Hi!

I live near Prescott. Raised beds, and sunshades on the beds are a must I find. Check out my profile for my most recent pics of the garden. I don't know if there is also a Tucson Permaculture Guild, but there is a Phoenix one that you can subscribe to; I have gotten LOTS of great advice just from reading their blog posts.

Happy gardening!

"I live in Tucson, AZ. Any other desert dwellers out there? How's your garden going? Any tips? "

Yeah, move into one of the houses that i used to rent down there. I left behind a garden or two...

Seriously though, gardening in the desert is great, and you can garden all year. In the summer you will need to have some partial shade because there is just too much sun. Do recessed beds that are easily irrigated by either your house or a rain storm. Uhm.. mulch heavily, maybe use straw. You will need to enrich your soil, its probably alkaline, and you might need to break up the calliche and remove that stuff. Do youself a favor and get a drip irrigation system that is automated - keeping up with the watering in the summer is a pain in the kneck. Look into three sisters: beans, squash and corn - can be planted in late summer to take advantage of the monsoon rains and they form a symbiotic relationship. Check out native seeds search on 4th avenue too. :)

Lotsa luck!