• A cistern installed at Manzo Elementary School.

Want to go green at home but need some ideas? The Watershed Management Group is conducting their second home-scape tour from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 20.
Watershed Management Group's Green Living Co-op has been helping Tucson residents since 2008. They use a barn-raising model where co-op members earn discounts on installations at their homes by volunteering hours and labor at other co-op member homes. It's a great program. I wrote about it here.

To find out more about the tour, check out excerpts from a press release below:

More than a dozen home sites are featured on the tour, demonstrating a wide array of green living practices — including rainwater and greywater harvesting; local-food-growing urban homesteads and chicken coops; wildlife-friendly native-plant gardens; solar energy; and a variety of composting systems. All the homeowners on the tour worked with Watershed Management Group’s Green Living Co-op to install green features at their residences.

The wide variety of water-harvesting practices along the tour route should be of special interest to Tucson residents, since the City of Tucson recently announced new rebates that can significantly offset the cost of implementing rainwater harvesting at home. The City also offers rebates on home greywater systems that redirect household water from sinks, showers, or laundry machines for landscape use. Seeing examples of qualifying projects at homes along the tour will show visitors that installing more desert-friendly features doesn’t have to break the bank — or the homeowner’s back.

Centrally located homes were chosen to encourage people to take in the tour by bicycle, with suggested routes weaving through bicycle-friendly neighborhoods — some of which also showcase street-side features that harvest stormwater to grow native shade plants and beautify the city. Local bicycle-advocacy nonprofit BICAS will lead a leisurely paced group ride that passes by most of the sites, and some sites will have snacks and drinks ready to refresh bicyclists. In addition to the home sites Manzo elementary school will be open for student led tours of the sustainability features of their campus including cisterns installed with the help WMG’s schoolyard program.

The tour runs from 10 a.m. — 4 p.m. on Saturday, October 20, and homeowners will be on hand to guide tour participants through the green-living features at their homes. Cost is $10 — or $5 for bicycle riders, public transportation users, and those who carpool. Children under 14 can come along for free. Advance signup is required to receive a brochure including maps, suggested routes, and brief descriptions of the features at each property. For more information and to sign up visit www.watershedmg.org/home-tour. No advance sign up is required for the BICAS led tour. Just show up as BICAS (44 W. 6th St Tucson, AZ) at 10 a.m. on Saturday Oct 20.

• Photo by The Contained Gardener
• Mature Winter Planting - Midtown

Be sure, once you purchase them, to get your plants in your pots that day. If you are not able to plant until the next day, water them well when you get home and put them in a shady spot or one that gets morning sun only.

If you are not sure how to create a well designed pot (the selection of flowers can be a bit overwhelming!), come to my free class next week Saturday.

Putting it all together — Designing a Colorful Potted Garden
Plan your floral combinations for great winter potted gardens. Marylee will demonstrate some of her winter favorites in color combinations that will last all season.

DATE: Saturday, October 20; 10-11 am
LOCATION: Pottery Blowout, 3840 E Grant (just west of Alvernon)
Call 579.9411 to register
Pre-registration is required due to seating limitations.
Cost: FREE!

For more pictures on potted gardens in the desert, visit Sonoran Gardens website today.

Have a question? Email Marylee

Sign up for our Potted E-News today. Receive monthly potted garden information as well as SW Arizona freeze alerts, heat and wind advisories.

• The Contained Gardener
• Winter Color Abounds

If you want to grow veggies but hate kneeling for hours in a garden, you may want to try aquaponics. From the Tucson AquaPonics Project website (www.tucsonap.org), aquaponics is "the growing of fish and plants together in a closed recirculating system."

The organizer of the project, Casey Townsend, offers several events to educate and inspire the public. He reports that aquaponics systems can not only feed people, but also save water, conserve energy and reduce land usage. Systems can be individual size all the way to commercial systems. (Read more about Townsend and the Tucson AquaPonics Project here).

On the first Tuesday of every month (next is Oct. 2), Townsend teaches a free Intro to Aquaponics class, starting at 6:30 p.m., at the University of Arizona Controlled Environment Agriculture Center, at 1951 E. Roger Road.

On Saturday, Oct. 6, a Fall Tucson Aquaponics Systems Tour will take place. The TAPST is a self-guided tour of more than 10 aquaponics systems in the Tucson area. Participants will see different ways of growing plants and fish together. More details will be announced at the group's Meetup site here.

• The Contained Gardener
• Finishing Up a New Garden with Fernando

Potted Gardens 101 in the Desert
Learn about getting started with a potted garden in the desert the right way so that your efforts do not end up in the compost heap!

DATE: Saturday, September 29; 10-11 am
Call 579.9411 to register
Pre-registration is required due to seating limitations. Cost: FREE!

LOCATION for all classes: Pottery Blowout, 3840 E Grant (just west of Alvernon)

Sponsored by The Contained Gardener from Sonoran Gardens, Inc, Landscape Design and Construction

If you are unable to come, email Marylee to receive the schedule for upcoming classes.

Sign up for our Potted E-News today. Receive monthly potted garden information as well as SW Arizona freeze alerts, heat and wind advisories.

• A Tucson Winter Garden

If you have any citrus trees in pots, it is time to fertilzie them with a citrus fertilizer (I like Arizona Best.)

HOWEVER, and this is a big however, if you have planted annual flowers underneath the tree in the pot, be careful. Fertilizing it now with granular fertilizer may burn the roots of the annuals. If this is the case, then use a water based fertlizer instead.

• The Contained Gardener
• Potted Citrus Tree

Use approximately 1/2 cup of fertilzier per pot, scratch it in and water deeply. This fertilizing will also happily cause some new blooms on Mexican Lime Trees and many kumquats!

It is important to fertilize now so that new growth is encouraged well before the danger of frost is here.

Have a question? Email Marylee.

Sign up for our Potted E-News today. Receive monthly potted garden information as well as Southwest Arizona freeze alerts, heat and wind advisories.

This was written about summer lettuce, but the information can be applied to winter lettuce too! Remember: This was all done in pots! The article below is reprinted with permission.

By David W. Mount
Master Gardener of the The University of Arizona, Pima County Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Program

• Lettuce Right From the Garden

1. Harvest the baby lettuce by removing either large 2-4 inch leaves or the entire plant after 2-3 weeks. Slobolt grows fastest, red lettuce in the mixes the slowest, and Jericho is also quite slow. I left one bunch of Jericho plants to grow larger for 4-5 weeks but they became bitter and were not edible (but they had also been attacked by leafhoppers). Red lettuce was harvested as small plants. None of the other plants bolted or were bitter.

2. Plant new seeds as soon as space becomes available.

3. Wash off soil in the sink and store in the refrigerator to freshen up

4. The favorite and most successful variety was Slobolt, which was also present in some of the mixes. The mixes had some other tasty varieties such as oak leaf and other Romaine types.

Have a question? Email Marylee.

Sign up for our Potted E-News today. Receive monthly potted garden information as well as Southwest Arizona freeze alerts, heat and wind advisories.

I could not let this great article pass us by without sharing it with you, reprinted here with permission

Growing Summer Lettuce in Tucson
By David W. Mount
Master Gardener of the The University of Arizona, Pima County Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Program

• David Mount, Master Gardener
• Summer Lettuce in Window Boxes

1. I checked on the web to see if there are varieties of lettuce developed for summer planting, and discovered 2 sources — one was a “summer mix” and a “heatwave blend” from the Cook’s Garden, Pennsylvania and the second was two varieties from the Territorial Seed Company, Oregon — one was “Slobolt,” a delicious loose leaf lettuce and “Jericho”, a Romaine-type developed in Israel. I recommend trying all of these seeds, all of which can be purchased on the supplier web sites. The seeds were stored in a zip-lock bag in the fridge to keep a good germination rate.

If you have been out shopping this week for some new flowers, you will have seen the first batch of chrysanthemums in the centers. You certainly can use these as a burst of color for the fall, but I do not recommend them as a perennial for the long term in our desert pots.

• Chrysanthemum

I always like our pots to be full of color. Mums will have their bloom time and then be green. Dedicated gardeners may be able to get them to bloom again but I do not have the patience to wait, often a full year and then still no blooms (for me at least!)

Instead, watch for osteospremums as they will give you a much longer season. And if you really like chrysanthemums, use them in a small decorative pot for temporary color.

• The Contained Gardener
• Osteos in All Their Glory!

For more pictures on potted gardens in the desert, visit the Sonoran Gardens website today.

Have a question? Email Marylee, Tucson's Potted Garden Expert.

Sign up for our Potted E-News today. Receive monthly potted garden information as well as SW Arizona freeze alerts, heat and wind advisories.

Long walls and square pots can add to the linear look of a back yard wall.

• Two Squared

We typically design in odd numbers—there is probably some psychological reason for this, but we know it works. These two pots just did not seem right against this wall. I added a third pot—round in shape—and twisted the squares to change the angles.

• Voila!

And here we are with three weeks of growth.

• 3 Weeks Later!

For more information on potted gardens in the desert, visit The Contained Gardener of Sonoran Gardens.
Have a question? Email Marylee

• The Contained Gardener
• Summer Potted Glory

We can make good use of afternoons with major cloud cover to give our plants some respite, add some fresh late summer flowers and to consider planting tomatoes for a fall harvest.

Watch for the forecast of high chances of monsoon activity for several days in a row. Hoping that our temperatures are below 100, plan to do some planting during this period.

Good plants to watch for are:
** Zinnias
** Osteospermums
** Pentas
** Angelonia
** Salvias
** Gallardia (Mexican Blanket)
** Coriopsis

In September, you can add petunias, snapdragons and some late season marigolds to this list!

Early girl tomatoes and other varieties that are 65 days or less to fruiting are your best bet.

Plant early in the morning, water deeply and if we do not receive the afternoon cloud cover, give the new plants a little shower of water to cool things off.

It would be a good idea to give your tomatoes some shade covering (draped over the tomato cages) on full sun days.

Now is the time to fill your pots with additional color that will carry you into November!

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• The Contained Gardener and Sonoran Gardens Join Forces

I am staying on with Sonoran Gardens through the transition and will make sure that our free potted garden classes continue with yours truly!!

Questions? Email Marylee!

If you would like to speak with someone directly, call 520.579.9411 or visit our combined website!