Behold the luffa! Heat tolerant, with big yellow blooms that reach up to the sky and attract so many bees, it spreads out into a beautiful and interesting vine – all this and funny little gourds. What’s not to love about this fascinating plant?

My luffa vine has been so wonderfully… weird. I started it in the spring in a big ceramic pot, placing it helpfully by the garden arch, hoping to entice it to climb up the trellis and make a green entrance to the secret garden. It made a little vine, bloomed, and died.

It’s too bad it died because it kept making these hilarious little buds. You’ll see what I mean. I just could not stop laughing at this plant.

But then! I must have scattered some seeds in Bed 1 of the secret garden because another vine began to grow.

I quickly realized the vine needed something to climb. I thought my crazy-woman-grabs- downed-branch would look great here in the garden so I used it as a sort of trellis. Besides, real garden trellis are astonishingly expensive.

Well, it liked that, and it grew and grew, and also made hilarious little buds.

Well, then the summer heat hit. We went on vacations. School started. I ignored my garden and then this wonderful thing happened.

The luffa quickly took over Bed 1 and ran over to the trellis, too.

I had to run out to the garden every day to see what was happening. And then…

The first luffas started to appear. With many many more yellow blooms.

And the wonder just hasn’t stopped since.

So that’s how my luffas are growing! I’m obsessed with this plant, and it looks like I’m getting at least 4 fabulous luffa from it. My plan is to dry them and make sponges. I heard you can also eat young luffa gourds, which I’ll try if I have time. I also heard the sponges from the mature luffa are a little scratchy, so those may be best for pots and pans. I can’t wait to see how it all goes!

It was a rare chance to get stuff done without the kids.

The kids like the glamorous part of gardening, the kind that sucks us all in at the beginning. Digging in the dirt. Planting the pretty flowers. Picking the pretty flowers. But, today was all about maintenance. I was glad they were being shepherded off to their activities today so I could get to work.

First, I removed most of the petunias I planted this fall for my BBQ. They were looking leggy and I haven’t been deadheading them faithfully. I kept two plants just for some color but I’m expecting them to die off soon. Ironically you can get a beautiful, large hanging basket of petunias for $8.88 at that orange home place. I’m sure they would look fab for an early spring garden party but once those 100 degree temps hit they have no chance of surviving the summer. Tempting, but no.

Notes to self: next year buy less petunias and let them fill out. The purple ones did the best. Buy petunias for the hanging baskets (don’t try to get nasturtiums to do what you want from seed).

What I did find on sale that could be useful, was 4 for $5 annuals – vincas, marigolds, dianthus, allysum, daisies. I’ve got plenty of vinca, dianthus, and allysum, and daisies never do well for me, but I did stock up on some pest control, er, marigolds. I also found some $2 watermelon and cantaloupe starts, $2 tarragon, and 98 cent tiny little tomatoes. For that price I’ll take my chances whether they survive the summer or not.

Next, I cleared out all the junk from under the grapefruit tree, recreated its moat, and mulched it. Tons of dead leaves and daisy chains of grass were removed. The grapefruit is an oro blanco, and from what I understand, they do well in marshy areas. Being in the Sonoran desert, we are hopeful. Its blossoms smell heavenly and we faithfully fertilize it. 

The grapefruit has two fruits the size of a bouncy ball right now, that the wind hasn’t managed to knock off. They’re growing on those branches nearest to the ground, and one was actually touching the ground. Yesterday, I yanked a particularly pitchfork-looking dry aloe stem off the plant, and my daughter was parading around with it like she was a mermaid holding a trident. It occurred to me that we could use one of these sticks and place the grapefruit branch in the Y to support the fruit and get it off the ground, and that is exactly what we did. Hope this works!

Isn’t that always the prayer of the gardener: hope this works!

My next task was to plant the watermelon and cantaloupe. I planted the watermelon right under the aloe. The soil there seems great, and there’s an irrigation sprinkler right there. I got rid of a few aloe pups and planted one in a little pot for the patio. I wrestled with a third aloe offshoot and decided it’s big enough for the front yard landscaping, so that’s where that will go now that I’ve dug it up.

I have so much freaking aloe. It clumps up and will never die, so I’ve slowly been reducing it to a few attractive plants. Sorry, HOA. We (and the birds) love its towering yellow flower stalks but because this plant is so big, it’s taking up a lot of prime real estate in the yard. It’s a beautiful, spikey work of desert art, but it’s also kind of a PITA. I’ve been poked by it many a time while mowing the lawn and the gardener just lets it make more and more babies. These plants need regular maintenance to look good, as they trap tons of leaves near the center. Luckily I have some long tweezers I use on my cactus garden for this purpose, so I’ll try to clean them up.

I planted some cosmo seeds where the petunias used to be. I expect the watermelon vine will choke these, but not before I get some cute blooms.

I planted a pink berry basket strawberry for my daughter, who loves that color. I set a big everbearing strawberry container on a pedestal I found in the bullseye bin. I stuck marigolds in all my tomato plants. I cleared out some dead pumpkin vine and worried over my beans, which have some kind of pest. We ate one off the vine (a bean, not the pest) and it tasted very… green.

And that was just the beginning.

I yanked half the chard from the hell on wheels planter, and went over to the secret garden to get rid of the chard from there. We’ll have a side dish of chard for dinner tonight with our mushroom ravioli in white sauce. The chard has done wonderfully on the west side of the house, but on the east side, not so much. Oddly, the zucchini is thriving on the east side and not the west. I may just cut back all my oregano in bed 2, which is well on its way to going completely to seed, and transplant the zucchini in its place.

So I’m checking out the garden and well. What a mess. Holy chard, and not in a good way. Spindly sunflowers. Scraggly beats. Fungus ridden malabar spinach.

But the loofah! The loofah is doing amazing this year and climbing up the arch trellis. I think it will survive the hot winds, and I have another one hatching.

I noticed my squash family volunteer is also starting to travel. Now, I’ve had it for awhile and have alternately thought it was a cucumber, or a pumpkin, but now I think it’s a loofah! But alas, it’s growing on the outside edge of my garden bed and I really don’t want to put a trellis there. And, I can’t afford the kind of tall trellis this plant really needs to thrive.

Well, call me crazy but I just had the best idea. A couple Halloweens ago circa the arrival of the fig tree (RIP) there was a giant wind storm that knocked lots of branches down in the neighborhood. Being from the Pacific Northwest I’m used to this kind of thing but the trees here are usually more resilient. Anyway, on the way to dropping my kid off at school I saw some spooky-looking branches out in the middle of the road. On the way back I popped my hazards on and darted across the street from my parked truck. Well, driving by I underestimated how big said spooky branches actually were but I wrestled them into my truck, much to the amusement of passers-by I am sure. My husband certainly wasn’t amused but that’s just because he couldn’t see my vision! Loads of people on Instagram and Pinterest would kill for these spooky branches and the world delivered them to me, for free! Plus by removing debris from the road I did the city a favor! I promptly ordered fake crows and fairy lights and happily decorated our front stoop for the season. Well… maybe Pinterest failed to mention the branches blow over in the wind and actually do create a spooky situation when one is watching TV inside and hears suspicious scratching outside the door! These days, I just use my dead fig tree (RIP) that is conveniently already in a large, heavy pot to hang crows and lights on, and the spooky branches have made their way to the messiest corner of the garden, languishing in the sun.

So today, as I’m leafing (get it, leafing… haha) through the overgrowth of Bed 1 in the secret garden, I get the brilliant idea to use the spooky branches as a sort of trellis for the volunteer loofah! I set it up and it looks awesome. Really sets the tone and character of the secret garden. Just the kind of garden a hag would have, which these days in my 40s is just the kind of the look I’m going for. I just need to get my husband on board to secure the branches from succumbing to the wind. Wish me luck.

I pulled up some old carrots and beets I planted ages ago. Wow, they really should have been ready for harvest before today. They came out short and stubby, which really made me laugh. I’m not sure why this happened, as I’ve dutifully thinned them. We’ll have some sort of steamed carrot dish or just stick these in salad (sliced thinly – they’re kinda tough!), and my dogs will enjoy the smallest ones. The beets were sadly enjoyed by a pest.

I’m not surprised. That garden always has bugs in it.

I left some carrots and green onions to do their thing. The green onions are really shining here, except I can’t remember if I planted chives here too. Probably did. I’ll harvest these as needed but what I really want to do here is plant some acorn squash seeds my mother in law sent me.

So, I made the difficult decision to get rid of the Malabar spinach. It’s not looking so great these days. I read that it transplants easily so I got the idea to put the smaller plants in a pot and see if it’ll take to the arch trellis. Then, I removed the whole big plant and replanted it in this weird side yard we have by the front door. Nothing lives there, only a palm tree and a fire stick cactus I stupidly planted. I wanted one but didn’t want it any place the kids or dogs would get into it. That thing gets so big and it’s toxic to even get sap on yourself so trimming it is such a nightmare. Behind it, I have some beautiful trellis panels that I’ve tried to grow star jasmine on. I also tried bird of paradise there and I’m telling you, nothing grows there. So I untangled the Malabar spinach from one of my tiny dollar store trellis that it was too big for. My, what a chore! I planted the spinach on the other, larger panel trellis, stuck an irrigation pick next to it, and called it good. If it fries and dies, which it inevitably will, I didn’t pay any money for it. Hope this works!

I decided that’s all the damage I can do today, as I needed a break and just got hot. The next tasks will be dividing the aloe and mother in law tongue, planting the tarragon, tomato, the last two marigolds, and the acorn squash seeds. People pay $30 for a nice mother in law tongue and I have tons of it to split up and plant around my house for free.

I’m also pretty excited about this black opal basil. It’s just been a beauty of a plant all season – fragrant, interesting, and surprisingly pretty purple flowers. I want to plant some more so I’m waiting for this to dry up.

That and my other gardening maintenance tasks will just have to wait for another day.

March came in like lion and is still roaring.

It was gusting 36 knots the other day, and the forecast indicates more. Every morning I check outside, worried about what the wind did to my plants in the night.

I have learned that the secret garden unfortunately becomes an absolute wind tunnel in the spring and summer months. I think these winds are called Santa Anas, but even after living here for 8 years I cannot be too sure. Wherever they come from, the W word can be devastating for my garden.

Today I noticed I lost a luffa plant, my blueberry is all beat up, and everything is in a bedraggled state. To make matters worse, the heat is coming and will fry tender new growth.

I have decided not to try too hard with a summer garden anymore. Between the heat and wind and hot winds – it’s just not worth all the drama. I do have a few spring things going, and my winter annuals are on their way out. Let’s take a look around and see what’s going on.

West side yard

Patio – all indirect sunlight

Secret Garden

The season is beginning to transition here in the desert. The lows are hanging out around the mid 50s, and the highs are in the mid 70s to 80s. We’re about to get a heat wave where the temps will be in the 90s. I can only hope that my garden established itself enough for the summer, as this is just a preview of what is to come.

All the cacti have new arms and knobs, and the succulents are thriving. This is always so fascinating to me because they are such slow growers, and seem to store up all their energy for spring growth.

On the other hand, the veggies are coming and going…

There are lots of signs that spring is coming. Around here, the smaller aloes with red flowers bud and bloom before my larger, yellow flowered ones do. My aloe plants send out towering stalks that will burst into yellow bell-like blooms that the birds love. It was a welcome surprise we discovered the first year living in this house. The tall spires have made an appearance, and I will have photos to share soon. Meanwhile, the citrus all seems to be healthy and adapting to being planted in the ground.

If I thought my snapdragons and annuals were winding down, I was wrong. The snappies, sweet William, and geraniums are all at their peak and going crazy. The petunias are also very pretty.

I noticed the luffa and cucumbers I planted aren’t doing a dang thing so I’m going to try again. I picked all my green peppers and am expecting them to push out new blooms any day now. I expect to spend the next week or so finishing up planting anything I wanted to try and get going, and removing anything that is done for the season to make room for new plants. I also saw what looks like powdery mildew in the secret garden so an evening spraying that is on the horizon.

My winter garden is winding down. I was absolutely lazy this year and barely lifted a finger, but I feel like I had the best results ever. This came from knowing my garden space and repeating some things that worked, as well as my usual “just wing it” attitude when it comes to my plants. There’s tons of advice out there on what to do and when to do it, but nothing can touch using experience to guide me.

Discovering Annuals

I planted a ton of petunias, sweet William plants, and snapdragon transplants in mid October, and those are still going strong with color. I probably invested a couple hundred just in pretty annual flowers for a fall BBQ. I wanted to impress the neighbors with a pretty outdoor space, which admittedly is kind of silly, but honestly I would do it again in a heartbeat because of the longevity and little effort it took to enjoy the heck out of these things, not to mention how much the bees like them. I watered every 2-3 days, and deadheaded the petunias when I had nothing else to do or just wanted to escape to the garden. Some of the petunias are on a drip irrigation system but I’ve mostly been hand watering. They’re obviously very forgiving.

The deep purple petunias seemed to do the best, although they fade in the sun. I learned you can trim petunias when they get leggy – cool! I planted everything way too close together. I have one petunia patch that is taking over the space, as seen above, and another set of maybe 12 plants I put in a long planter, pictured below. I could have planted far less plants and still had beautiful coverage. I think 4-6 of them would be just right. When I realized my mistake, I transferred several of the plants all over the garden – next to the sweet William, in my tomato and pepper pots, started new petunia pots, just anyplace that needed a pollinator or color – and the remaining plants grew larger.

Note my snapdragons from seed (of which I still have thousands of seeds) never did a dang-blasted thing. I ended up just transplanting a few petunias on top of them in the pot and called it a day.

How pretty are my snapdragons now? They are on their second bloom. When I planted them in mid October, they weren’t as tall, and I see as they are reseeding themselves they’re encroaching on my dormant trees. I knew they would get pretty tall so I’m glad I placed them in the back.

Strawberry Starts

This strawberry planter was so beautiful earlier with the deep purple petunias and sweet allysum, but the allysum started to look dry and spent so as soon as I saw $30 bird food aka strawberries in the orange big box store again, I yanked out the allysum and opted to try the berries in this container. You will recall I bought strawberries and soil and a container and the whole nine yards a couple of years ago and could not keep the birds out of them – hence the $30 price tag to feed my winged visitors. Well, now that it’s 2025, strawberries are $2 more with inflation, so I hope the birds like them.

FYI the above advertisement was not chosen by me and has nothing to do with my blog. The blog hosting website gets to pick this out and make these kinds of decisions and let me tell ya, some of the ads are pretty wacky! I do not advertise or get paid for my blog. If I did, I would pick better ads that have to do with the content 😉

Anyway, I have no idea what kind of strawberries these are. I have tried types I purchased in San Diego – Seascape. Berry Basket. And none did as well as my $30 bird food, so even though I saw cheaper options, I’m going with the good stuff. Placed in northwest corner with morning sun.

Hell On Wheels Update

My hell on wheels planter is about to go to seed. A few 90 degree weeks and it will be done. Just over a week ago I gave a bunch of cilantro away because I had so much. I also made refrigerator pickles and salmon casserole to use up some dill. My dehydrator gave up the ghost last year so I’m having to use fresh herbs. Still plenty to go around before these bolt. I’m thinking about experimenting with some cilantro pesto.

Funny story, but I totally thought the dill was carrots. After scrutinizing with the old roll some leaves between my fingers and sniff trick, I discovered my error. By that time the plants had taken off! Guess I forgot what seeds I planted again.

I still have my beautiful chard plants going here, too. I learned that I can trim the outside leaves off and keep the crown, and the plant will still keep making leaves. This does not seem to affect the taste. The plants on the west side of the house, as with most vegetables, seem to be doing better than the ones I planted on the east side.

Just Call Me the Secret Garden Whisperer

In the secret garden, the Malabar spinach is winding down. I’m saving the seeds. I got curious one time because it was flowering and then throwing stem after stem of dark purple berries. It finally dawned on me that these contained its seeds, so I squished one between my fingers. Big mistake! It looked like I had been playing with a blueberry pie and it stained my skin. Come to find out the berry juice can be used as dye and the best way to get seeds is to pick the berries and just let them dry out for a month.

I’ve harvested the bok choy outer leaves and more grew in its place. What a lush, green plant! I’m going to plant more – on purpose this time.

We’ve been eating fresh green onions as we need them – they’re not getting real big but they’re fun to grow here. I planted garlic, as well, and it’s doing well.

In bed 2, my oregano is massive. See above note about the dehydrator… worst time ever to have such a beautiful plant. I did finally pull out that nasty spicy basil and have since decided it does not make me a bad person to remove something that isn’t working for me.

Other Veggies

On the other hand, my poor pumpkin plants have been beat up by the wind, the kids, the guy who mows the lawn, and God knows what else. It’s severely unhappy and the new leaves are teeny tiny. I think I need to fertilize it. It still has a lone pumpkin growing, maybe the size of a bouncy ball. I tried to pollinate another bloom and we’ll see how that goes. And here comes another female bloom. It has been pretty tricky to catch the bloom opening up to pollinate it, or sometimes there are just no male flowers to help it along. I hope this plant can hang on through summer so my kids can have some little pumpkins to paint come Halloween. Oh, and the beans I planted as a companion? They’re doing diddly-squat. Or should I say, diddly-squash.

I planted some new tomatoes (sweet 100 bush and early girl slicing tomatoes) and violas with my daughter. I wish I could fill up this whole space with a large raised bed because everything grows well here on the west side of the house.

Smokey’s Garden and Everything Else

Ah, nothing bad to say about good old Smokey. I love him, the hummingbirds love him. Everything is growing in nicely.

My patio has a brick extension that after a bit of sleuthing on Redfin I discovered used to be a dog run. The previous owner left a gap between the brick and the wood border that indicates the start of the grass. Who does that?! Anyway, the kids kept shoveling the sand and dumping it in the grass, so I asked them what they wanted to plant in this gap. They picked out turnips and beets. Facepalm. We put the root vegetables in the secret garden instead and got some sweet William as a filler for my fall BBQ. This area gets no sun, so I wasn’t expecting flowers to happen, but it’s kept up very well and mostly watered by the grass sprinklers. It looks tidy and cheery with these plants there so I’m definitely going to plant those there again when these are done.

Spring Gardening Plans

Well, with the tomato starts, strawberry starts, garlic, cucumber, and peas already in the works, the only thing left to do is replace spent plants with new ones that are adapted to summer. April is just around the corner, and with it comes that 100 plus degree heat famed in our desert. If I can get stuff in early, it might stand a chance to survive. I still have a ton of work to do and the seed packets have piled up. I’m trying melons this year, and I’m interested in seeing if the luffa will do anything (probably not). Zinnias, hollyhocks, cosmos, and sunflowers round out my list.