Thanks again everyone! I'm inspired to expand, and to try to become more and more self sufficient. I will most likely cultivate the 900 sq ft area outside the cage in the fall or next spring. Socks, right now I've been sharing basil and Armenian cucumbers with friends as those are incredibly prolific and we are having trouble keeping up. As for the other vegetables, my family and I will have no problem eating everything - there are 6 of us and we're all vegetarian. Canyonsister, I started all my tomatoes, peppers, basil, and eggplant by seed indoors at the beginning of January. I then started all the cucumbers, squash, cantaloupes, watermelons in mid February. I transplanted everything in mid March and directed seeded beans, more squash and cucumbers. In April I direct seeded okra, tepary beans and more cantaloupe. With heavy mulching, close planting, and shade cloth most things are holding up very well to the 100+ degree heat right now. In the winter, I wasn't as well organized but I did have a small selection of greens (kale, broccoli, rapini, arugula, lettuce etc) as well as beets, carrots, spring onions, peas, bok choy etc. You can start seeding the fall/winter vegetables as early as August and September if you provide some protection from the heat incase it stays in the 90's all the way up to November as it did this last season. Basically, you can seed, grow and harvest something in Phoenix year round!

Melati Your gardens are absolutely beautiful. How many hosta do you have in your collection? It looks like a park and you should be very proud of you creation. Love the idea of the video even if I don't know all the names of your hosta

Gardenfanatic, wearing a bulb of garlic around the neck in an "asifidity" (spelling off more than likely) bag, was a good preventive to keep vampires away. And, it is of current interest that those old medieval folks had something right...because the ingredient/compound found in garlic is the same used in mosquito repellants. So it does repel blood sucking insects, but do not think it works with ticks or fleas. The video remark says it only irritates the slugs and sends them to the neighbor's yard. And I think the hanging garden concept will have its uses here, where I can raise some containers off the ground and use the posts to create additional shade with some 90% shade cloth that I bought last year. My zone 8B garden gets really a lot of sun, plus it gets hot. Just so I do not create an oven, keep the air circulating, all should be well. Adding the fertilizer to the spray job should kill two birds with one stone. I guess a good manure tea would work nicely. I could afford to make fresh batches of the garlic slug repellent on demand.

Here is the link so you can just click on it. Here is a link that might be useful: Eric's plumeria link