Late Fall Desert Garden Tour: Surprises, Setbacks & What’s Next

Most of the fall garden is in and growing. Walk with me as I share what’s ready to harvest, what I’m planting next, and how I’m keeping things going through winter. In this tour: when I harvest luffa and pomegranates, what I’m trying for mosquitoes, a small-space update (GreenStalk + mini Vego), and a few new-to-me varieties you recommended that I’m planting this fall.

00:00 Introduction
00:18 Front Yard Fruit Trees
03:56 Back Yard Fruit Trees
05:55 Main Garden
08:00 Back Garden
10:38 Arch Garden & Chicken Coop
17:19 Front Bed
20:34 Containers
21:28 GreenStalks & Elevated Bed
23:22 Side Yard Garden
24:41 What I’m Planting Next

Mosquito trap: https://amzlink.to/az0SgMgqMJPpP

Front yard fruit: pomegranates (harvest cues), calamondin (marmalade!), key limes (how I preserve)
Backyard fruit: Barbados cherry, Meyer & Lisbon lemons (why I pick before full color)
Main beds: cut-and-come-again cilantro & bok choy, broccoli just forming
Back garden: pollinator strip (gomphrena, yarrow, Gregg’s mistflower), amaryllis care after bloom, pepper harvest ideas, rose blooms
Arch beds: trellis netting, luffa timing, mosquito traps, pinching snapdragons, training peas, light tomato pruning, thinning carrots, harvesting parsley
Front bed: garlic feeding, chiltepin harvest and drying, roselle for holiday recipes
Containers: ranunculus & anemone sprouting, lobelia taking off
Small space: elevated bed + strawberries update, feeding with worm castings
Side yard: peanuts check, lots of tomatoes forming, root barrier plans
Planting now: crimson flowering fava beans, Monstrueux de Viroflay spinach, Thom multiplying onions vs I’itoi

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Most of the fall garden is in and growing. Today, I’ll walk you through what’s taking off, when I harvest lofen pomegranates, and how I’m tackling mosquitoes. I’ve got a small space update, too, plus the new to me varieties I’m planting thanks to your suggestions. First up is the front yard fruit trees. The pomegranate trees are getting ready to harvest. It’s my favorite time of year for pomegranates. So, it takes a little while and you have to stay on watch to try and get them before the birds do. But, there’s a few things that you can look for to see if they’re ready. What’s going to happen is the ends are going to flatten and they’re going to get flat on the sides. That tells you they’re getting fully formed. The easiest way to tell if they’re ready is to pick one and see if they’re turning red. then you know they’re ready and best way is to try them. Now these are good. But sometimes the fruit doesn’t turn as red as you would like. That doesn’t mean it’s ripe. So try them. If they’re sweetening up, they’re ready. They like cold nights. That helps them develop their flavor a little bit and their color. But try one and see if they’re ready. So, I’m harvesting a lot of these pomegranates off the tree. I have several that have damage. There’s birds, leafooted bugs, all of those things take a toll on the harvest. The nice thing about pomegranates, they produce a lot. I have several trees and so I still get a really nice harvest. The ones that are pecked a little bit, my chickens love. And if they’re kind of gross um from the leafooted bugs, kind of rotten, my worms actually don’t mind those at all. So, none of these go to waste. And we really enjoy eating it fresh. Um I’ll harvest a bunch, even freeze it, throw it in smoothies. So many ways to use fresh pomegranates. You can see sometimes they’ll get a nice red color and that’s great. Other times, same tree, same plant, not getting the same red color, but check the taste and if they taste ready, then they’re probably ready. The biggest pest with pomegranate trees is leafooted bugs. And so when you see this dry markings on the outside, you know that that’s the damage that they cause. And a lot of times they’ll cause fruit to be rotten. This is the damage that leafooted bugs cause. It’s pretty disgusting. Um, you can throw that in your compost, give it to your vermma composting bins. Um, I probably wouldn’t feed that one to my chickens. I have two other fruit trees that are producing right now. This is the key lime. So, it tells you the fruit’s ready when it drops. So, I’ve been noticing a lot of dropped fruit. I’m coming out and harvesting these key limes. Nice thing about limes is that they are ripe or you can harvest them a lot of the year. So most of the year I can come out and find some, but right now is when we’re getting a really big harvest. I like to preserve the juice, put them in silicone molds and freeze them. So I have fresh lime juice. The other tree is this calamandon. So it is ready, but it’s actually the opposite with this tree. If I pull this off, it’s going to damage the peel because this peel is so thin and then I have to use them right away. So, I actually like to go through and cut all of these off. And calamand are sour. The inside is sour, but the peel is sweet. So, they are perfect for marmalade. Marmalade was my dad’s favorite. So, I love making this calamond marmalade every year with this harvest. Perfect time. So, we’ve got most of them. I’ve got enough probably for a batch or two ready and there’ll be more coming. But, cut them off. Don’t pull them so that the fruit lasts longer. Now, let’s check out some of the fruit trees in the backyard. So, this Barbados cherry tree is now two years old and this is my first time with a pretty good harvest. It’s actually dropping a lot of fruit. I need to get these harvested. It’s kind of fun to grow a cherry tree in the desert. I love Barbados cherry because again, cherry tree in the desert and the fruit is pretty tangy and tropical. There are a lot of little seeds, so I like juicing it and adding that juice to things like lemonade or limeade. Um, really good flavor, but it’s fun. Um, it’s fun to actually start getting a harvest. This gets western sun. Super happy tree, and it’s grown really well. The other two trees that I’m harvesting from in the backyard right now are my lemon trees. I have a Lisbon and a meer lemon. The Lisbons, they’re starting to fall off when they’re ripe, but you can pick them even when they’re green. So, I harvest for a long time on the Lisbons. The Meyers are really starting to ripen, and they tend to ripen all at once. So, I’m excited to have both of those. Let’s go check them out. So, the Meyers, look at this. So, they’re um just a really delicious lemon, and they are starting to get ready. And I’ve been harvesting a couple, but these I do like to wait until they get nice and yellow. And they tend to come on all at once, so you have a whole bunch. But really, this is a nice size. The meerlemon trees are a little bit smaller, which is nice. And then over here is my Lisbon tree, which I love. Uh, the tree gets large. We do kind of prune it a little bit for size, so it can keep a little bit more manageable. But this fruit is yellowing up. And really, I harvest for months off of this tree. And I don’t take them all off until they start to get soft. And that won’t be for several months. So, we’ve got lots of months of harvesting lemons. It’s so nice and convenient to have fresh lemons. Let’s check out the main garden. So, this bed, sweet spot in my yard. If I want it to grow well, I plant it here because morning sun, afternoon shade. So, this bed crops are already taking off and ready for harvest. I’ve got cilantro that’s ready. Let me show you how I like to harvest it to keep it coming. This is definitely ready here. So, just grab the bunch and cut it off. And then this cilantro, put it in a jar here. Helps it last longer. And that’s going to regrow from there. I’ve also got other cilantro around here. So, plenty to harvest. Also have bok choy. So this is mini bok choy. You can harvest it once the leaves, you know, at least about four inches. So you can cut the whole thing off, harvest the whole thing, or just harvest some of these outer leaves, which I also like to do. Just come out and harvest a few at a time. And these young tender leaves are so good. fresh. Can also um cook them as they get older. This kind, this plant’s a little bit small. And I’m not seeing a lot of pest damage on the bok choy. I am seeing some on that cabbage next to it. So, I’ll have to keep an eye on that. But look at that. Just a little bit of harvest right there from that bok choy. Um the cabbage starting to form a little bit. What I’m excited about is this broccoli. So you can see these leaves are getting large and you think, okay, where’s the broccoli? But if you peek down in the very center, that little teeny broccoli head is starting to form. And so all of these leaves are giving lots of energy to that broccoli. And hopefully we’ll have broccoli harvest soon. Let’s head into the back garden. It’s getting a little bit crowded because I’m using this as a holding area. doing a project in the front yard where I’m adding several milkweeds and some nectar plants, but I’m not ready to plant them yet. So, they are all back here by the other nectar plants. So, this floss flower and gumrina are butterfly magnets. All day when the sun is out, there’s so many butterflies out here. I just come out and watch. I actually really love it. Kind of a holding area for those. Um, this area is probably my favorite part in the garden right now. Um, spent quite a bit of time harvesting peppers. There are so many peppers that are ready to harvest. I’ve already roasted and frozen a bunch of peppers. I’ve got more here. Look at all these. So, one idea that someone gave me, which thank you, is to make some um red chili enchilada sauce. So, I have kids coming for Christmas, so I’m going to make up a bunch of that and eat it and then also freeze some. So, we’ll have that. But so many peppers right now. No complaints about pepper season this year. Starting to get some fall blooms on these roses here. Some beautiful blooms. The arch has some pretty blooms, but anytime I see the new roses, I’m loving it. Love those beautiful flowers. The flowers are different than they are during the summer. Even if it blooms during the summer, small kind of puny flowers. These fall flowers, we’re finally getting those nice lush blooms that are so beautiful. You might get an amorillis as a gift over the holidays. And once it’s done blooming, don’t throw it away. Plant it out next spring. Let me show you what my amorillis that I planted looks like right now so you know what to expect. So, it’s going to bloom. Beautiful blooms. And then you’ll get these tall um leaves and just let them go. There’s no blooms. I cut off this the bloom so it doesn’t form seeds because I want all of the energy to go back into the bulb. So, right now these leaves, but they’re going to start to die back. it’s already happening. So, they’re putting the energy from the leaves back into the bulb. Once they’re all dyed back, then I’ll cut off those leaves. And next spring, I’m going to have more blooms from this gifted amorillis. Plant it in your garden. Don’t throw it away. So, as we head into the arch garden, these are all of the flower beds. So, I’ve started putting the trellis netting on them and need to finish getting this down. But I’ll put the first layer, you know, about 12 or 18 in. But pretty easy. Going to lower it down. So, I’ll keep getting these ready. So, these cut flowers are just going to grow up through here and we’re going to have so many blooms. Let me show you the lofah and how I know when it’s ready to be harvested. lofah taking over the chicken coupe. The bees are loving it and I love that it’s not in my garden taking up space so I have more room for other crops and I’m just letting it go because it takes a while for lofah to be ready. I like to harvest it when um it is turns yellow and it’s it’s not ready yet. So this is big and it’s really heavy. It’s going to turn yellow and it’s going to lighten as that fibers in as those fibers form inside. So having a place where it can just grow and fully form on the vine is perfect. So I’m just going to keep it going. I’m Lots of fruit are forming. And if you want to come back here, I’m going to show you how I am hopefully taking care of the mosquitoes in my backyard this season. So, more lofah here. Fun to see. Okay. I don’t know about you, but I have had Well, there’s flies from the chickens. Those are for the flies. But because of all the rain we’ve had, I have more mosquitoes than we normally get. And so, I looked and this might be a good option. I’m trying it out. There are these mosquito traps that you get four of them and set them in the four corners of your property. and the mosquitoes are drawn to it will lay their eggs in there and then you replace those every 30 days. And so hopefully going to see a difference in the mosquitoes. So I have one here, you know, basically in all four corners of my yard up to an acre. My yard is not an acre, so four is plenty, but I’m going to give those a try. I’ll let you know how they do. Okay, so now I have more snapdragons. I know, more cut flowers. Um, but these are ready for me to pinch back. So, I wanted to show you how to do this. And don’t skip this step because you’re going to get a lot more blooms. Um, these are getting really tall. But if I pinch them now, and I might even could have pinched them a little bit earlier, you’re going to get more bloom. So, I’m going to come in above two sets of leaves here. And then each of these are going to form stems. So, here’s a better example actually right here. This one is a perfect example. So, we’re going to cut off this stem right here. And then these are going to form. So, before I get the trellis netting on this, I’m going to come in and um get these thinned. There’s a couple here that need to be thinned. And pinch these back. And then I’ll get the trellis netting on these. I’m so excited for all the blooms. Going to be so beautiful. So, the roses I planted just a couple weeks ago are leafing out. Love seeing that. Really excited to see those take off. They’re going to be really gorgeous roses. And my peas are starting. They’ve emerged and I want to make sure that they find the trellis. But once they get to the trellis, they’ll f they’re fine and they’ll climb right up it. But they can kind of get tangled and do their own thing. So, I’m just going to take these peas and make sure that I’m tucking them up into the trellis, helping them kind of find their way up there. They’ll get there eventually. So, helping them find the trellis so that we can have lots and lots of fresh peas this season. Tomatoes are really taking off. Lots of fruit forming. I haven’t really pruned these a lot. I’m pruning a little bit. When I’m seeing suckers on suckers, pruning those a little bit, but really just hoping for just lots of fruit. So, not pruning as much, especially on something like the sunold. They are fine with that. So, just trying to keep it contained and hoping that this fruit will ripen soon. This celebrity tomato, um, I am pruning it a little bit more and then I will use these clips to help the stems attach to the trellis. The sunold is easier to weave in and among, but these stems get a little bit thicker and so I’m attaching them so they don’t break off because this fruit is a little bit larger. So, making sure that just keeping an eye on them, you know, when I’m hanging out in the garden gives me something to do. Just like I harvested the cilantro, I have parsley that’s ready to harvest. And I harvest it exactly the same way. Get my clippers. So, I’m going to just come in, harvest that. I like to keep it in a jar of water so that it stays fresh until I’m ready to use it. But it’s going to regrow right from those stems. So, I’m going to have a fresh supply of parsley, as much as I can use. Got lima beans that are starting to form on there. Very cute. And then I’m noticing a lot of these carrots have germinated and it’s definitely time to thin them. So, if I don’t thin these carrots, just going to have a lot of little carrots, but I want nice large carrots. So, I’m going to thin them down easily. It’s not too hard to do, especially when they’re young. I just come in and pull them up. But you want to thin down to about 2 or 3 in apart. So, it might seem hard to do, but come in and just think of the big delicious carrots that you’re going to have. You definitely want to come in and do this once and then I don’t know what it is about carrots. I think more germinate, but every time you look at them, they usually need thinning. And then once you have, you know, two or three inches between them. Okay, that’s a good start. See, still some there. So, if you come in with their young, just gently pull them out. that keep your carrots thinned so that each carrot has enough room to grow. You’ll get big carrots. Come back in and thin those. But overall, I’m really happy with how the cool season crops are growing. I am not so much here. Oh, yeah. Look over here. I’ve got some holes in the leaves on these cabbage. So, I’m sure there’s probably some worms here somewhere. I’m not seeing them. Maybe the birds are helping me and eating them. So, I’ll keep an eye on that. If I’m seeing a lot of holes, I’ll definitely come out and handp pick. If it gets out of hand, I may use BT. But, we’ll just kind of keep an eye on that and monitor it. Again, when you’re out in the garden every day, those are the kinds of things you want to look for. Just keep an eye on any pest activity and decide if you want to do anything about it or not. Got some mustard greens here that I’ll come back and harvest later, just like the pock choy. But for now, let’s check on this garlic experiment. It has been super interesting. So, the nonveralized garlic, if you remember, uh the ones that I didn’t put in the fridge before I planted, popped right up. So, they were all up within just a few days. And the veralized garlic, which I put in the fridge for several weeks, is now starting to sprout, but it took longer. So, we’re going to I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes through the season, but it’ll be interesting to see at the end of the season what the difference was and if it helps or if we don’t need it. You know, the low desert kind of goes by its own rules and sometimes we figure them out as we go. So, that’s what I’m trying to do here. So, now let’s check out the chilapene peppers. So, these are a native pepper kind of um people say the mother of all peppers. This is where peppers may come from and they are native to Arizona. So, they are um ripe and ready. So, I like to harvest using this berry picker, the blueberry picker. I use this for chamomile, too, and get the ripe berries off of here. And what I’m going to do is I’ll dry these up and then grind them. You can I’ll leave them whole until I’m ready to use them, but then you grind them into a powder and just a little bit goes a long way. But you can then use that powder to add some heat and flavor to salsas, eggs, you know, whatever it is that you like to do. It’s fun to see these chilapines red and ready to harvest. Once they turn red, they fall off pretty easily, which is nice. They’re a little bit labor intensive to harvest. So, one chilapine pepper is very hot, and I’m going to try one. I might regret it. We’ll see. I’m going to pick a little one. But normally Oh, I dropped the little one. Okay. Normally, I don’t eat them whole. I know. I’m going to regret this. Pretty hot. Yeah, very hot. It’s very hot. It does have a good smoky flavor, but it’s pretty hot. The roselle is still producing. I’m keeping it harvested. I use roselle in some of my favorite holiday recipes and I want to make sure I have enough te enough for tea for the rest of the year. So definitely staying on top of the harvesting. And I’ve got lots of flowers of course growing in containers. And I’m starting to see the renunculus and anemmones sprout. And surprisingly, loilia, which sometimes takes a little bit to take off, is really starting to pop. And I’m really happy to see that in these containers. So I’ve got some little sprouts coming up of the renunculus and loilia here. And I noticed it especially over here just really starting to take off which I love seeing. So really love loilia. Um the sweet peas, the sweet pea flowers are starting to climb. And same thing that I did with the other peas. I want to make sure that they find the trellis and hopefully just fill this up and we’ll have beautiful, beautiful sweet peas. So now let’s take a look at the small space gardens and check in on how they’re doing. The green stocks are all planted out with strawberries. So this one is completely full of strawberries. And this I ran out and so I added some echoy onions at the bottom and then some chundula and alysum at the top. But lots of strawberries in these planters. I’ve been feeding them with worm castings and I’m probably going to start feeding once a week with a fruit and flower fertilizer. Just want to make sure that we get a nice harvest from these. Haven’t seen a lot of action yet, but they seem to be they’re still alive, so they seem to be settling in. Starting to see a little bit of new growth, so that’s good. Um, keep an eye on these. And this elevated bed is planting out and it actually gets the most sun in late afternoon. It’s gets quite a bit of sun. So, I was really happy to see that. I wasn’t sure how this spot would work out with, you know, the we get less sun in the winter, so it’s hard to know, but this actually is getting some nice sun in the afternoon and into the evening before that sun goes down. So, this bed’s all planted. Starting to see the etoy onions pop up. We’ve got peas that are going to climb up this trellis and things are just kind of settling in. I’m not watering this very often. I think once or twice a week even though we’ve been, you know, still warm a little bit during the day, but haven’t really had to water much. So, oh, and there’s a cilantro, couple cilantro that are popping up. So, I think this bed so far, I’m really happy with how it’s growing and hoping to get quite a few harvests from a small space. I’ll keep you posted. I’m going to show you all the new things I’m planting, but first, let’s go check out this sideyard garden. I love seeing this garden bed growing. Last season, it struggled because of all those plant roots. Thanks for all of the ideas. I think I’m going to have to put down some root guards along here. But for now, this season, things are growing well, settling in. It’s growing slower over here because there’s less sunlight, but I’m still seeing new growth and plants really start to take off. So, I’m very happy about that. The herbs are growing well. Okay, peanuts are still going. So, let’s see if I can find a peanut in here. I want to let them go as long as possible. I don’t have anything that I’m dying to plant in this bed. So hopefully I really want to get a harvest. Okay, I think I found one. So I think we’re getting close because here’s a peanut. So I will definitely be harvesting these probably in the next couple of weeks. They’re starting to die back more. I love seeing this Juliet tomato. So many tomatoes. One plant covering all of that. Very happy. These Jolene tomatoes doing pretty well, too. Lots of nicesized fruits forming here and really haven’t had to do much with these. Hopefully, we get a nice harvest of these tomatoes. I posted a video about fava beans and one of the hard things about fava beans is you have to support them. they get really large. But a viewer comment told me about these crimson flowering fava beans that not only might have a little bit better flavor. We’ll see. But they’re more compact and so you don’t have to stake them. So I was really excited. I Googled it right away and found some seeds from plantg good seed. Thank you. So I’m going to plant these as spots open up. I also found these from Baker Creek. I’m not sure if they’re the exact variety, but I’m excited to give both of these types a try. So, thank you for the recommendation and I’ll let you know how it goes. I also posted a video saying that I had struggled with spinach and I have. I haven’t gotten reliably big consistent harvest that I like to get if I’m going to give up that spot to some greens. So, someone told me about this variety. I’m not even going to try and say the name. I’m sure I would just butcher it, but they get in Tucson consistent big harvests from this variety. So, I’m going to be planting this and I’m going to give spinach another try. You’ve probably heard me talk about etoy onions. They are a multiplying onion that grows very, very well here in the low desert. And I heard about another multiplying onion that grows well in warm climates. It’s a Tom multiplying onion. So, I had to order some and try them because, you know, onions can be picky sometimes and I love having onions ready to harvest. So, these are tom multiplying onions and in warm climates, you plant them in the spring or the fall and then you do the same thing. You harvest throughout the season and then pull up and divide the plants in either spring or fall. So, I’m going to be planting these and it’ll be fun to compare the difference between the etoy onions and the tom onions and see which we like and just see how they grow. So, thank you so much for sharing your ideas of other crops to grow. It’s been fun to have some new varieties to to try and grow, but thank you so much for watching this tour. Let me know how your garden’s growing and let me know what you’d like to see in the next tour. Want a thriving desert garden? Join my monthly online classes live or on replay and get instant access to past classes and journals. Bring your questions and let’s grow together in growing in the garden