"I'm getting my PhD in urban agriculture, and I've never seen a potted [fruit and vegetable] garden as impressive as yours. You should be in Phoenix Home and Garden magazine!" A neighbor in 2021

​(Glory to Jesus, our creator, for His designs including organic gardening itself which allows us to feed and nourish ourselves as simply as possible with natural materials!)

About ​How to Grow Food Organically in
a Small Space (Read: Mostly Container Vegetable Gardening) and in the Supremely Hot and Dry Low Desert Climate of Phoenix, Arizona (and of Maricopa County)

First, please note that my website looks best from a computer and is most easily navigated that way, too. Click the first photograph at the start of each row to open up a slideshow with bigger photographs from my organic vegetable gardens. You can learn a lot from my photographs and website content even if you are not yet ready to hire me as a consultant.

If using a phone, wait for the large photos to load so that you can view them easily just by scrolling down the page. Soon, however, I may make the phone version load like the website version so that you can more easily see the sections of content.

​​e.g., Texas, Nevada, California, New Mexico, and other parts of Arizona

Though supremely hot and dry low desert gardening is what I have the most experience with, I can also help those in climates less hot than Phoenix, Arizona's ​103-122ish-degree ​summers enjoy organic vegetable gardening and growing food for oneself ​only or perhaps as part of a community of family and friends ​who each grow ​their ​own ​types of food and share the surplus.

Some of the many foods I have grown (mostly in containers) that are photographed in this section follow: cherries, sweet peppers, a first blackberry, cherry tomatoes, melons, guavas, buttternut squash, a vegetable that is similar to green beans, cactus fruit, kiwano melon, figs, kumquats, tomatillos, sage, carrots, a super sweet squash, a delicious spinach substitute, thyme, carrots, beets with mild edible leaves, olive tree, and nopales which are prickly pear flesh of the tastier and more tender cultivars, and kale.
​
To make the most of my desert climate, I am now adding cacti to my desert garden--types that are grown for the fruits and/or the flesh.

Plus I Can Give Tips for Growing Food In-Ground

Most of the food I have grown has been in containers (yes, container gardening in the desert!), but at my last home, I also had a ​large raised bed for my organic vegetable garden. I've also done a good amount of research on edible plants best grown ​in-ground or that can't fit into my relatively small space. And while I grow a number of newer cultivars called hybrids (NEVER GMOs), ​my preference is usually heirlooms for the stability they offer. 

​For those new to organic vegetable gardening, the best time to begin to grow your own food was several years ago, but now is second best. ​Even if you start with just one vegetable, herb, or fruit tree, you too can learn how to grow your own food in your own Phoenix, Arizona desert garden (yard) or in any other hot climate! Container gardening is one of the easiest ways to begin a vegetable garden, and you may never need a raised bed even if organic hot weather desert gardening--not just cool climate or cool weather gardening--is what you have in mind.

Starting your education and planning for the following year four or more months before spring (October or earlier) is ideal, but with the right elements in place, you can even start some things for a fall harvest in the heat of summer. For example, I'm now successfully starting heirloom tomatoes from SEED outdoors in dry 114 F Arizona weather, and my Phoenix summer garden just became much more exciting as homegrown and heirloom tomatoes provide an array of flavors not found at the grocery store.

Making organic Vegetable gardening consulting more accessible

When I looked into it a couple of years ago before inflation took place, a number of vegetable gardening consulting services began with a roughly hour-long, in-person consultation of about $150 and then cost $50+ hourly after that, and not all of them had an organic focus. Additionally, most did not have a potted/container garden specialization, had not tested as many heirloom tomato cultivars, and did not have the specialization of hot and dry low desert vegetable gardening which has many challenges of its own including too few clouds to soften the sun's rays, too little rain, and supremely dry air.

​One of my goals is to help more people than can be helped with those types of consulting services—through e-mail and phone consulting which works for both locals and those outside of my immediate area of Phoenix, Arizona, plus reducing the amount of time spent driving reduces cost. 

As I have spent hundreds of hours researching answers to my questions and learning through trial and error, it is also a goal to save my customers much time, money, and effort! I’ve documented much along the way for sharing via computer.
​
My experience is with growing food organically—mostly potted and in a raised bed—in a supremely hot and dry, low desert climate (Zone 9B), but I can also help those in climates less hot than Phoenix, Arizona’s 105-118ish-degree summers, and I’ve done a good amount of research on plants best grown in-ground or that can’t fit into my relatively small space.

VEGETABLES AND OTHER Food-Bearing Plants I'VE GROWN
In MY SMALL SPACE SO FAR ARE LISTED BELOW
Vegetables, Fruit, Grains, Herbs and Spices, Seeds, and Nuts

I am adding photographs by food category in the blue section just below this one,
 and please note that a few of the flowers are not edible but are for attracting pollinators and beneficial insects.

• Apples
• Aromatics like lavender, patchouli, and geranium
• Arugula
• Asian vegetables like bok choy and napa cabbage
• Asparagus
  
• Beans
• Beets
• Blackberries
• Blueberries
• Boysenberries
• Broccoli
• Brussels sprouts
• Cacti for their fruit and/or flesh; prickly pears are one example
• Carrots
• Catnip for cats
• Chamomile
• Cherries
• Citrus: key limes, limes, kumquats, lemons, mandarins, calamondin
• Corn
• Cotton
• Cucumbers
• Dandelion greens
• Eggplant
• Elderberries
• Figs​​

• ​​​​​​​​Flowers to attract bees & other pollinators​
• ​Garlic
• Gherkins
• Goji Berries​​​​​​
• Goldenberries
• Grains like oats, barley, 

           sorghum, and Job's Tears

• ​​Grapes including muscadines
• ​Green beans--pole and bush
• Green bean alternatives
• ​Green onions
• Guavas
• Herbs and spices like parsley, sage, oregano, fennel, peppermint, rosemary, thyme, basil, spearmint, lavender, cilantro, bay leaves, celery, dill, caraway, ginger, lemongrass, turmeric, galangal, lemonbalm, fenugreek, and mushroom herb
• Hibiscus calyces for tea
• Hot peppers
• Jujube fruit
• Kale
• Kiwano melons
• Leafy vegetables like chard, collards, mustard, orach, and shungiku
• Lettuce
• Louffa/luffa sponges
• Melons incl. watermelons​

• ​​​​​Millet seed for birds
• Moringa ​​​​
• Mulberries
• Nasturtiums
• Neem tree
• ​​​Okra​​​​
• ​​​Olive tree
• ​Papaya
• Passion Fruit
• Peanuts
• Peas--snow peas, snap peas, and shelling peas
• Pepino melons
• Pomegranate tree (my last landlord kept it, but I cared for it for two years)
• Potatoes
• Pumpkins, squash, zucchini
• Radishes
• Some rare fruit trees
• Spinach
• Squash
• Stevia
• Strawberries
• ​​Sunflowers
• Sweet peppers
• Sweet potatoes
• Tamarind
• Tomatillos
• Tomatoes
• Turnips
• Yerba mate 

ORganized by Food Category
Photographs of Some of the Food-Bearing Plants
 ​That I Have Learned to Grow 
(Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs, Spices, Grains, and Peanuts)​
In my Desert Garden (Technically Two Gardens over 5 Years)
​

Apples

Arugula

Asian Melons

Barley

Basil

Bay Leaves

Beans

Beets

Blackberries

Black Goji Berry Plant

Broccoli

Brussels Sprouts

Cactus/Cacti
For Edible Parts Including Fruit

Caraway Seeds

Cantaloupe-Type Melons

Carrots

Catnip

Celery

Chamomile

Chard

Cherries

Cilantro

Citrus Trees

Collard Greens

Corn

Cucumbers

Dandelion Greens

Dill

Eggplant

Elderberries

Elephant Ear

Feijoa aka Pineapple Guava

Fennel

Fenugreek / Methi

Fig Trees

Galangal

Geranium

Geranium leaves are edible, but they're mostly used for fragrance.

Gherkins

Goji Berries

Goldenberries

Grapes

Green-Bean-Like Gourd

Green-Bean-Like Vegetables

Green Onions

Guavas

Hibiscus Calyces for Tea

Hot Peppers

Jujube Fruit

Kale

Kiwano Melon

Lavender

Lemongrass and Red Malabar Spinach

Lettuce

Lettuce Substitute or Salad Additive

Millet
as Bird Seed or for Sprouting

Mint/Peppermint

Moringa Tree
with Edible Leaves

Mustard

Nasturtiums

Neem Tree

Oats

Okra

Olive Tree

Oregano

Papaya

Parsley

Passion Fruit

Patchouli

Peanuts

Peas

Pepino Melons

Pomegranate Tree

Potatoes

Purslane

Radish Greens

Rosemary

Sage

Sorghum Grain

Spinach

 Spinach Substitutes (Five Excellent Ones)

Starfruit Tree

Stevia (Natural Sweetener)

Strawberries

Sunflowers

Sweet Peppers

Sweet Potatoes

Tamarind Fruit Tree

Tatsoi

Thyme

Tomatillos

Tomatoes

Turmeric

Turnips

Watermelons

Winter Squash (Pumpkins, Butternut, and Hard-Shelled Kinds)

Yerba Mate Tea

Yellow Squash

Zucchini

​And a Video

of my Organic Vegetable Gardens

​One long slideshow of many types of mostly food-bearing plants is below.

​I have had my own organic vegetable gardens in the low desert of Phoenix, Arizona (Zone 9b) and of Maricopa County for ​5 years, and below are many photographs from my two organic vegetable gardens (one using a raised bed and containers while the other is almost completely potted). I have grown over 100 varieties and types of edibles/food--with more varieties ​being trialed now--of vegetables, ​fruit, ​culinary herbs, grains, seeds, peanuts, cacti, and 'medicinal herbs' (that's what they're called, but I believe that God designed *all* of his foods to create healthy bodies and that there's a spiritual component to health)--in this supremely hot and dry desert. If you have your heart set on desert vegetable gardening or even just want to look into what it would take to succeed, I'd love to help you plan your desert vegetable garden or even just learn how to garden in the desert!

A WALK THROUGH my
ORGANIC Vegetable GARDEN (A Container Vegetable Garden)
on april 17, 2021

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