
Now tell us about some of the choices and the reasoning behind those of the vegetation
here in the front.
Well, what we're trying to show here are not only plants, but some of the strategies for
watering them.
And for example, with this blue palo verde here, we're getting it established with the
use of a drip remitter system.
And we use these throughout much of the garden and here at the Center for Desert Living.
But we're also showing some other ways to get water to plants.
For example, right here, we have a very shallow basin around the tree.
And as rain falls on the ground, it'll just run right down and collect around the base
and soak in.
So it's a very direct and inexpensive way to get extra water to your plants.
Not for aesthetics, but very useful practice.
In the background, I noticed that there's some netting over some of the younger plants.
Those are to protect seeds and seedlings from birds and rabbits for our wildflower displays.
We try to show the use of wildflowers in gardens, and they're very beautiful.
But out here in the garden, we have lots of birds.
And if we don't protect those seedlings, they'll all be gone before we know it.
I'd like to take you down to the rest of the Center for Desert Living and show you some
of these plants as they look when they get a little more mature in your home garden.
Terrific.
Let's take a look.
Well, this is certainly a much different look than the gardens we've just been at.
Well, this shows you a garden after it's matured for a few years, and this has been in about
six or seven years.
And what we're showing here is the tremendous diversity of plant material available for
a desert landscape.
People think of desert landscapes as being kind of empty and gravely.
And the reality is that there's a wide variety of plant material available for desert landscapes,
and many of them from the deserts right around here and from other parts of the world.
And we're showing trees for shade, cacti for form and drama, shrubs for color and flower
color, and ground covers and wildflowers, vines.
We have it all here in this demo garden, and we can give you a very, very lush and diverse
look.
I noticed even we have some in bloom right now.
That looks great.
Well, even here in late winter, we've got something in bloom, and we've got this garden
set up, so there's something in bloom every single day of the year, or there's something
that's pulling in the hummingbirds, and it's a very pleasant experience to be in a desert
garden.
You've got a year-round experience.
That's a neat thing to keep in mind as you're planting, not just placement for the growth
of the plant, but also for what you want out of your garden.
I call it gardening choreography, you know.
It's thinking ahead of what you want to see all year long and planting it.
And then it happens if you do it right.
A beautiful example.
Thank you.
One of the key elements to a successful water-saving landscape is to use water efficiently, and
one of the best ways to do that is by using drip irrigation.
With us this morning to tell us more about how a drip irrigation system works is Terry
Michael, horticulture agent for the U of A Maricopa County Cooperative Extension.
Terry, give us a real rough definition or a simple definition of what drip irrigation
system means.
Well, in the simplest way, a drip system is a controlled flow system where they meter
out through engineering and orifice size and pressures.
The orifice allows just X amount of water to come out, and the idea is that you put
the water strategically where the plants are going to be growing and where the roots are
going to be growing so the efficiency is increased and you don't waste water running every place,
and you don't have as many weeds because, you know, weeds grow where water grows.
Right.
Well, because of us are used to the old hand watering, we'd take a bubbler and it's running
at five gallons a minute and we'd bubble everything all around the whole flower bed.
Sure.
Or if we had a more recent sprinkler system, we have this little one gallon a minute heads,
and within five, ten minutes your whole garden is done.
But with the drip system it's simpler, it's much more localized.
Well, yeah, you could do it.
Another thing about the drip system, and when you say we're a drip system, that's a big,
I mean, that's a...
Okay.
And another thing is instead of dragging around a hose, you know, you can only do so many
plants at a time, drips that you can maybe turn on one valve and 20, 30 plants get water.
So there's efficiency plus convenience.
Because it is so slow flow, right?
Right.
Okay, let's talk about the basics of a system.
What are we going to do?
You can either bring in a designer, a landscape designer, whatever, or a plumber.
I think it's of any size.
You probably best go in the designer, and probably if you have a landscape design done,
you'll probably have an irrigation design done as part of it.
If you're going to do your home, I would avoid the kits.
The kits are nice, but they're very limiting.
Whereas if you go to a sprinkler house, you know, a place that really does sprinkler,
they're going to go ahead and give you the correct parts, and you don't have any worries
about finding a part that's not going to work here, work there.
They'll have any combination.
Probably the most important thing to remember is the system's going to start with your water.
And this is your service water.
This could be a tea this way.
It doesn't matter.
This is the water.
It's going to come up through probably the most important segment of the whole system.
This is a backflow preventer.
From here, the water goes out to your landscape.
If there's a sudden drop in pressure, the water will be sucked back from out in the
system, could come back into your potable water system.
This valve prevents that.
So it's a real safety thing.
Besides being a code, but it's very, very important because you don't want all the gunk
that's growing in the pipe, you don't want that coming back up and re-drinking it.
So after we come out of the backflow preventer, we go down.
And remember, this is going to be kind of out of the ground.
Now everything else is going to be buried.
PVC, which is the rigid white plastic, it's not very stable with ultraviolet.
So we want to have that buried.
So this is going to go underground.
And now this will go out.
And after it goes out, then it comes into a valve.
Bring the sprinkler drip valve in.
And if we can just take this, out there somewhere will be the valve assembly.
And this, these wires, it's your electronic solenoid operated valve that comes back to
your controller or your timer, however you want to do it.
This is a filtering device.
Always keep the filter up.
Never have it down.
And this has a little filter in it.
And then this is a pressure regulator coming out.
So let's talk about the importance of some of these components, one, this is just obvious
for turning on and off the water at the right times.
But the filter's important because we're talking about very small orifices on the emitter tips.
You've got to filter that water very carefully.
And someone has told me that our water has a little hardness in it.
I've heard that.
No matter how clean they try to make it at the water plant, something's going to get
picked up.
And it's going to be something.
So always have this up so when you do take it off, I'm sorry, have this down, so when
you do take it off, the gunk is going to fall out.
Never have it up.
Always have it down.
Right.
So what about the pressure valve?
Now, most Phoenix water runs at anywhere from 40 pounds to 120 pounds, and the drip emitter
systems can't handle very high pressure.
Well, we want to regulate the pressure.
We want to keep the pressure constant because the fittings that go into the line, if there's
too much pressure, they pop off.
Sure.
And so we want to keep it at kind of a constant pressure.
And 20 to 30 pounds is in the ballpark where most of them run.
Right.
OK.
And then, of course, everything you want to hide very nicely.
Well, and that's what this does.
It's like those valve and all that would go into one of these boxes that are buried
down in the ground.
You've probably, everyone's probably seen one.
Sure.
And you don't have to get as big as this.
You can get smaller ones.
But basically, you just bury it.
Bury it inside of the box.
Inside the box.
OK.
Well, let's get a little further into our drip system here.
And then, probably, once you get out beyond all that, and this could be hundreds of feet
away now.
Sure.
Then this would tee into the PVC, normally a riser coming up, because remember, that's
to be out of ground.
OK.
Coming, and these risers, any size, any shape.
Well, apparently, you can snap these off at just the right heights, too.
Right.
Just cut them off.
Right.
So you buy them this long.
You just cut them off, whatever length you want.
Then out of the ground would be the black, the polyvinyl, because this stuff is much
more ultraviolet stable.
This will take our sun.
It'll take the sun.
Right.
And this is technically the emitter right here.
And this will control one gallon an hour, two gallons an hour, three gallons an hour.
Right.
Let's take a little closer look at the emitter.
Now, we've got a variety of emitters in a variety of sizes.
Oh, there are all.
So emitters, we're talking about anything, any shape, size, color, combination you want.
Mm-hmm.
Tremendous combinations.
Great.
Let's take a look.
We'll talk a little bit more about emitters in just a moment.
This is your control box, I get it?
Absolutely.
And the heart of most of the systems are control box.
And most of the newer ones, you either need to spend some time practicing with them or
hire a 10-year-old.
You know, someone can do a VCR.
And the neat thing about some of the newer ones is the module part.
Pop this out.
Snap out.
Easier said than done.
There we go.
You can snap it out, disconnect this.
You can take this inside, hook a couple of 9-volt batteries, and you can sit down at
your kitchen table with your design or with the, and just.
Program the whole thing inside at your kitchen table and you're done.
Inside and then walk back out, reconnect it.
And the little computer has a memory, so even though it's disconnected for a short time,
it won't lose what it did have.
On my part of town, we had a great shower this morning around 7 o'clock this morning.
We had about an inch and a half of rain in some parts of the valley.
If we've had an awful lot of rain in the valley, you may not want your emitters to
run for a couple of days.
Do most of these have some kind of an interrupt feature where you can stop them?
Some of them have sensors, rain sensors.
But the best feature of most control is the manual switch.
Great.
Let's look at some of the emitters if we can.
Some of the small things.
We'll look at some of the glue.
Let's bring back the emitter if I can that we had earlier.
We'll talk a little bit about some of the sizes and choices that we have.
What's the best way for us to find out if this verbena needs X amount of gallons of
water each time or this Palo Verde tree needs more?
There's a real common misconception that plants grow in gallons per hour or gallons
per day.
What we need to think about more is a smaller plant needs a smaller volume of soil wetted.
And every time the dripper does come on, it's going to wet a certain volume.
A gallon of water wets about a cubic foot of soil.
And if you look at a verbena or a pinstemon or some of these little plants we have here,
you know a cubic foot of soil is pretty good.
So I like that concept better than gallons per hour.
I know engineers love, and it's neat that they can engineer these things, but it's better
to think of wetting a volume of water.
So smaller plants need less amount of water or soil wetted, bigger plants a lot more.
And again, if you go to a professional turf or irrigation company that offers these, they're
going to give you the advice you need to help you design and help you operate your system
the most efficiently.
Well, thank you very much.
Again, this is very, very important in a city like Phoenix where you use up to 300 gallons
per day per person.
If we can bring that down, that's the way to go.
Well Terry, I know regular checkups and maintenance are important for a drip irrigation system.
You showed us some examples of that recently at the Extension Garden.
Let's take a look at that now.
When we talk about maintenance of a drip system, we're talking about many, many possibilities
for something to go wrong because there's lots of different fittings and emitters, and
you can start anywhere you want.
I've just decided to start at one of the more obvious things that some people probably think
they're doing the right thing when they put on one of these Y-Gate strainers.
They put it on, but if you see this one, it's going up, which means when you unscrew this
cap to clean out the filter, any gunk in there will then just fall down into the line.
So the strainer should be down in the down position, and after we've got the strainer
in the right place, one of the best things about a drip system, the timers can be in
all arrays of sophistication, but generally they have a manual switch.
If you hit manual, then you can just turn it on, and by turning it on, you open the
valve, let the water through to the system, and it's an easy way just to quickly check
to see if there are any leaks anywhere.
Here it comes.
So often the drip systems are timed to come on at night or maybe during the day, perhaps
you're not home.
So if you're going to check the system, you need to kind of check it live, and so that's
why you turn it on, and obviously that's the time to see if there are any leaks, and now
we need to make a couple patches, and those are pretty simple to do, but before you make
the patches, first you have to turn off the water.
In this case, it happens to be kind of a drip tape, a polyvinyl drip tape that sprung a
leak, and they're pretty easy to fix, and you just normally cut it, and these handy
dandy little fittings, just slide it on, and then they screw tight and make the tight fitting,
but if it were a black poly line that maybe had drippers or emitters on it, whenever you
go to a store to buy things, always buy extras, the emitters that you might be using.
They're not that expensive, and if you're going to buy 10 of them, just buy a couple
extra because it may pop off, someone may step on it, it may get vandalized, whatever.
So if you have all the extra parts ready and handy, and just kind of keep a little tool
bucket, it's real easy to do it, and if it's all right here, you don't have to run the
store and get it, always buy a few extra of everything.
Another thing that could also work, oftentimes on black, the polyvinyl, and this is probably
the best invention ever made, and they're simply called goof plugs.
If a hole pokes or a head pops off, you can just twist these off, and these snap into
the hole and plug that leak up.
Then you can poke another hole and put another emitter on.
If the emitter pops out, you really shouldn't put another emitter back in the same hole.
So that's why they invented these goof plugs, and real simple to work with, and it just
makes life a lot easier to have all these things handy for you.
We talk about the different kinds of pipes.
We have this rigid white color, the PVC, and then the black is the polyvinyl.
The polyvinyl can take a lot of sun.
PVC, however, should never be exposed to the sun.
It should always be buried.
If it is exposed to the sun, it'll actually begin to see scorch marks and dry out and
become very brittle.
Even the glue that's used to make the fitting connections here, it begins to dry out.
So always, always bury PVC.
The black can be exposed to the sun.
Really an easy way to keep the system cleaned out of sediments and algaes and gunk that
may show up in the line is just have a little fitting that has a screw cap.
It's called a flush-out cap, and with the water on, you just unscrew it and get ready
to get a little wet.
Just let it run for a few seconds, and that'll just flush out anything that may be collecting
in the pipe.
After you've let it flush out for a while, just simply tighten it back down, and your
system's cleaned.
Probably the biggest safety feature in the whole system is some kind of device like this
one that will prevent the water coming back into the potable system in case there's a
pressure loss somewhere.
This one happens to be a vacuum breaker type.
There are backflow preventer types, but this is what keeps tainted water from getting back
into your potable water inside, so you always want to watch this one.
Go ahead, and when we turn it on, we'll see a flush of water coming out.
That's okay.
As soon as the pressure builds up, it should have a solid seal.
I'm going to go ahead and turn it on, and we notice that there's actually a small leak,
which means either the little gasket or diaphragm or O-ring, maybe a little bit of sand or grit
got in there, and it's got a little leak, so it's not making a good seal.
So if there was a rapid drop in pressure, the water potentially could come back into
your home.
Another thing we can look for, if I turn on this gate valve to make sure any fittings
that might be leaking, and I have a sneaking suspicion that we have a leak here, and I'm
about ready to fix it, but it's pretty obvious that the water coming out here, there's something
wrong with this threaded fitting here.
It could be something as simple as the tape that goes around the threads needs to be replaced,
but whatever happens, we're going to have to turn off the pressure, take this whole
piece, cut it, put another fitting on there, because this is unacceptable.
You can't have a leak like that.
What we found here was a leak, and in fact, simply enough, it was just a leak on this
connection down where the riser comes out of the fitting from the PVC, the main service
line.
To take it off, first thing you always want to double check is open up the valve and make
sure that you did turn off the main valve.
Get a pair of pliers, get a little grip on it, and break it loose.
If you break it loose, typically, you can just unthread it pretty simply.
I took that old riser out because it had some broken threads, and that's where the leak
was coming from.
I've already attached the valve on the new riser.
Any time you do threaded fittings, you need to put on some of this Teflon tape, and what
this will do is help seal it much, much better.
Just take a couple turns, and just roll it on, tear it off.
Now we can insert the new riser back in, snug it down.
It's ready to go.
All we do now is put some more Teflon tape on this fitting and reattach it back to the
fitting that was on there before, and that's how you fix a riser.
Main is the drip system.
It's something you need to do probably weekly because when you get out there and you find
leaks or popped heads, you need to fix them because what you want with the drip system
is putting the water strategically where the plants are, therefore, you can have healthy
plants.
So it's a good idea to check your drip system and keep that maintenance up.
If you want to find out more about drip irrigation or xeriscape gardening, a good place to start
is your city's water conservation office.
Many cities provide free information, and some have xeriscape classes and even rebate
programs for conserving water.
It's a good thing to check out.
In Glendale, they've installed a xeriscape botanical garden around the city library.
Glendale Water Conservation Coordinator David Schultz gave Bruce a tour of their demonstration
garden recently.
One of the nice things about a demonstration garden is you certainly get a wide variety
of plants.
Like this one here, it's beautiful.
Well, this Texas mountain laurel is a lovely, lovely tree, and I hope that we see more of
it in landscapes.
The thing that's interesting about this tree is that because of what it says in its botanical
name, Sagunda flor, it means it blooms every other year, so people putting this in their
yard expecting it to bloom every year may be a little disappointed, but it's a tree
that they should definitely consider for putting in their yard.
It's an early spring bloom.
Yes, it is.
Now we certainly can get some vivid reds from this fairy duster here.
Fairy duster is a lovely plant, which I hope also to see in more landscapes.
It is quite vivacious in its color, and also we wanted to show people how large plants
will get, so this is another reason for the demonstration garden, because this plant,
as you can see, is quite large already.
Okay.
Let's take a look at the ground covers over here.
Ground covers play a very important role in a landscape.
You can see that the beauty that they provide, where the fact that there are low water use,
they also can be beautiful, and we tried to demonstrate some of the examples, like the
African trading daisy and the red devil verbena, to show just how much they add to the overall
beauty of a landscape.
This verbena is definitely a very dynamic color of red.
It's gorgeous.
Absolutely.
Let's talk a little bit about trees and how to change emitters when they mature.
Well, most homeowners make a mistake that when they plant a tree, they leave the emitter
right by the root ball.
That's fine for about the first six months, but after that, the roots of the tree are
out under what we call the canopy line, looking for water, so that's why we want to move the
emitters out where those roots are at so the tree can do a lot better, a much healthier
tree.
A garden that's zero escape doesn't necessarily have to be all very dry vegetation.
You can have a very lush part of your garden, can't you?
Yes, you can.
An area such as what we've tried to demonstrate with like a patio area is what we call a mini-oasis
where you'd have a number of your plants that might be a little more water intensive in
their use, but then it transitions out, as you can see, from the plants in the planter
to the turf and then into the zero escape type plants.
Well, Dave, while we're on the subject of shade, what kinds of plants have you found
to do well with little or no direct sunlight?
Well, this is one of the most frequently asked questions, what plants will do well in the
shade, and that's one reason why the zero escape garden has been experimental to see
what plants will do well in the shade.
Like this large was it agave, lovely, lovely agave seems to be doing very well in the shade,
although most agaves do like to have full sun.
Got a ground cover over here with an unusual name.
The elephant food is another very lovely ground cover.
It's a ground cover I hope to see in more landscapes.
People have said it will do well in the sun, but for our use here, it seems to be doing
very, very well in the shade.
And speaking of a dual purpose, plant this vine here seems to be doing well in both the
sun and shade.
Yeah, Carolina Jasmine, a lovely, lovely vine that seems to be doing very well in the shade,
and this is a vine that more homeowners could consider using in a shaded area.
It seems to be blooming and doing very nicely.
Well, we're moving from shade to the sunniest and driest part of the garden.
It's the cactus garden.
And one thing you were recommending earlier was that the cactus, generally the dryer plant
should be planted further away from the house than others.
Yeah, generally an zero escape principle is plants that use the least amount of water
planted further away from the home, and generally because it's a little more difficult, maybe
times the water if they're not on an irrigation system.
And also because most cacti don't need as much water, they, for the most part, can get
by with maybe watering by hand or whatever, maybe once a month.
Great, so you can really cut back once your garden's established.
Oh, very definitely.
You've got quite a variety here of plants as well.
What do you have here?
Well, we have some examples, a beautiful blue yucca, the spiny purple prickly pear, and
for more color, this beautiful coral owl.
So people can see that they can add a lot of beautiful, colorful plants to help in the
transition of their landscape.
And very nice use of the boulders and rocks for accents in the garden here.
Dave, thank you very much for showing us your garden right in the heart of Glendale.
Well, I appreciate you stopping by to share this garden with you.
If you want to visit this garden, you'll find it at the Glendale Library on 59th Avenue
and Brown, just north of Glendale Community College.
Lisa, what's coming up on our next program?
Well next time, Bruce, we're going to learn about edible desert plants and some tips for
growing traditional vegetables in Arizona.
I hope you'll join us.
Arizona Spring Landscaping and Gardening is made possible by a grant from Salt River Project,
working together to encourage the wise use of water by all those who share our desert's
water supply.