Urban gardening in low desert?

[greenwitchymama]

I live near Phoenix, and I'd like to have a small potted vegetable garden on my balcony. It's impossible to keep things alive outside in the summer (temperature averages about 110 usually) but planting season is upon me. Does anyone know of good resources for a beginner that are desert specific?

[SweetSilver]

Try these guys:

http://www.phoenixpermaculture.org/

[greenwitchymama]

Thanks I'll check it out :)

[tightwaderin]

Hi greenwitchymama, I live in the valley also and get a lot of great info from the Valley Permaculture Alliance that SweetSilver mentioned.  Here's a great planting calendar that I use throughout the year:

http://www.urbanfarm.org/Planting_Calendar.pdf

I'm not so great at summer gardening and mostly just let mine go fallow but I go all out this time of year.  Good luck!

[greenwitchymama]

Thank you so much for this! I still need to figure out how to make potted gardening work, but this is a great resource. 

Do you ever have trouble with bugs? I had whiteflies destroy the last garden I planted. I tried every organic method I could find, and even used some 'organic' pesticide from the store.

[tightwaderin]

I don't garden in pots but there might be some good info on the Phx Permaculture site about it.  i tend to forget to water. 

Some years I have a lot of bugs and others not as many.  I've heard that you have to spray whiteflies with water/soap everyday when they're bad but sometimes you have to resort to chemicals if you want anything for yourself.  I think there's a post about them on the site too.  If not, at least you can ask questions to which you'll get lots of replies.  They're a pretty good bunch of folks over there.