Excessive Heat Wave

I was nervous about going on a two week vacation and leaving my precious plants to be hand watered by a kind neighbor during the hottest month of the year. Our cisterns and water barrels had long since run out of rainwater. In preparation for the trip, I started deep watering all the plants a few days ahead.  Dan had read that when the temperture is over 80 degrees that plants can't transpire, so they don't take in water. Since we don't have a drip system, I had to wait until it cooled off in the evening or early morning. I used that time to gather my Zero Waste assessories for our road trip.

For our deep watering we use a method recommended by a local arborist. Dan had drilled two small holes in five gallon buckets.  We use three buckets of water on each of our three jujube trees. It takes 20 minutes for each bucket to drain. Luckily, we have three buckets or I would have been there all night. I did that same process with our moringa, pomegranate, fig, and curry plants. The day before we left, I even watered our cactus garden, agaves, and an acacia that hadn't started to leaf yet. On the night before we left, I used the hose to slow water our Mexican Honeysuckle that usually get our sink rinse water everyday.

Meanwhile, I took pictures of our plants to include in the directions for our neighbor (which included filling the bird bath.) I didn't get much sleep that night worrying about my plants and all that water!  I guess you can call me a parachute plant parent. And I still had to plant my sweet potato slip in the morning! 

After a lovely family vacation, I finally got the nerve to text our neighbor to see how things were doing. She said the plants were doing well. She enjoyed two tasty cherry tomatos. Whew! 

When we got home three days later, I was shocked to find that Tucson was under an excessive heat warning! 

One of the tomato plants was looking pretty sad (despite having several tomatoes on it.) Our mint plant that was struggling before the trip was now dead along with some tomato volunteers. (Mint never makes it in our yard... Go figure...) Some of the leaves on our sunchokes were a little crispy.  Oddly, our moringa had flowers. Usually they get flowers after they are really big. And one of them was really struggling.

After 12 hours on the road, I stayed up late watering my emaciated plants. 

I was actually surprised to find that the sweet potato plant was flourishing with new leaves (in the compost under the bird netting cage.)

And the curry and some of the tomatoes were doing just fine. Thanks to my kind neighbor! Of course our native plants were doing great. The acacia now has leaves, and the mesquite has lots of pods. I was surprised to see how well the jujubes were doing. All three have lots of little fruit! Maybe those shiny leaves make it durable?  

Since I got home I've been kind of sleep deprived, staying up late and getting up early trying to water the plants in my garden before it reaches 80 degrees.  It was 78 degrees at 5:30 this morning! When am I supposed to water them?!! We haven't even washed our dirty clothes from the trip yet because the greywater irrigates the fig and pomegranate and we don't want to waste that water if they aren't taking it in. 

When I decided to write this blog, I figured I'd reach out to some gardening experts on Facebook.  

I heard that plants can't take in water after the temperature reaches 80 degrees. With this extreme heat way into the night, how are you watering your plants? Also, are there some plants (heritage figs and pomegranate or native trees maybe) that have adapted to take in water after 80 degrees?

Jared Kitty Katt McKinley from Spade Foot Nursury gave the best reply: 

That is an overstatement. And it’s a dangerous one because it leads people to making bad choices. One must water plants when it’s hot and dry. Plants most certainly take in water above 80°. It’s kind of ludicrous to suggest otherwise. Especially native plants that evolved with monsoon. Sometimes institutions take research done in other places and extrapolate. I would pay that advice no heed as it really doesn’t apply to our climate. Plants cool themselves off by taking in water and letting the water evaporate from their leaves. If they weren’t taking in water after 80° they would die. One can always expect some wilting and visual struggle in some plants, particularly new plants in summer. But as someone who has started countless plants in summer, I’m here to tell you that so long as you water consistently and correctly, your plant (given it’s appropriate for our climate and properly planted) will make it. For whatever it’s worth, I think it’s best to water in the morning in summer if only because you don’t want a plant to spend it’s driest hours during a hot part of the day.

Thanks, Jared! So what did I learn from all this?  That I should check with our local desert plant experts before getting sleep deprived. I think it's best to water early in the morning or late at night so the water doesn't all evaporate.  We need to get those other two cisterns installed before the big monsoon rains start! And hook up a string of clay ollas to them so they can be self watering! I'm so grateful to have native mesquites and drought adapted jujubes that do great on just the water that sinks into their catchment basins - and palo verde volunteers that shade our little garden.  

I plan to finally get a good nights sleep... well... as soon as I water the moringas. 

Larger considerations:

Planning for Urban Heat Resilience

PAS REPORT 600 BY LADD KEITH, SARA MEEROW

Yummy palo verde seeds ripe for the pickin'

Want a native food snack that isn't as spiny as some?  You might have some growing in your own yard!  I spotted these palo verde pods hanging over the backyard fence. 

It's so much easier to pick them from the tree then bending to pick them after they sprout in my garden!

If you gotta pull them from the ground, you can munch on the new sprouts!  

But they won't be as tender and sweet as the green palo verde seeds. Just crack open the pod and pop the seed in your mouth.  Unlike mesquite where you can gnaw on or suck the ripe pod, the palo verde pods are bitter.  But the seeds are so delicious - reminisent of edamame. (And you don't have to blanch and salt them.) 

Yum! Palo verde seeds! 

Unless you want to blanch and freeze them... But why wait when you can have a yummy snack right now?  

nom nom nom

For more ways to serve palo verde, check out this blog. 

And here's how to harvest mesquite. 

Attack Your Water Bill from All Directions!

by guest blogger Steve Barancik

Can you improve your sustainability? We have! At least when it comes to water.

This is our most recent water bill. As you can see, our water usage has been trending sharply down over the last two years. We're now at about 30% of average residential consumption.

We've managed this drop despite:

• Keeping a garden
• Keeping chickens
• Nurturing a couple fruit trees (while giving the death penalty to a couple others)
• Planting trees and cactus constantly!

It can be done...and you can save money while doing it!

(And remember: lowering your water consumption lowers your sewer bill as well.)

THE STUFF WE'VE DONE

We guttered up part of the roof, where runoff was not being made good use of, and attached the gutters to a tank....

That water now goes toward fruit trees and the garden.

Do we use ollas in that garden?...

Why yes, we do.

We turned off the irrigation to our landscape plants....

You'd be surprised how many of your plants are established and don't need it!

We removed the "weed-control" plastic from both front and back yards....

We used passive water harvesting techniques to:

-redirect (and infiltrate) water where it's needed....

- keep water from jumping the curb and leaving the property....

- and capture water that runs by the property or runs onto the property from neighboring properties!...

We dug a basin and diverted alley runoff to support a mature oak without groundwater....

And by the way, we eat from that oak. So do our chickens!

One key thing we do is make use of our graywater...and here's the thing: We don't HAVE a graywater system; we ARE the system. We capture shower water in buckets....

...and sink water in a dishpan.

(That's Lisa—the other half of "we." She thought of the dishpan as a graywater tool!)

We even catch laundry water in a bucket!...

The tank holds the laundry and spins. The spigot drains the water

Oh, and speaking of buckets...

Why would I go out of my way to get a straight-sided bucket? Well, it certainly makes scooping water out of a flooded street easier! All it takes is a quarter inch rain event for me to be able to fill basins that aren't filling on their own.

I'm a big believer in the water-saving powers of mulch....

I not only try to make use of all the debris and cuttings from plants on my property, but...

I've been known to rescue landfill-bound rakings from neighbors as well!

I even use a technique to irrigate BENEATH my mulch in order to lose less moisture to evaporation.

When it comes to water, I contextualize our use by comparing it with what falls on our 8,257 sq ft lot. At 11.59 in. of rain in a normal year, we have just under 8000 cu. ft. falling on us. Our groundwater use for the last year was only 3300 cu. ft., so I'm pretty happy. I'll be happier still if you're able to put any of these techniques to use yourself!

Another benefit...

This shaded walkway didn’t exist when I moved in six years ago...

Steve is a teacher who thinks his students deserve better than what we're leaving them. You can read more on his facebook page. 

Spineless Prickly Pear Brunch

As Dan and I steward in place, we are enjoying the desert bounty already growing in our own backyard - our spineless prickly pear! My friend Duane tells me this isn't prickly pear pickin' time... But our spineless prickly pear is ripe for the pickin'!

You can identify this variety by the yellow flowers, pink and burgundy fruit and the new beaver-tail shaped pads with little curved conical green leaves. 

For the past few weeks Dan has been harvesting the ripe, burgundy colored fruit and making delicious prickly pear syrup. You can watch our "how to" video here.

Dan holding the fruit with tongs and brushing off spines 

Meanwhile, I have been harvesting our nopales and preparing them for breakfast and snacks. This has come in real handy since we aren't going to store as often in an attempt to avoid the crowds during the pandemic! We don't really have to tend the cactus like I do with our other edible plants. Though Dan occasionally dumps some kitchen rinse water on them when they are looking really desiccated.

harvesting the younger pods with bbq tongs

Lately I have been harvesting the new pads. FAIR WARNING: the word "Spineless" in the name is misleading since under the curly leaves are white spots with tiny spines that can stick to your fingers or tongue if you're not careful. I got one in my finger that was irritating me to no end last night. The younger pads are darker green and smaller (averaging 5 inches) than the older pads that appear spineless. The older pads are tougher and not as tasty. 

younger prickly pair pad with leaves ready to be harvested

Here's how I prepared the pads...

First, I put them in a plastic bowl to keep them from moving around as much. I hold them still with salad tongs as I scrape off the leaves and those sneaky spines under the leaves.  I found it easiest to use the grill scraper we had in a bbq kit. You can also scrape them with the blade of a knife - but then you can't use the bowl to control them. 

Next, I rinse off the spines with water and and pour it out over on the cactus. (We try not to waste water since we live in the desert.) 

I found that the spines on the edges of the pad are difficult to scrape off, so I use the salad tongs to hold down the pad while I cut off the end and the sides of the pad. 

Then I cut them into pieces. 

Finally, I rinse off the nopale pieces to get rid of the rest of the spines and to rinse away the slime. Notice that I am doing it outside to keep all the spines out of my kitchen. 

I don't like to waste anything, so I pour the slime water around my potato plants. I hope they like it. 

These pods produce a lot of slime. (Think "Ghost Busters.") They need to be rinsed off several times until most of the slime is gone or you lose patience. 

Then I dice an onion and saute it with the nopales. 

sauteing them produces more slime

You can eat them like that on a tortilla. But we added tomatoes, potatoes and eggs to make a yummy scramble. I microwaved a potato while I was cooking the nopales. When the nopales were cooked (tender and lighter in color) I  removed them from the skillet, added a splash more olive oil, and fried the potatoes. I added the nopales and chopped tomatoes, scooted them to one side of the pan and scrambled 3 eggs on the other side of the pan. Finally, I stirred it all together. 

nopales scramble! Yum! 

Meanwhile, Dan blended some prickly pear syrup, lemon lime seltzer and spiced rum to make a prickly pear cooler to have with our nopales scramble. We enjoyed a yummy brunch on the patio with a lovely view of hummingbirds pollinating our prickly pear blossoms. More fruit to come! 

Now that's what I call stewarding in place! 

For the Love of Tucson: Creating a Desert Oasis to Combat Climate Change

When I first moved to Tucson, it rained most every day during monsoon season. I remember waiting for it to cool off in the evening so we could take the little ones to the pool. Inevitably we would wait in the car as a storm swept by. Then we would enjoy the most luminous sunsets as we swam - storm clouds catching the brilliant hues of the setting sun. That was the beginning of my love affair with this stunning desert. But it wasn’t until I witnessed the ravages of record heat and sparse rain on our own little monsoon garden that my heart became totally invested in fighting the effects of climate change on our desert town.

I've often pondered how climate change would affect Tucson.  Nobody knows exactly.  But, from what I've learned, climate change often seems to intensify the extreme weather of a particular area. In that case, Tucson would continue to experience rising temperatures, prolonged droughts and more severe floods. That means even more flood damage as storms further erode the banks of hard, dried river beds.

The desert will eventually return to its natural state with or without us. But if we don't stop savaging the earth for profit, Tucson could become a stark, barren desert. If we don't change our ways now, even our iconic saguaros won't be able to survive the scorching heat.

I sometimes wonder what will become of my little house after finally paying it off. If temperatures continue to rise, would my boys still want to live here? Would they even be able to sell the house if they decided to leave? That's one reason I'm dedicated to finding ways to lessen the impact of climate change on our town or at least find ways to live here comfortably.

Anyone who is paying attention knows we need to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and curb our wasteful consumer lifestyle if we want to stave off climate change. But for Tucson to be more resilient, we need to learn to responsibly use the resources the desert has to offer: the power of the sun, native flora and fauna, and our seasonal rainwater.

We can start by implementing solar energy* to keep our air-conditioners running and planting native shade trees to cool our neighborhoods. But to be really sustainable we need to start living in harmony with the desert. No, I'm not talking about living off the land like the Hohokam before us. I'm not talking about giving up all of our modern conveniences. (Most of them can be adapted or retrofitted to be more environmentally sound.) I'm talking about restoring as much of the desert habitat as possible in an urban environment. I'm envisioning our neighborhoods as desert oases with edible forests of native plants and desert rain gardens with drought tolerant heritage crops. You've probably seen some lush desert landscaping or cool community gardens popping up around town. That's what inspired Dan and I to plant our own edible forest irrigated with rainwater and greywater and to start experimenting with drought tolerant crops. We are working towards food security.

How do we transition Tucson into an urban desert oasis? The first step is embracing the nature of the desert we inhabit. Stop trying to force it into something it's not. Stop bulldozing it and paving it over for perpetual development. Shut off the sprinklers that water those little patches of grass in front of businesses. Sorry, manicured lawns don't belong in the desert - native plants do. We need to rethink our perception of tidy xeriscape landscaping and stop suffocating our native vegetation with plastic and mounds of gravel. Why on earth are we raking up all that great organic matter that could be nourishing our soil and allowing the rainwater to sink in? And all those weeds we "Roundup" can help prevent erosion.

Noooo!

One of the biggest concerns of living in the desert is having a reliable source of water.  Right now Tucson depends on CAP water. A whole coal-powered generating plant was built to run the pumps that push our water 336 miles uphill from the Colorado River. Unfortunately, that source isn't sustainable. As droughts continue, there will be more competition for that diminishing water supply. The river supplies over 40 million people in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Mexico as well as a $5 billion-a-year agricultural industry.

The good news is that there is enough annual rainfall to supply every Tucsonan's water needs - if we harvest the storm water. While the city and county work on their own green infrastructure improvements, we can incorporate rainwater harvesting features that keep the water in our yards to irrigate our native landscapes, edible forests and drought tolerant gardens.

Diverting roof water to wood chip mulch covered catchment basins conserves water which helps to restore our aquifers. Those near a river or wash can even help infiltrate water to the aquifer. If you wanna see how it's done, you can tour Watershed Management Group's Living Lab and Learning Center. Using a combination of cisterns and earthworks, WMG harvests enough rainwater (during a regular monsoon season) to meet all of their needs - including irrigating some fruit trees! But more important are their efforts to restore Tucson's aquifers and get our rivers flowing again.

Underground cistern at WMG's living lab

By returning our yards to a more natural state that allows rainwater to sink in, our hope is that it will replenish the Tucson basin and get the rivers flowing year around.

But here is an even greater vision!

 

If we could get everyone on board, we might even be able restore the riparian habitats by the rivers. We could transition to green infrastructure throughout the city. We could all use earthworks to sink in more of the storm water in our yards, schools, churches, business properties, and empty lots. That would slow down the rush of water before it gets to the rivers and washes. That native vegetation would act as a sponge allowing flood waters to sink in! There would be less flood damage. (Extreme weather costs Tucson and Pima Country $9,449,667 a year.)

Restoring the riparian habitat would attract more birds and other wildlife to Tucson. Arizona is already a bird lovers' paradise with ecotourism contributing to our $21.2 billion tourist industry. Imagine Tucson becoming the hub of ecotourism!

     
What is your vision for Tucson?  Would you like to ride your bike along a flowing river surrounded by twisty mesquite? Pick a fig from the orchard in the park? Enjoy the sight of  hummingbirds, butterflies and other pollinators fluttering around desert shrubs in a traffic median? Snack on some yummy edible weeds without worrying about pesticides? Stop by a neighborhood garden stand for some freshly harvested salad fixin's? Wouldn't it be cool if a local farmer grew drought tolerant heritage white wheat and amaranth by the Santa Cruz river to be milled right here in Tucson and baked into healthy bread in Tucson's own native grains bakery?

That's me holding a bag of freshly milled mesquite flour.

 I have a dream. I believe Tucson can thrive in the future if we reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, cut down on waste, restore our desert flora and fauna, and use the desert's resources responsibly.  Instead of polluting our water by mining coal, we can use one of the desert's most abundant resources - the sun! Why not power our vehicles, homes and businesses with solar? We can retrofit our older houses and business buildings to conserve energy and water. We can have neighborhood micro food parks with safe bike and walking paths. We can make Tucson THE ecotourism destination by attracting more birds and wildlife to our urban desert. And all those desert trees sequester carbon!

Brad Lancaster shows how a curb cut lets in street water to irrigate mesquite trees.

We already have a great community working to make Tucson more sustainable: Sustainable Tucson, Feeding Tucson, Community Water Coalition, Sonora Environmental Research Institute, Sonoran Institute, Watershed Management Group, Tucson Water, the 2030 District, Local First, Zero Waste Tucson, UA Compost Cats,  Desert Harvesters, Iskashitaa Refugee Network, Arizona Master Naturalists, The Sierra Club, Tucson Audubon Society, Pima County Master Gardeners, Mission Garden, Community Gardens of Tucson, Trees for Tucson, Native Seeds/SEARCH, the Pima County Seed Library, Living Streets Alliance, the U of A, the Desert Museum, and the Community Food Bank's Community Gardens. Several schools like Manzo Elementary and Changemaker High have gardens.

The Pima County Department of Environmental Quality has a manual on green infrastructure. The City of Tucson and Pima County have pledged to fight climate change and even implemented a Green Infrastructure fee. Check out the Mayor's Million Tree Program. 

Let's work together for a sustainable future for Tucson!

MORE ABOUT GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE IN TUCSON

https://www.sustainablelivingtucson.com/2019/09/support-tucsons-green-stormwater.html

MORE THINGS YOU CAN DO...

What Kind of Climate Champion Are You? 

Exploring food forests in Tucson

Brad Lancaster's Documentary:

Water Harvester: An Invitation to Abundance - Arizona Public Media