Planning Planters and August First Harvest

I recently headed to a local garden shop, less than 10 minutes away from me called Dig It to buy some small planters for our new indoor plants. I am just itching to get out and garden again and spend my entire fall in the garden sneezing, drippy nose and all, and loving it.

August is known as a celebratory time of year that wheat, honey, and the most tender young fruits and vegetables are collected, the biggest harvest – also referred to as the first harvest. And while it’s no surprise in Arizona we aren’t harvesting much because our summer didn’t give us much more than basil and tomatoes (not complaining), our big harvest is in a few months – at least for us over at the Steffen house – citrus!

Here’s a few updates on how our trees are doing and the herbs that have held on throughout summer.

Basil, oregano and chives made it – I planted in spring and they’ve held on through summer! I almost pulled the chives because they looked like grass but then I realize they were clumped together there was no way, oh yeah, herbs haha!

I’ve let a lot of flowers seed, which is what they want to do, and I am happy to not go prune happy on them so I can do this –

I then I can do that, and scatter them everywhere! Free flowers! Unless the birds come and eat them for lunch, of course.

Now onto the citrus trees – grapefruit tree has one last season before she’s removed, sadly. These babies will turn a bright yellow end of November and it’ll be time to juice them.

^^ Lemon, pink lemon and lime.

Our mandarin orange tree got fried. We put a little umbrella over it last year but this year she’s really mad at us so no oranges for us.

Below is the kumquat tree which has a love/hate with us – it’s still there, as for the productivity, meh. But we had our arborist come out and fertilize the fruit trees and we saw an explosion of buds so we’ll keep our fingers crossed for citrus season this winter.

We had a tree drop off last Friday, an Australian Bottle to replace the California Sycamore that didn’t quite make it through the summer. Summer is brutal here, I’m telling you. We have 10 trees, not including fruit trees, or the palm trees. Throw in the six citrus trees we are officially done with the large trees. I won’t say we’re done with fruit trees because there’s always room for a peach or plum if you ask me :)

A few things on the wishlist for the garden –

Cape Cod Self-Watering Plastic Planter Box / Cordie Basket Weave Doormat / Steel Obelisk Trellis / Dobson Wood Garden Bench / 3 Piece Harvest Basket Set

Thank you Wayfair for sponsoring this post.