Beets 3 Root Grex
Bok Choy & Asian Greens Hedou Tiny, Tatsoi
Chinese Broccoli 50 day Choy Sum, Yod Fah
Broccoli Piracicaba❀
Broccoli Raab Spring Rapini
Collards Georgia, Nancy Malone Wheat Purple❀
Green Beans Sonoran Canario (bush)*
Mustard Greens Byrd
All-Purpose Peas Velarde (pick very immature for snap peas, slightly immature for shelling, or allow to dry for soup)❀
Shelling Peas PLS 14*, Lincoln
Snow Peas Oregon Giant
Sugar Snap Peas Sugar Magnolia Tendril
*first planting, only; susceptible to powdery mildew later in season
❀Look for seed saved by the APU Community Garden in the Azusa Seed Library
Dry Beans Black Coco (bush), UC Southwest Red, Rio Zape
Green Beans Blue Coco, Rattlesnake
Corn (sweet) Golden Bantam Improved
Cowpeas U'us Mu:n (for snaps or dry), Blue Goose Field Peas
Cucumbers Painted Serpent (Armenian type, which is genetically a melon)
Peppers (sweet) Acoma Pueblo
Peppers (hot) Campo Dorado, Szegedi 179, Canyon City Chile❀
Okra Clemson Spineless, Azusa Okra Grex❀
Squash (summer) Black Beauty (best yield with good flavor); Costata Romanesco (lower yield with spectacular flavor)
Squash (winter) scrape the seeds from the best store squashes you eat and plant them
Tomatoes Subarctic Cherry*❀
Hot Climate Tomato Mix❀: Abu Rawan, Flamenco, Punta Banda
Cherry Tomato Mix❀: Black Cherry Improved (pink over green), Isfahan (red), Pocket Star (orange over green)
Multi-Colored Tomato Mix❀: Abu Rawan (red), Berkeley Tie Die Green (green with yellow stripes; a particularly productive selection), Black Cherry Improved (pink over green), Carbon (pink over green), Dwarf Wild Fred (pink over green), Indigo Apple (blue/black), Port de Antuzzi (yellow), Rippled Rinon Delight (pink)
*start & transplant early for tomatoes in May; not heat tolerant
❀Look for seed saved by the APU Community Garden in the Azusa Seed Library
These are some of our favorites to grow and eat in our garden and microclimate (Sunset Western Gardens Zone 21). We continue trying new things. Let us know if you have something we need to try!
Social media can give you the impression that growing your own vegetables is hard and that you need all the latest gear to succeed. Fortunately, that's not the case! The true necessities are:
Some soil to grow in. If you've got a bit of flowerbed (as little as a few square feet), that's a great option. If you need to use a container, look for secondhand pots at least a foot diameter, or try a grow bag for a lightweight, durable option. Remove existing plants that you don't want and add about 4 inches of compost to the top of your flowerbed (no need to mix it in), or fill your pots with compost. Compost can be gotten free at various community events.
Sunshine. This is generally in good supply around Southern California. Observe your yard and avoid areas that are shaded by buildings or large trees for all or most of the day. Remember that sometimes areas get lots of sun in summer but are shaded in winter.
Water. An irrigation plan is a necessity in the desert. Hand watering is an option. Drip irrigation is often more efficient, and we've had good luck with gravity-feed micro drip setups (here and here) for small gardens and containers.
Guidance on the back of seed packets to "sow 6-8 weeks before last frost" doesn't make sense in a place that gets a frost once every 10 years. Southern California gardening can roughly be divided into two seasons: warm and cool, with a small sub-group of hot season crops that thrive in August and September when everything and everybody is wilting. Here are links to some good planting calendars:
Simple, one page from Greg Alder
San Diego County Extension Office ("Inland" is appropriate for Azusa)
Detailed guide from UC Vegetable Research & Information Center (While this was made for the Sacramento/Davis area, it is pretty good for Southern California. We can grow a few things deeper into our nonexistant winters.)
Double digging or rototilling to break up soils and incorporate amendments (whether compost or fertilizer) have been staples of home gardeners for decades. New research is discovering that even in challenging soil conditions, these practices make gardening more physically challenging, reduce yields long term, and reduce the ability of the soil to sequester carbon. Soil is far more than an agglomeration of mineral particles. It's home to a variety of insects, worms, small vertebrates, fungi, and protozoa that all work together to maintain aeration, fix and liberate nitrogen, and more.
Considering how you're going to water your garden is one of the most important parts of planning a garden in the desert. Here are some of the strategies we've found to maximize every drop of water. Hand watering has value (for instance, for immediately after transplant), but is the least efficient option for the duration of the season. We've found that a combination of maintaining a mulch layer year round and using drip or soaker hoses reduces total irrigation needs by 60 to 80 percent over the course of a year.
Children’s Books
The Goat in the Chile Patch, Sheron Long (preschool fable)
Up, Down, and Around, Katherine Ayers (preschool picture book)
Tops and Bottoms, Janet Stevens (preschool/early elementary picture book)
Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt, Kate Messner, (early elementary nonfiction)
No-dig Children’s Gardening Book, Charles Dowding (late elementary nonfiction)
Composting for Community, Michael Martinez (elementary fiction)
Seedfolks, Paul Fleischman (middle school fiction)
Reference Books
California Master Gardener Handbook (extensive)
Sunset Western Gardens Book of Edibles (compact)
No Dig, Charles Dowding (ignore the calendars)
California Bees & Blooms, Frankie et al. (a deep dive into our native bees)
Natural Enemies Handbook (helpful for you pest control arsenal)