Permagarden

10/10/2025

Check out this tour with Brad Landcaster showcasing this permaculture community outside of Tucson.

Brad Lancaster leads us on a tour of the Milagro Cohousing Community, completed in 2004. Milagro is located in Tucson, Arizona, and the design is centered ar...

10/09/2025

https://youtu.be/0WGiLaAAEoo?si=h4AXdVnSbiqZ6n2D

This animation is one of a series developed to support public understanding of the principles of landscape rehydration and restoration.This full series inclu...

10/06/2025

10/03/2025

This is so typical that I look for it when examining trees and shrubs. Buried crowns. I removed about 8” of material to uncover this trees crown / root flare.

The crown and up need to be exposed to air. If they are covered moisture can begin to rot the bark. This decay affects the phloem, part of the trees vascular system. Inhibiting nutrient flow throughout the tree. This is vascular necrosis and often the cause of weak sickly looking trees that never seem to thrive and eventually rot and fall over .

Although I do believe that a lot of these cases are due to blatant negligence of the proper height that this part of the tree needs to be eventually placed. I think part blame is likely that trees are not back filled in a way that the soil under the root ball has adequate compaction. That and if you use non composted soil or even wood chips in the root ball you can expect subsidence as that organic material decomposes.

So all of this causes our planting to sink over time. Adding detritus and more organic material will naturally congregate in low spots and sink holes. Adding more matter around this sinking already too deep plant.

02/13/2025

I moved this bottle tree. I made irrigation swales to bring passive rain water to the trees basin before staking and mulching it in.

01/15/2025

01/09/2025

12/01/2024

I ran into caleche when digging a planting hole for this Desert Ironwood tree. I didn’t want to plant the tree on a hard pan of solid caleche which is rock hard. I dug down a good 4ft and still found caleche. At this point I did a water test and filled the hole with water to test how well the drainage was. The water had thoroughly drained by the next morning so I felt comfortable planting the tree from there. I made sure to compact the backfill as I refilled the hole. Then I used a 6ft level to make sure the crown of the tree was not lower than the surrounding landscape. You can see this well by looking at the picture where I filled the basin with water upon planting the tree. Later I filled this basin with compost/ mulch. The end product is a heavily mulched, not-too-deep, seamless with the landscape tree. The broken up backfilled hole with great drainage will promote healthy deep root growth now that there isn’t a solid layer of rock like caleche in the way and the mulch will help retain moisture. All of this is in a basin that will hold water during an irrigation or rain event to store water that is applied faster than it can soak into the ground. AKA passive water harvesting.

11/25/2024

A great desert tree, check it out!

When you see a desert ironwood tree (Olneya tesota) you know you are in the Sonoran Desert proper. Found in desert washes and on low hills, often in gravelly to silty soil, below 3,000 feet, the desert ironwood's range is identical to the range of the Sonoran Desert, proper. The only other organism that has such an identical range is the lesser long-nosed bat.

Desert ironwood is also a habitat-modifying keystone species, that is, a species that exhibits strong influences on the distribution and abundance of associated species. It is important as a nurse plant for many younger plants--providing shade and protection as they grow, as well as providing habitat for animals that make nests in the trees, as well as below the trees.

Possessing one of the hardest and heaviest woods in the region, desert ironwood grows slowly but steadily, and some trees are estimated to be about 800 years old! It is remarkably resistant to rotting, perhaps because its heartwood is rich in toxic chemicals that make it essentially non-biodegradable--a dead ironwood tree trunk will persist as long as 1600 years!

Usually a multi-trunked tree, sometimes single-trunked, plants can grow as large as 50 feet tall, but normally much shorter, especially in Arizona. More commonly in our area they get up to about 30 feet tall and wide. They bloom in April - May and are followed by seed pods. Native bees are the primary pollinators of ironwood. The tree is also a larval host to the Rawson's metalmark (Calephelis rawsoni).

For information on using ironwood as food (especially the seed) check out Desert Harvesters page on Ironwood.

Grow ironwoods in full sun with moderate to low water. It is hardy to about 20º F. Ironwood is slow-growing if you rely on rainfall, but on irrigation it grows much faster.

While Ironwood is not endangered or threatened, its populations dwindle annually over tens of thousands of square kilometers.

11/12/2024

Implemented an irrigation system upgrade - new timer and installation of a swale around this lemon tree. Now it will passively collect rainwater that falls here from the drain on the roof.