I have an experiment with Tepary beans planted outside over two months ago in a raised bed of dead dry soil. It's sand and dust. They are said to grow with only natural rainfall starting with the summer monsoons and with the recent rains they haven't shown at all. For all I know the beans have been quietly eaten underground, but am still waiting...

I was looking at those too. I was actually thinking of getting them growing with supplemental water and then seeing how little water it would take to grow them to maturity.

Of course nothing will replace my tomatoes, cucumbers etc but it would be nice to be able to still have a garden in case we get water restrictions here.

I'm trying burgendy okra and malabar spinach. Underneath bushes where I still irrigate, I am trying to grow bush beans. I also know that my yard long beans will survive in drought; but only produce when they get soaked. So, if I get them going and we have a few good rains from time to time, they'll give a good yield. Also, mulching with straw this year and it has really helped keep the soil from drying out so quick. Happy Gardening!

May and June are the driest months of the year and the monsoons are 8 weeks away. No better way to test it!

Here in low desert of S. Calif, we don't get those monsoons normally. It did rain this morning though! Looks like you'll get a downpour, from what didn't fall here, within the next few days. Guessing anyways.

According to our morning paper, it has not rained on May 8th in a decade! Go figure. CNN headlines said it was the "hottest first quarter on record", but not here. Only 53 degrees here this morning. This is good for those tomatoes I was late getting planted but sure is weird weather.

As for this being the hottest first quarter on record, I'm not sure about. After the NOAA and NASA were caught manipulating weather data to support global warming, it's hard for me to believe what the government agencies say. I believe that this 3 month report came from them.

However, it has been a great winter for us :) And, yes, my late planted tomatoes are loving this along with pretty much everything else that I planted.

subsmith, I too planted Malabar spinach and Burgundy okra. I also planted Quick Pick Pink eyed Cowpeas and various other types of okra together.

You said that you mulch with straw. Doesn't that bring a lot of weed seeds to your garden? I have a strawberry patch that I wanted to mulch with straw but was afraid of the weed seeds it might contain.

Since it is so nice out now, it will be interesting to see how some of the other drought tolerant/ heat loving things that I planted do when it heats up. The purslaine is doing great now. Some of the other things that are supposed to take the heat like the Orach, Aztec spinach,Calaloo Amaranth,Guvar Beans Armenian cukes, Mosaic yardlong beans and Egyptian spinach are still babies or just sprouting.

I think that I need a bigger garden :)

Mary McP in Phoenix, I hope you get some of the rain. Often, it flies over us and either dumps in the high desert or keeps going all the way to AZ and pours like crazy. We had 1/4" of rain here. In Orange County they had a 1/2" of rain. It's still cloudy so I'm hoping there is more, but it will probably pass us by. It was soooo cool today I planted some of my cool weather crops as an experiment. Optima Lettuce, Beets, Carrots, and Red Vein Sorrel. Probably will fail, but had some extra seeds and only used up a bit of space under my tomatoes (which I single stem and support with a spiral stake).

dustdevil13 (where?) I'll have to try some of those crops. Add them to my wish list. I have grown armenian cukes and yard long beans successfully. The armenian cukes all depend on the seed. If you can get it growing, you should do fine. They get quite large and cover a large trellis or arch. But some years, the seeds just don't get going well. I have stored the fruit in the fall like winter squash and they kept quite well in the hard-shell stage. I make a hearty fall stew that uses the butternut squash, armenian cuke, AND even the yard long beans. I was gifted some seeds of the egyptian spinach. Do you know if it's better to start them in seed flats first or to direct sow? I forgot about them and need to get them planted! Oh, those yard long beans take awhile to get going. Once they do, you should have abundance. I like them because they do much better than most beans in desert heat. I plant some bush beans early in the year. Bout time the bush beans die off, the yard long beans begin yielding. They will produce till frost, if you don't get ants. I suggest that when the plants are about 6" tall, you remove side shoots that may touch the ground. By training them up, it's easier to control ants (and so the aphids) since they have fewer access points from the ground. I usually put a tiny amount of Surround at base stem of each plant and that keeps the ants off.

dustdevil13 - the straw may bring some seed, but I can pull them and have more mulch. I also have free range chickens. They tend to beat me to the weeding though. Also, I'm mostly straw mulching tree areas and decent sized plants, not the seedlings in the garden. This year, straw is what I had available... economics... and it'll do.

Mary, where do you get your straw? price?

Sub, I live in the Phoenix area.

I'm not sure about direct sowing or sowing in flats for the Egyptian spinach. I direct sowed them and they are just now up. I have them covered with floating row cover to help ward off any insects that may want to eat the little guys. This is the first time that I have grown a lot of these things.

Good advice on the yard long beans, I will try that.

I too have chickens but I don't really let them in my enclosed garden with so many things growing in there since they like to eat things that I don't want them to. I do let them graze in there between plantings.

With the straw, there is really only one thing that I worry about getting going as a weed in my garden and that's Bermuda grass. You are right. Hay is filled with weed seeds. I have horses and even though I buy quality hay, there are always weeds in those bales.

I may give some straw a try but I am still hoping that I could find something that looks better too. I know that sounds weird but I like my garden to look a certain way and straw is messy.

Mulching my fruit trees with it sounds good though. I use composted mulch but it fills the tree wells and leaves little room for water. The only thing is I wonder if it will stay in place when it's windy.

Mary, thanks for the insight into the manipulation of data. Their dishonesty drives me crazy :)

You guys were lucky because I am east of Phoenix and we only got a few sprinkles.

dd13, if you're worried about the wind you can toss a few rocks on top for a few weeks, or a bit of rough compost, or even kitchen peelings. Myself, I just pulled up some weeds, lambs quarter, and tossed them on top to hold things down. The hens had them mixed in within a few days, so now you can't tell it had weeds there. For my garden, I find my hens move the hay more than the wind, but our typical wind rates are only 15 mph. Again, the main reason I'm using the straw is because I have it on site this year... and prices on everything have gone up. It's about economy. It's more important to mulch twice a year, the drier the climate gets. So, I use what I have.

The last few years I've stopped digging in ammendments, and begun mulching more. The last two years I've used wood chips that tree companies dropped off in the yard in a pile. I composted it down a bit and then used it as a mulch. Another year I had some manure from a small dairy. This year, it's the straw bales that insulated my coop thru winter. They say a good compost has at least 5 ingredients. So, I theorize that I should change my mulch layer, as materials are available, to build up that variety in the soil to feed the soil organisms. Just like Mary McP said, you can manipulate data so easily..... as I just did... to justify using straw this year. ha-ha.