In 2023, Phoenix endured record-breaking heat that had residents coping with an entire month of daytime temperatures that never dropped below 110 degrees Fahrenheit, with the typical monsoon rains nowhere in sight. While other regions may not be quite so blistering, hotter temperatures and less rain in certain areas are likely to become more common as climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, warms the planet. In Phoenix, where a harsh climate has always been more or less the norm, gardeners and farmers have been adapting for centuries, and they have wisdom to share. Their top tips? It all comes down to shade and soil. 

The native soil of Phoenix is often very clay-heavy, high in poor drainage and low in organic material. When it is exposed to the sun, it dries quickly and cracks, cooking anything below. This type of earth is fine for native food plants such as prickly pear cactus. But to grow more food, the soil needs to be both protected from the sun and built up with organic material for nutrients.

Phoenix’s clay soil is ideal for native plants such as the prickly pear cactus. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Rose Courtney is an urban gardener who has transformed her backyard into a food forest where she grows year-round. She even had a bumper crop during last year’s seemingly unending heat wave. In July, she was still growing vegetables such as carrots, kale and cucumbers, tending to her garden early in the morning, when the temperatures were in the 90s instead of the triple-digits.

“Invest time and energy in permanent [shade] structures,” she advises. “Without that, you’re not going to have a lot of success.”

Shade comes at two levels for desert gardeners—shade for the plants with shade cloth or trees and shade for the soil in the form of groundcover. At the Arizona Worm Farm, permanent shade structures, trees and wood chip mulch are all part of the soil-health strategy, too. In fact, owner Zach Brooks says that the mulch is potentially even more important than the shade—combined with high microbial activity, it keeps the soil moist and allows for a system of deep watering, less frequently. 

Permanent shade structures help protect crops from the hot Arizona sun. (Photo: Callie Radke Stevens)

“What happens three or four feet underground to 18 feet underground is more important than what happens above ground,” says Brooks. “So, keeping your soil covered that’s how we get away with watering as infrequently as we do and having good results for the time periods that we do.”

In the summer, the Arizona Worm Farm’s combination of shade (from both 50 percent shade cloth and trees), mulch and active soil keep the farm’s air temperature about 30 degrees cooler than the ambient temperature of the city. So, when it’s 110 degrees Fahrenheit at Sky Harbor Airport, where the city’s temperature readings are taken, it’s a balmy 80-85 degrees seven miles away at the farm. 

Brooks and his team grow food on the farm roughly from October to April, excepting the trees in the food forest, where at least one of the 118 trees is producing food year-round. This fall and winter growing season is common in the Valley of the Sun, where even cold snaps are short and relatively temperate. By planting in the fall and harvesting in the spring, growers can maximize cooler temps and wetter weather—and gardening days that are a little less sweltering. 

Zach Brooks of the Arizona Worm Farm shows off the work of composting worms. (Photo: Callie Radke Stevens)

Michael Chamberland is an assistant agent for the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, a service of the University of Arizona. The extension provides resources for gardening all over the state. “What we’ve done here is taken advantage of the fact that our winter is cool and sunny and so we can grow things through the cool season,” says Chamberland. 

Chamberland also pointed out that it isn’t as simple as just swapping seasons. Seedlings are growing in temperatures that go from hot to cold instead of cold to hot, and the days are much shorter than a summer growing season. While you can grow almost anything in the desert with enough shade and water, it makes more sense to look for things that are better adapted to short days and low water use. 

Sierra Penn is the Indigenous Garden Educator for NATIVE HEALTH and runs a traditional garden on an urban lot in partnership with Keep Phoenix Beautiful. There, she plants in rows as well as using methods such as the Pueblo Zuni waffle beds and Akimel O’odham flood irrigation with water from Phoenix canals. 

Both techniques make it easier to water deeply and less frequently (another theme among the growers). In fact, many of those modern canals are built following the ancient canal systems dug by the Hohokam or Huhugam people thousands of years ago. Growing food in the Sonoran Desert is nothing new.

NATIVE HEALTH’s traditional garden incorporates Indigenous irrigation practices. (Photo courtesy of NATIVE HEALTH)

The garden is a teaching garden, and Penn runs workshops on everything from growing luffas to using grow bags to get started. Over the years, the garden has produced food such as brown tepary beans, Diné blue corn, Tohono O’odham melons and other traditional plants that grow well in the low-desert heat.

“I think it really helps them to kind of find that connection to ground themselves,” Penn says of the people who attend her workshops. “I think gardening is very grounding and just connecting us to our roots.”

Like most food growers, Phoenix farmers and gardeners have an extensive web of knowledge sharing within the region, too. Penn says that she didn’t have much experience when she started and has learned from Keep Phoenix Beautiful’s master gardener, who also knows about the traditional gardening methods, the garden employees and Native Seed/SEARCH, a southern Arizona nonprofit and heirloom seed source.

This knowledge web is particularly important in the urban, arid city because many gardening resources center on a longer growing cycle that has more lively soil and more water. 

“People get confused because they go on to these blogs and somebody in Minnesota is doing something spectacular, and it doesn’t work in Phoenix,” says Brooks. “If you follow Phoenix-based bloggers, then you get good advice.”

The traditional garden offers workshops and grows traditional plants such as Diné blue corn and Tohono O’odham melons. (Photo courtesy of NATIVE HEALTH)

The other gardeners agree. Penn has been diving deep into the gardening practices of Indigenous Arizona tribes, and Courtney looks for plants that grow well in similar climates. As the climate becomes less predictable, knowing how to successfully grow food in harsh environments will be vital. Just as these food growers have done, sharing knowledge will be equally as important. 

“I think my biggest tip would be to look at it as an experiment of trying something new, and if it fails, don’t be afraid to try again because you could create something bigger and better,” says Penn. 

Each of these desert gardeners shared failures, from pests to putting the wrong plant in the wrong soil. But they have also kept going, turning a suburban backyard, a cotton field and a misused urban lot into thriving food plots. As we rethink food systems, trying something new and creating something bigger and better might be just what we need.

The post Swapping Seasons, Casting Shade: How Farmers Are Growing Food in the Fearsome Phoenix Heat appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Mahmud helped start the Phoenix-based collective in 2019 with a mission to grow both food and justice. Her house is one of seven or eight mainstay gardens—since teaching people to grow their own food is also part of the mission, the exact number varies. Mahmud estimates the collective has helped start 20 to 30 gardens around the city. “I think it’s good that people have that knowledge—to grow their own food,” she says.

Ibado Mahmud. (Photo: Callie Radke Stevens)

Kadija Farah has a garden, too, although it looks a little different than Mahmud’s. Farah’s garden has turned her small condo terrace into an Eden, spilling out of containers and a small strip of earth. In the garden, “I feel relief,” Farah says. “It’s good. It encourages me what I can learn.”

Any food from Drinking Gourd that the hosts and volunteers don’t eat themselves is harvested and distributed to families who lack the money or time to grow their own healthy produce. At the height of the pandemic, they were distributing food to around 165 families each week (supplementing their year-two produce with food bought with stimulus checks). Now, the number is closer to 25 each week. Some of the backyard owners donate or exchange garden space, allowing people who live in apartments to come and grow food, too.

The collective focuses on marginalized communities and upholds a vision of Black food sovereignty, although Mahmud says that it would help anyone who was in need and teach anyone who wanted to learn. 

“It’s important to grow food, no matter who you are,” she says. “Let’s go back to our ancestors and create our own food.”

Kadija Farah, who grows a prolific container garden at her condo, with a moringa tree in Mahmud’s garden. (Photo: Callie Radke Stevens)

Mahmud herself knows something about the importance of a collective that shares food, gardening opportunities and community. She and Farah both came to the United States as refugees from Somalia in 1993. There wasn’t much of a support system; she had young children, and she didn’t speak the language well. A resettlement agency provided some food, but she didn’t know how to make sure something was pork-free to maintain her religious dietary convictions. It was a difficult time. Now, she hopes Drinking Gourd can provide the community she didn’t have 30 years ago. 

The garden has seen plenty of trial and error. While Mahmud’s father farmed during her childhood, she and the other gardeners were starting from scratch when it came to farming in the urban soil of Arizona. The first year was all new, and Mahmud says that now, in year four, she and the onsite manager are still learning from other farms and gardens and from their own experience. 

“We’ve put a lot of time, a lot of labor into the soil,” says Mahmud. “You will know what is right and what is not when you get to do it.” 

Mahmud (right) makes breakfast for volunteers every Saturday using produce from the garden. (Photo: Callie Radke Stevens)

Mahmud and others involved with Drinking Gourd dream of some day buying a farm-size parcel of land where they could grow all the food they need. Mahmud also has a vision of providing work and community for those coming out of incarceration, creating a farm that is a safe space for people to reintegrate. Already, as food prices rise, the gardens can’t always meet demand. And while Drinking Gourd maintains a small staff, they had to go several months without pay when the collective ran out of funding last year. “We’re just praying that we can do more,” she says. 

Standing in the backyard garden, Mahmud points to the rows of greens; these are the things she grows that remind her of home. The garden, the collective and the mission help remind her who she is, she says. 

“My father used to tell me, ‘When you are somewhere new, show them who you are,’” says Mahmud. By growing food, sharing it and teaching others to do the same, she is doing just that.

The post Meet the Refugee Homesteaders Cultivating Backyards for Food Justice appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Across the U.K., farms often stay tied to families or corporations, and farmland is notoriously difficult to purchase or lease. While new, post-Brexit subsidies will reward nature-based farming, they won’t make it any easier for newcomers. “Most farmers are farmers because their parents are farmers—and grandparents. So, they’re kind of inherited down,” says James. “If you go to places like Wales, there’s a lot of companies—and not necessarily British companies—buying up land as a way of potentially offsetting carbon.”

James grew up helping on a cousin’s farm, which sparked a passion for nature-based agriculture, and Katie’s initial interest grew out of a desire to participate in and preserve a small corner of the British wool industry. As their interest grew, they realized they didn’t want to wait years or decades to begin. Instead, they discovered a way around these barriers, acquiring a herd of cattle and a basic understanding of conservation grazing, the practice of renting herds to heritage sites to maintain native landscapes. From there, they expanded to also partner with landowners to rehabilitate fields that had been neglected or monocropped for years. Heritage Graziers was founded without the Allens owning any land at all. 

Their herds grew to include Castlemilk Moorit and Portland sheep as well as British White and English Longhorn cattle. All are breeds native to the British Isles, which makes them particularly well suited to nature-driven grazing; the hardy animals eat dominant plant species, which gives other plants a chance to thrive and cultivates greater botanical diversity. Grazing fields in sections also allowed grasses to grow taller, and their deeper roots to keep more carbon in the soil. 

Heritage Graziers graze cattle like this English Longhorn to give native flowers and grasses a chance to thrive.

The more involved James became with agriculture, the more he learned about the relationships between livestock, soil health, native seed banks and even dung beetles. “For me, the key thing is working with nature,” says James. “We human species are alive because of nature. Nature is the environment we live in. It gives us all of our resources. If we don’t learn to work with that environment, then, ultimately, the degree of cleverness we have to have to overcome the damage by taking from nature—we will not be clever enough to get there in time.”

Heritage Graziers learned by doing (“Basically, we got cows and got on with it,” says James), but James also began soaking in knowledge wherever he could—from other farmers, extended family members and even local vets. He also became very involved in several nature-based farming networks in the U.K., and both Allens have spoken at events around the country. “Everybody’s got something to teach us,” says James. “It gets to a point, after a certain while, [that] you sort of realize people are listening and learning from you, which is a bit of a weird concept.”

Heritage Graziers’ native-breed sheep grazed on the land of partnering farmers and heritage sites.

In January, after nearly eight years of grazing, the Allens purchased a farm in Wiltshire, in Southern England. For the first time, Heritage Graziers would be staying put for most of the year, though they’ll still look for a conservation grazing site for part of the year, as the fields are too wet to overwinter the cows. 

The farm itself came to the Allens through a stroke of luck: James’s father-in-law had recently left the couple an inheritance, and they happened across a farm that was unappealing to both developers and farmers. It had too much house for anyone interested in the barns and land (a boon to the Allens, who share five children) and too many barns to make the house an attractive buy. “We feel it kind of fell between the gaps, really,” says James. “We believe we were the only people that wanted to take it on as a whole farm and farm it as a farm. They were quite keen for that to happen. So, you know, we were a bit lucky.”

For the first time, James is thinking about all that he and Katie can accomplish by staying in one spot. He uses the mob grazing techniques popular in regenerative grazing, which require regularly moving electric fences to keep the livestock contained to a certain area. Before, he had to drive to where the cattle were grazed and undo several gates before he could begin moving fences. Being right next door will free up time for other regenerative practices, such as restoring soil, building up hedges for biodiversity, engaging in agroforestry and setting aside corners for wildlife. 

As the Allens’s journey demonstrates, becoming “farmers without a farm” is achievable, though Allen also pointed out that it’s not without compromises. He has kept his day job as a programmer throughout the venture to pay half the bills, a role he will continue at the new farm. “You’ve got to compromise,” he says. “You’ve got to be realistic. But you’ve also just got to go for it. It is hard work, there’s no doubt about it, but it is possible. … Don’t do things that are just normal, just because that’s the way it has always been done. You’ve got to be a bit creative and be a bit different.”

The post Meet the Modern Graziers Who Broke Into Regenerative Agriculture, No Farmland Required appeared first on Modern Farmer.