When I meet another Martha, my first question is: What elderly relative were you named after?
Usually, it's a grandmother, an aunt, or some long-departed ancestor.
I fall into the "ancestor" category.
I'm named after my great-grandmother Martha. She was my mother's maternal grandmother.
From her Victory Garden in Buffalo, a city with long and brutally cold winters and a blink-and-you-miss-it growing season, great-grandmother Martha fed eight people.
According to Mom, those people depended on great-grandmother’s produce.
And now here's this Martha, on the other side of the country, tackling urban agriculture in another challenging climate.
In Tucson, the growing season is year ‘round, but it includes the five-month inferno we call summer.
In January, our concerns are quite different.
We, the urban agriculturalists, are monitoring short- and long-term weather forecasts, and we're especially concerned with overnight lows.
If those lows go below freezing, we risk losing our crops. This is a major concern among citrus growers, large and small.
So far, we have experienced above average winter temperatures.
It's to the point where my Meyer lemon tree has begun flowering. That usually doesn't happen until February.
Did you know that you can thank pollinators for one out every three bites of food that you eat?
Although pollination happens in many different ways, bees are currently among our agricultural stars.
They don't just bump into pollen on one plant and carry it over to another; bees collect pollen on purpose. It's their only protein source, and they also need it for their young.
On the other hand...
This ought to be the place where Farmer Martha tells you about some terrible insect that has wreaked havoc on my crop yields.
But I'm not going to do that.
Instead, I'm going show you the worst garden pest I've ever dealt with...
That's two thirds of what I harvested in 2024, when I pulled 60 lemons off the tree.
But I'm happy to harvest whatever the Meyer lemon produces. It's irrigated by my laundry-to-landscape greywater harvesting system, and that was a big help during the drought of 2024.
$150.00
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I'm an author, photographer, podcaster, and avid water harvester in Tucson, Arizona.
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