Garden Tour After Being Gone All Winter & Adding New Walking Paths

In this particular video I finally make it back to my property and garden located in Valle, Arizona which is at 6000′ elevation and in 6b-7a growing zone. I give a tour of my gardens after being gone all winter and also add a few new garden paths.
Music…
English Country Garden – Aaron Kenny
Side Path – Kevin MacLeod

good morning everyone hope you’re having a beautiful day this is Aza from garden days I just made it back to my property here in northern Arizona we’re at growing zone 6B 7A it’s a beautiful sunny day today with a slight breeze which is amazing M you look so comfy yes are you glad to be home after a long winter this winter I was very fortunate we traveled to the east coast and I was able to see so many other Gardens and get some inspiration but today I want to show you my garden and how it looks and uh what’s growing I left the property and Garden at the beginning of November and it is now may and we are just getting back the first day we got back was very gloomy and rainy which I’m glad for the rain cuz we are in high desert and that doesn’t always happen here it’s like we live in a Vortex and there’ll be rain all around us except right here but anyways I just want to show you some of the garden cuz there was a few surprises that I wasn’t expecting this is my Courtyard here like I said I haven’t been here all winter so excuse the mess I need to still clean up and in the distance those are the mountains in Flagstaff that are still covered in snow and that is humre peak and I think the tallest one is called San Francisco Peak but I do own 20 acres if y’all have never been to this channel before or seen my other channel where I did start most of this stuff but I decided to separate the Channels cuz my other channel is mainly about traveling in an RV so that I want to keep that separate and this channel is more about gardening which is one of my favorite hobbies so this is an overview of my vegetable garden we’ll start here now from this side these are newer garden beds and as we work over here it progresses to more established garden beds and the one against the fence was my first vegetable garden now as you can see I didn’t really clean up anything I just left things cuz I heard that it was better for insects it gave them a place to overwinter so I didn’t clean up any of the garden and I said when I got back this spring I would clean up but we’ll start over here right here tucked in the corner is rhubarb and I did transplant this last year and it did struggle but it looks like it’s starting to come back actually it doesn’t look like it died during the winter which is strange cuz usually dies back and that’s happened with a lot of things let me step over here like we’ve got some onions that are growing now some of didn’t do good last year but the ones that didn’t are now starting to come up this year oh and the Dinosaur Kale overwintered I can tell where it died off but I grew Dinosaur Kale the previous year and it didn’t overwinter it just uh didn’t come back but it seems like this year since I didn’t really cut anything back it kind of protected it it’s very cool some friends and I installed this pallet fence around the garden here but unfortunately there are rabbits and I guess mice that still like to Burrow under so I had to put in this fencing here so it keeps them out of the vegetable garden I still need to paint this fence here on this side but the rest of it has been painted I planted a grape there but it did nothing actually moved the grapes over to that side well it seems like this broccoli has also survived it’s the one and only which if it goes to flour and seeds I’ll probably collect the seeds cuz if it can survive winter that would be amazing then this is where I planted my potatoes and as you can see some are coming back up behind me here is where my sunflower patch was and it’s a lovely spot for that cuz I can when the sunflowers get tall I can support them by the fence and I have an asparagus patch here usually I did greens here but I’m not sure if I’m going to repeat that process and I don’t know if I’m going to focus on annual crops this season I’m actually gearing towards perennial crops and things that pop back up like the asparagus I really need to clean the garden don’t I but I did save the seeds for the sunflower so I’ll just throw those about and see what comes up and I do have shots here that have come back up from last season I didn’t Harvest those this apple tree has been going for I think this is going on its third year we got one lone apple on it last year we have two apple trees in this Garden here and they got grazed by rabbits at the bottom luckily this one survived that one did not unfortunately and look it I have collared greens coming back and a whole row of onions there coming to this side of the garden bed there’s actually a leak right there that survived the winter the strawberries this is what this is a strawberry patch and I did have some what was gr there pepper plants there but I think I’m just going to make this all strawberries cuz they come back year after year I don’t have to worry and fuss this here is my herb garden and this one is My Rosemary and it survived the winter thankfully it just needs to be sheared back we have Sage here and this is th and these are more onions that I planted under this apple tree that didn’t survive but they look like they’re doing good I can probably Harvest those but there’s more Sage here and what was that I don’t know about y’all but I’ve planted so many plants throughout the seasons that some times I just forget so I might should get some plant labels to put on things there was a plant label this is oregano I should have known that and this was a surprise to me that the parsley survived I didn’t think that would survive the winter but it did it’s coming back and this is chives back to the front of this bed this is where I planted my brasas like I said I’m going to try to focus on perennial crops that come back cuz I just feel like that’s more my style because lettuce and Stu I get organic lettuce and it’s pretty cheap at the stores and this is where I actually planted all my tomatoes this is my tomato run I’m going to get rid of this Juniper I believe this season and plant a fruit tree here cuz it just causes too much shade and it is a water hog it just sucks all the water in this is where I planted my grapes here and I made the little trellises for them this was or last year was their first year so they’re going on their second year they’re going slow but over here is where I planted raspberries and um blackberries I think and then there’s also um another Grape at the end there now remember over here are new garden beds I just started them last season and some of them are not even planted I just laid the cardboard down and put heavy Mulch on top which you can see there’s still some weeds that want to poke through so I’m going to have to go in and weed this Garden I think I’m going to install a bed that wraps around this way here and the entrance is right there here I have horseradish growing now this will spread and make a nice patch but I just planted it last year and it’s now just starting to come up I have two figs right here and we are we get so cold that these do die back but they come up from the base every year cuz they’re a cold variety and there’s nothing here I was thinking about putting maybe another fig or some berries here speaking of berries we do have the honey berries I planted these last season and there are three bushes right here they actually did struggle a bit last year but it looks like they’re doing pretty good this season and there’s a bee it’s a bumblebee how cool first bee I’ve seen of the season I’ve seen those bumblebees at uh the Grand Canyon cuz I live about 20 mil away from the Grand Canyon but I’ve never seen them here at the property but it seems to like the honey berries maybe I’ll plant another honey berry right there with honey berries they say they need two different varieties to actually produce fruit so I forgot that’s what I wanted to put here that’s why I left that space CU I wanted to get a different variety of honey berry and I’ll probably just get those from online cuz our local Nursery only carries this variety here I have another fig planted back there behind the salt Bush now once that gets established cuz I moved all the figs they were in the main Garden but I actually moved them into the vegetable garden so this is going on its second year in this spot and once it gets established I’ll remove this salt Bush which is a native to this area and don’t worry there’s plenty of salt Bush out there we have no problem with salt Bush so yes I will be ripping this out and this is another thing I need to work on is my pots I don’t know if y’all have an issue with but it’s just like when you buy plants and and you just have so many pots I know I can recycle them and return them but from time to time I do like to use them and plus I have friends that are planting out as well so I like to I tell them they can come get pots but I need to do something better where it’s not it’s an eyesore maybe put it somewhere where it’s not seen I do eventually want to put a greenhouse all along the shipping container there I think that would be amazing but that’s a later project and this is a view from this side of the garden over here in my container garden I actually had a lot growing I had squash um I had all different kind of mints and B bomb I kept them in the container so they don’t spread cuz I did have one sector that it did spread a bit anyways this is also where I grew my tomatoes in these pots here if you wonder what these are these were actually my little Greenhouse domes that I used when I first had my seedlings so it would protect them and just in case we got any cold weather and this is how I store them I just put a rebar in and just put them in but I have to pick those up it looks like some have blown to the side oh no and my little pig mailbox that my friend Jennifer gave me has blown over like I said I have a lot of cleaning to do in the garden I’m just trying to show y’all what it looks like after the winter here in the laundry room is where we keep all the garden tools just Tools in general then here we’re going to go into the main Courtyard where I started we’ll start on this side and like I told you we do have a native which is a salt Bush and it has no problems I do need to cut it is kind of growing big in that spot and we did miss a lot of the Tulips we saw some of them but we weren’t here for most of them so we also did plant daffodils which have come up and we missed there is some Dian this that I planted from seed there’s some tick seed and hot poers some um what is that called Valyrian and there’s Yaro there this is a twoin one peach tree it’s going on its second year so it hasn’t produced any fruit for us yet we have a mid Pride Peach which I’m sure is midseason and this one is a what is that let’s say Florida Prince Peach and I think this one is a later Peach we have more native plants over here and there’s actually a Japanese maple but it’s struggling so I might actually move that I don’t know what it is it just does not like this spot I was hoping it would kind of fill in this area and I could remove some of these salt bushes this is another native here it’s a barberry this can be a very irritating plant because instead of the Thorns being on the branches they’re on the leaves and when these dry out out they get even pokier so you don’t want to like grab these and if they poke you they leave I don’t know some kind of residue or something it’s just it itches for a while it does get covered with beautiful yellow flowers from time to time I do have an empty part of the garden right here that I have to figure out what to do with now I do have a Foria there maybe a hedge of Foria would be nice here with a little garden feature like a water fountain or something like I said I definitely need to be better about labeling my plants cuz I forget what is here now I know there’s a dog wood there you probably can’t even see it this is going to be its second year so it’s only one year old there’s more valaran there and that does have a tag more tulips look at this one’s growing in the salt Bush I need to cut this salt Bush back now over here I planted a bunch of apple trees that I was going to espo once they got a little bigger but that one was the only one that made it the rest of them died off I B bought them in a plant sale and I thought oh awesome they’re on sale but yeah they were dead so that’s why they were on sale I did get my money back fortunately and then underplanted here I planted a bunch of native plants that way they’re drought tolerant I don’t have to water them as much well besides the comfrey more tulips and I can’t even remember that that is but it does look like it needs to be replaced it’s I don’t know if some rabbit ate it or whatever and we have hella over here which survived the winter I’m very surprised at that it could have something to do with being sheltered by this pinion Pine which is another native here it’s just weird I don’t know if rabbits got to them and just planted these tulips but I did not plant the Tulips here and they just are popping up and my friend Jeff did not plant any tulips in his garden and look he’s got some popping up over here now in his garden he’s got some sand cherries which are completely covered in pink blooms little tiny blooms aren’t those pretty and then in the front he’s got three cherry trees planted he’s still trying to figure out what to do with his garden over here by his area he went ahead and planted oh a butterfly oh squirrel anyways by his parking area he actually planted this pear tree which look at all the flowers on it looks like it’s doing good it’s got bugs all over it it was good bugs Little Bees and stuff not bad bugs this garden bed here which is mostly shaded we have hooka planted here and also Yaro which I’m going to have to move because it does not like this spot obviously Yaro likes Dre Sun so if I would have just moved it from there all the way over here then it probably would have done better cuz this is a sunny spot right here we have some irises we missed unfortunately and then there is my blueberry plant I had to put in a pot because anytime I put a blueberry in the ground it just did not like it so we’re trying this and hopefully it’ll work in this spot here is more of a drought tolerant area I have Yaro butterfly bush Sedum and I think that’s it GH I have to get to the outdoor furniture but we just kind of cluster it together and cover it for the winter on the deck since it’s covered and in this garden bed here I have a raspberry bush form so it’s not supposed to spread too much and it just gets into the size of a bush over here we have lavender more of the Tulips that popped up that we missed and here is Globe malow which the old needs to be cut back it’s a little green that’s popping up there and that’s a native plant it gets beautiful orange little flowers on it that are kind of bell shaped upside down bell shaped anyways there is some dianthus which looks like survive the winter it is perennial though so and we’ve got pin cushion here believe that’s yeah the pin cushion there’s three of them I did a little drift here then there’s more of the globe mow this kind of spreads by ryom underneath the ground not everything is popping up yet and I don’t remember what I planted like I said I need to be better about tags cuz then I’ll remember where things are but we have more daffodils over here and then back into the Shady part of this Garden um let’s see oh there’s a hellbore it’s struggling I replanted it here what was it last season cuz I think it was in too much sun in its last spot and it just was not liking it so hopefully it does better here so just give it a chance to get established sure this grass here doesn’t help this bed here is very weedy and it just never wants to do anything I did plant some hostas but they did not survive and I’m just going to I have to figure out what to plant here we’re trying to redo some of the garden beds so Jeff is taking this kind of natural fence that we installed several years ago and he’s moving that over there and I’m going to put a gate here cuz this is my drive and my parking spot here on the property so I just want this to feel more attached I feel kind of disconnected a little bit over there this is one of my favorite places in the garden cuz we have this large Juniper here it just makes it cozy I don’t know it feels up the space so it looks good I planted some drought tolerant things over here just because it gets a lot of sun the only thing that’s not really drought tolerant is the blackberries and didn’t seem like they really like the spot I don’t know I’m going to give it a couple years and see what happens so I do have more tulips here and a JuJu bee more native plants this is the salt Bush you just grows you don’t even have to worry about it as well as the Barberry here so I just need to fill in more plants my garden is fairly new most things I planted last season or the season before that this is my awesome Crystal Tree and I don’t even have to water it we have this sitting area here which waa honey to weed and it doesn’t look like much is coming here we have daisies and penamon planted in here also strawberries which are just now starting to come up and Yaro over here that’s actually a snowball VI burum and I thought it would like this spot because it gets um early morning to afternoon and then once it gets hot hot this does get shaded and this will be its third year so hopefully you know what they say third year it leaps we’ll see Jeff if you wait wait a second I’ll help you and then I have the organ grape I’m not sure I don’t think that’s evergreen or it’s died off I’m not sure we’ll have to see if it comes back but we have this mugo pine I planted about five of these and this is the only one that actually survived how pretty these tulips are we didn’t miss these they’re very beautiful I like the color it’s got like a deep wine color with yellow another snowball Viber My Hope was that this would get really big and take up this spot then I could cut back this salt Bush I don’t want to remove it but I do want to cut it back but right now it’s filling in the spot so I don’t want to do anything with it and I don’t have to take care of it it takes care of itself this is a threein one I believe it’s a cherry uh nectarine and a peach all stone fruit yeah that’s looking good I like the fence kind of out of here here we can plant more stuff and then I’m going to put two walkways going into the garden so it’s easier when you’re over here to get across cuz right now there’s a path that leads from over there by my front door and then a path over here leading into the sitting area so in this garden bed here still needs to plan out I put three rose bushes and they did not survive and I’ve got a Black Lace Elderberry here this is going on its third year so hopefully it’ll start growing faster it’s been I mean it’s been surviving it’s not doing bad but I mean it’s not like thriving I have another Black Lace Elderberry growing here next to a cactus and nothing else really see this plant here it looks like a mess but actually what it is is the desert 4: clock and it has beautiful like purple blooms all over it it’s a very beautiful plant and it grows naturally don’t have to do anything it was here when we got here now that we’ve been here a couple years and I’m getting used to how things are laid out some things I like and some things I don’t so like Jeff’s doing right now we’re going to be changing a few things this season and I’m excited for it now I love aelas and I planted two here that actually can grow in the high desert they’re a yellow variety I forget what they are though o this whole area needs to be cleaned up it’s pretty messy so on the that Jeff’s working on we have more apples and behind it is a dry riverbed because I’ve diverted the stream that wants to flow through here during the monsoons uh my whole front area there was flooded out it was just it was like a stream was flowing through there a couple seasons ago so I created this Dry River bed which is not dry all the time just to flow the water through here and into the garden it does get some moisture and the tumble weeds took over and and we’re stacking them over here for now just to get them out of the way but I like the fence here I’m going to put a gate like I said an entrance gate here and in the back but what I want to do is just wrap this around so it’ll feel more like one spot and include these two juniper trees in there I think that’ll look nice and make some Pathways like I mentioned but like I said apple trees lilac fig oh um Russian sage then we have uh what is that a plum another lilac and then a rose bush here a barberry but this is the Japanese not the kind that grow native here this was here when we came so was that and that um nothing’s really coming up here besides the penamon and more penamon this season I think I’m going to buy some plant tags online some nice ones the metal ones and put them by the plants cuz I can remember a lot of plants but I just can’t remember all of the plants there’s just it’s too much to remember I just it’s like meeting a hundred people and remembering all their names anywh who we did this cow trellis Archway through here and I do have a kiwi Vine male and female growing I’m hoping that it’ll grow up the archway and cover this and last season I did some annual vegetables in this Garden but I want to establish this Garden more and just put regular plants in it and last but not least is my sitting area here which my dog moo is relaxing in it’s a nice Shady spot isn’t it MooMoo here’s the mint that’s kind of spreading in the garden I planted one plant here and it’s just kind of spread but luckily it hasn’t really taken over like the rocky area it’s just kind of staying confined to this patch here but there’s one small plant and it just it did spread we got a lot of rain that season that’s the season I had the flood the stream up here so it just took over but I’m okay with that now it doesn’t seem like it’s doing too bad it’s just little patches here and there we have more Valerian there there’s a helan uh but it’s not coming up I see the tag far but there is a rose bush now I think last not this past winter but La the winter before that I bought about six rose bushes and I showed you some earlier and this was a climbing rose bush and it was the only one that survived we have some red hot pokers this was a tomato plant here it was the um yellow Paar and I’m going to probably plant something in here an evergreen just so it looks better all year long yeah a lot of cleanup some pots over there I did get some tulips for my birthday and I planted them here don’t really like them here so I’m probably going to move those really needs to be weeded look at all this grass growing here seege just blow all the wind we get but right here is um it’s a thyme and it’s a ground cover I kind of want it to spread which it looks like it’s doing and I just want it to take over above the Rocks I might buy more and add it in here cuz I just would like the look of that that was the end of the garden tour and there was a few nice surprises that I was glad to see I’m going to go help Jeff with this fence and then do some Garden cleanup [Music] all right all the wood is moved from this area over to here where we’re going to have to build a fence and I’ll be using some of the pieces for posts and then we just attach other pieces like cross members and then do another post exactly like I did this area here I still have to clear this pathway in this grass is becoming very challenging I’m trying to use the shovel but that’s taxing I feel like the hoe works better along with the rake it definitely might not seem like it but it is much easier then I’m going to spread the gravel back through here once it’s done I’m so glad that this is done that was a lot that was definitely a chore and there’s still so much to do so much more to clean up speaking of more to do this will have to wait till next gardening days well I just want to say thank you for hanging out with me today in my garden I hope you enjoyed it if you did don’t forget to give it a thumbs up and hopefully we’ll see you next time here on Garden days if you want to check out more videos they’ll be right over here or if you haven’t subscribed yet the button will be right there we’ll see you next time bye for now [Music]