Gardening during one of the hottest Phoenix Octobers on record? Here’s where to start

Fall has officially arrived in Phoenix. The weather has finally cooled off, Halloween is just around the corner. You might even be wearing a sweater!

But, just this week, the temperature was 10 degrees above normal. Saturday’s high reached 100 degrees — a record. And, even with the temperature drop on Tuesday, we’re on track to hit the hottest October on record this year.

So, if you like to garden, or at least try to: What season are we even planting for?

Mellissa Kruse-Peeples, master gardener and all around desert gardening guru, manages the garden at Arizona State University’s Polytechnic Campus and helps with urban garden education and outreach. Kruse-Peeples joined The Show to shed some light.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So I went out to your garden in June of this year and we talked about the heat, this record, hot summer, the hottest ever, and we talked about how this increasing heat has made it harder to garden through the summer, which you used to be sort of a disciple for. So now it’s lasting into fall.

MELLISSA KRUSE-PEEPLES: Exactly. I mean, normally we start feeling that crisp, cool morning like we have this morning, in mid-September. You know, as soon as the stores start getting pumpkin spice, it’s fall. But this year, no, that heat just kept lingering and continuing and to top it off, we really didn’t have much of a monsoon. And so, yeah, we’ve had it rough, the last few weeks.

GILGER: Rough is a way to put it, but it’s finally cooling off today. Talk about the impact that this heat, this extended heat through October, almost the end of October has had on your garden. How has it changed things?

KRUSE-PEEPLES: Yeah. So I’ve actually lost more landscape plants this year. I lost some barrel cacti from the heat, and so I’ll be replacing those things in the next couple of weeks, which is a great time to plant more landscape plants, so they get established over the winter. So they’re bigger and can survive our heat.

But it’s really mentally made me think about how we just have to kind of hedge our bets because some falls arrive on time at the end of September, and then I think this will be kind of our new normal to have the heat linger through October.

But the one thing we can’t change is the rotation of the earth. And so the days are definitely getting shorter once we pass the fall equinox at the end of September. And so hard to believe it here in Phoenix, that we could be losing sunlight. And so the days getting shorter just means things grow much slower. And so we do want to make sure that we plant in October and early November before it gets super dark in December and January.

And so plants need sunlight to photosynthesize and to grow, and so things kind of really slow down come December. And so that’s why I’ve been so torn and in such a hurry to get everything growing in the garden because it’s just getting darker and darker. And you know, it’s not fun to garden with the headlamp on at seven o’clock at night.

GILGER: Which I’m sure you’ve done, it sounds like you’ve done that.

KRUSE-PEEPLES: Exactly. Right.

GILGER: OK. So, even if it’s 100 degrees in October or more, it’s still the time to plant because those days are shorter.

KRUSE-PEEPLES: Exactly, yeah. And so we need the warmth of the day, maybe not 100 and 10 warmth, but to allow roots to grow. But, we just need the sunlight and the more sun, faster things will grow.

GILGER: So you’ve based a lot of your gardening on how to garden in the Sonoran Desert, the fact that you can garden in the Sonoran desert. You created this sort of timetable of Arizona gardening seasons, which are very different than what you might see back east or something. So, let me ask you then given this record summer and now record fall of heat in Arizona here, are you changing that calendar?

KRUSE-PEEPLES: Not sort of the basic calendar of what to plant when, but maybe the timeline of exactly when go-time is. And so normally I like to have all of my fall garden planted out by the end of September that last week of September. But, I delayed about two weeks and I’m still planting many things. I haven’t planted my garlic or my onions yet.

And sort of the slow burn, and a lot of nurseries actually delayed having any plants, especially leafy, green vegetables, a lot of flowers like pansies and things, they do not like over 100 degrees. And so nurseries were really delayed too in what they had.

And so inside, I had all these plant starts ready to go outside, but it was still so hot. And so some of those didn’t make it outside and just, they were too large. But then when things have been planted, they’ve been growing really fast and things. So, so some adjustments on when the go time is, but not necessarily what?

GILGER: All right. So, last minute here, you brought some samples for us. So, what are you harvesting right now? What are you planting right now?

KRUSE-PEEPLES: Yeah. So there’s many things that thrived in our hot monsoon. I had the best melon year ever. And that’s what I brought with some yellow Tohono O’odham watermelon, and so I had the best watermelon season. Normally, I take them out in mid September, but they kept going through October. And so, it’s a great one and cantaloupes grew well throughout.

GILGER: That is so good.

KRUSE-PEEPLES: Thank you. Throughout the season. And so it’s kind of like some things thrive but other things, maybe not so much. So, I had a really tough time with green beans, which I normally do in September, but they are just kind of fried. They don’t like above 100 degrees.

GILGER: It’s been too hot for that.

KRUSE-PEEPLES: Right. And then what I am planting now is I just did some more lettuce last night, all those leafy greens, spinach and then the roots like carrots, turnips, radishes, beets. And then my favorite is growing broccoli. So, I do broccoli every two weeks all throughout October and November.

GILGER: Why spread it out like that?

KRUSE-PEEPLES: Well, no one in my house likes to broccoli every meal except for me. So by spreading it out, I can just kind of keep the harvest going over a longer time rather than having it all in one day.