{"id":2754,"date":"2012-07-08T01:54:03","date_gmt":"2012-07-08T05:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/?p=2754"},"modified":"2012-07-08T01:54:03","modified_gmt":"2012-07-08T05:54:03","slug":"community-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/?p=2754","title":{"rendered":"community garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We had our monthly community garden meeting early this morning. By 8 am it was already mid 90s. The meetings are always fun and informative, particularly as Arizona gardening seems so especially difficult in light of the the climate. You can see above there are a number of gardens growing really well.<\/p>\n

Here are a few things I learned today.<\/p>\n

Lemons and grapefruit trees are especially easy to grow in Tucson. We’re adding three trees to the garden.
\nSoil pH is measured on a scale of 0 to 14. Battery acid is around a 0 and lye is around a 14. Each number on the scale is separated by a factor of 10 (so 2 is 10 times more alkaline than 1). Distilled water is around a 7 (which is considered neutral). The pH level determines the availability of nutrients and micro-organisms. Tucson soil is around 8 or higher. Our water here is also high in pH.
\nSoil pH levels cans be lowered through amendment. Sulfur is slow, but effective when worked into the top 6 inches of the soil. Lots of organic material in the soil helps. However, to break down the organic material (to improve pH levels) comes at the expense of nitrogen. Nitrogen levels will then need to be replaced. Manure is helpful for this. Bone and blood meal do the same.\u00a0 Earthworms are great for soil.<\/p>\n

What to start growing now? Okra and black-eyed peas. Black-eyed peas grow us a bush, so no trellis necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had our monthly community garden meeting early this morning. By 8 am it was already mid 90s. The meetings are always fun and informative, particularly as Arizona gardening seems so especially difficult in light of the the climate. You … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-garden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/muchachopolaco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}