Posted on 03/15/2014 7:23:40 PM PDT by Ghost of SVR4
I haven’t read all the replies but of course you can have a garden! You will have to water it and often and if you’re good at those things you should put in a drip system.
You will have a really long growing season with heat units up the wazoo. You should be able to grow anything. You need to mind the season and not try to grow peas, carrots, lettuce....in the middle of the summer but if you do it right you can have produce pretty much all year round.
DO NOT USE A SWAMP COOLER. Modern ACs are just as effecient and don't bring in pollen.
You can carry a concealed weapon just about anywhere without a permit, even most banks. They just don't permit smoking.
The best thing of all? It gets real hot in the summer and the relatives stay away.
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Moved here from SoCal in '81 and plan to retire here. The town of Payson is 90 minutes from my driveway and that is where we are going to spend our summers when we retire.
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The sunshine is more important than the temperature. It can be 100F, and if you step out of a swimmming pool into the shade, you will be chilled. But if you step out into the sun, you will be dry--quickly. Use shade whenever you can.
Get your auto glass tinted as dark as the law permits. This will instantly boost the felt capacity of your A/C. I actually commuted for years with a broken A/C. The heavy tinting made it bearable.
Use a folding shade screen on your windshield when you park. You will be sorry if you leave your seats and steering wheels exposed to the sun when you go grocery shopping. And park facing away from the sun if possible.
Always keep bottled water in your car.
If you plan on spending time working or playing in the sun, start hydrating before you leave the house, and keep hydrating. If you wait until you are thirsty, it is too late. The way to tell if you're getting enough fluids is the color of your urine. If it's dark, drink more water. If you've been gardening all day, consumed a couple gallons of water, and haven't peed, you really haven't gotten enough water.
Plan on doing outdoor activities in the summer at sunrise.
Buy a shady hat.
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Okay, you're ready.
Lived there for decades. Loved it.
There are numerous good neighborhoods, but also a number of not-so-nice ones, but it is easy to tell by just driving around.
Weather good 9 months/year; hot and dry in summer except for mid-July through mid-August which gets storms from Gulf of Mexico which bring humidity. Good time for out of town vacation.
You never have to shovel sunshine or scrape it off your windshield... You can get out into the mountains or forests with a couple of hour drives.
If you prepare the soil well (natural clay... so add sand, mulch, etc.), you can plant and grow good gardens pretty much year round. We grew oranges, grapefruit, a few varieties of apples, tangelos, lemons, tomatoes, corn, asparagus, grapes, peppers, beans, a couple of varieties of apples, limes, artichokes, carrots, watermelon’s, and more... The county extension agent can tell you how to prep the soil, and once you’ve done that, the sun and water will do the rest...
Nice to do concealed carry without a permit.
What’s not to like???
Personally I wouldn’t want to live all the way out in the City of Maricopa... preferring instead north or northwest Phoenix, Scottsdale, northeast Mesa, or the newer parts of Chandler, Tempe or Gilbert (depending on where you will work).
Cooling costs in AZ are high, but you'd have to live in a McMansion to incure 800 bucks a month.
glad for your job opportunities. i don’t have any, but don’t let that dissuade you. the most beautiful state. take many day trips (esp during the summer). don’t have vinyl seats in the summer. and you should be good to go.
Just down the street from me is about an acre garden with all kinds of vegetables and fruit trees. It has been going approx. 22 years. The only thing that may prevent you from having a garden is an HOA. Avoid them if you can.
It is hot here during the summer. The cool mountains about a hour and a half away.
No place is perfect, but this is better than most.
Twice a day they have the largest parking lots in the world, unfortunately they are highways.
Tucson is horrible. Run by libs, cameras on traffic lights and quotas for the cops to bust you for traffic offenses. It’s terribly hot and the traffic resembles Phoenix before the freeways. They don’t call it the “People’s Republic of Tucson” for nothing. I got out six months ago.
Tucson is liberal and the city government sucks big time. The east side isn’t too bad. Now that it is built up, the city temps hit 110-115...about 5-10 deg less than Phoenix. Long ago, highs ran around 103-105. I still prefer it to Phoenix, but I live outside of Tucson now. Where I live at 3500’, the summer highs are around 101-102.
My husband and I went to a Valentine’s party in the hills above the Biltmore Hotel. Everyone was trading stories of the cold the had escaped. These are people who made the move decades ago and have no intention of leaving The Valley of the Sun.
It is so hot in Phoenix, they don’t even have the yearly monsoons anymore. But they have plenty of water to have lawns.
Frankly, my heat quotations maxes out in the area I live north of Tucson. (Otherwise, I am very happy here.)
It’s a Tale of Two Cities: Phoenix grows business; Tucson discourages it.
Good luck in your new life in Phoenix. It’s a very optimistic place.
Has the temperature increased with our population? I wonder why the weather people or the radio garden hosts don’t mention this trajectory. Fascinating. I wouldn’t mind that level of heat. The nights seem much colder this year, though.
I was referring to phoenix. I admit I don’t know Arizona but am opening an office there and will be learning.
You might want to look at Payson, not so hot. My brother bought a house there after he retired and loves it.
Its very hot in August. Drink lots of water.
I grew up in Tucson. In the 70s, Tucson still had entire square miles of empty land embedded in it, and there were many more 1/4 mile squares that were empty desert but with ‘city’ surrounding it. There was no high density housing, which is what modern developers tend to build. IIRC, back then the record high at the airport was 108.
Now, Tucson is heavily built up. Lots of traffic and lots of high density housing and the empty sections sprinkled everywhere are gone. After retiring from the military and returning to this area, I was shocked to see highs of 113 & 115 inside the city on a regular basis.
I live well outside of Tucson, and am 1000’ higher. A hot summer day is normally around 101-103. That is cooler than many cities back east, and dry.
I firmly convinced that much of our ‘global warming’ is due to increased city density and less rural areas.
I stand corrected. Maybe the difference in power costs between AZ and CA accounts for those high bills. My kid certainly wasn’t living in a huge house.
I worked there for a summer in the mid-70s at a place called Ski Haus. Loved Eegees, lightening storms, the Catalina Mountains, and the sunsets. Every Tucson summer sunset is like a post card.
California has tiered power costs (the more you use the more expensive it gets) and their ‘baseline’ is not doable. I live in the Central Valley where it gets to be 114 for stretches during the summer. $800 for electricity is pretty normal here in the summer.....sometimes it is more.
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