You can grow most all annual flowers with the right soil mix. Keep in mind that some plants just don't like our salty soils, salty water, high heat and low humidity. Most of us have used the 'trial and error' method to find the varieties that survive in our planting areas.

1) Your goal is to create a bed that is about 12 inches deep. First, moisten the area well by letting a garden hose trickle for several hours or overnight. Wait 4 - 5 days before digging. You'll want soil that is moist but doesn't stick to your shovel.

A great recipe for garden soil is 1/3 native soil, 1/3 compost or composted mulch and 1/3 pumice, coarse sand or perlite/vermiculite. Our clay soils hold moisture but tend to be 'tight' and can restrict water and air - hence the compost and sand/pumice.

2) Till the area with a shovel or garden fork - or you may want to use a rototiller. Add a 4 inch layer of compost/mulch and 4 inches of sand/pumice. Till again. This will give you your 12 inch garden depth.

3) You can add amendments like ammonium phosphate or ammonium sulfate before you till.

4) When you are done tilling, the garden bed area will be higher than the surrounding soil so you may want to use a border of some kind. There are dozens of choices from the standard concrete blocks to more decorative stones, wood or even PVC.

5) To water your beds I'd recommend the 1/4 inch tubing that has emitters built in. Each emitter puts out 1/2 gallon of water per hour and they are spaced either every 6 inches or 12 inches depending on the brand. I'd discourage the use of microsprays because much is lost to evaporation.

I'm sure others in the forum will have more ideas for you. Here's a link to a guide on what to plant and when.

Good luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: Flower planting guide

Great information!! Thanks so much.

Rhair - STOP!!!!! This is the absolute worst time of year for planting anything. Not only do the plants have a small chance off surviving even with 3x daily watering, the gardener can get heat exhaustion even at dawn doing all that digging.

I would cover it with a thick layer of newspaper topped with compost, shredded tree branches, wood chips or clean straw and wait at least until the rains start in a week or so, and the temps drop a bit. Waiting until mid-September is even better. (we hibernate in June, July, and August here)

While you wait, figure out how you will be watering that area. Can you tap into the old lawn sprinkler system for new drip lines? Do you need to run a new line?

Figure out what you want to plant, what its needs will be, and where you can get it. If you plant natives your care needs will be minimal and so will the soil amendments. If you want to duplicate Iowa, it's not going to work very well.

Make sure your plants have compatible requirements.

Mary Irish's book on Desert Gardens it really good, and if Sunset's Western Garden Book doesn't list something as growing in Zone 13, don't bother with it unless you are really experienced with desert gardening.

amen to lazygardens, Mary Irish's books are awesome. Month by month listings in a to-do type fashion. Covering most everything from flowers & shrubs to fruits and veggies.

Also check out Dave Owens, the Garden Guy:
Extreme Gardening: How To Grow Organic In The Hostile Deserts
The Garden Guy: A Seasonal Guide to Organic Gardening in the Desert Southwest

It's BLISTERING hot right now. A neighbor put in dozens of vinca, azalea, pine saplings and such less than a month ago, more this past weekend, and they look HORRIBLE, poor things. We tried to offer up some advice, but he wouldn't take it, finding out now that he's lost several $$$ in dried, burnt up plants.

You could use some 40-50% shade cloth, but the air is like a convection oven during the summer, it WILL drain the life outta your plants.

Personally, I would just prep the area in the early mornings and very late evenings, with all the non-plantlife eyecandy and whatnots.

I don't like Dave Owens techniques ... he applies more ingredients to a garden than I use in cooking curry, and has little to no research to back up his claims that they are needed or better than cheaper additives.

Cover the basics of regular water, mulch, and added organic matter and most gardens do just fine if you plant the right plants for the area.

Thank you all for your help and advise. I'm not buying any new plants right now as I was afraid they wouldn't make it planting them this time of year. We had to take out some plants last Saturday to prepare for the renovation and I've been babying them in buckets all week. There are two roses bushes that I would really like to save but they don't look good. Of course, they don't look good this time of year anyway. So, extreme heat and all, we were out today spading up the ground. We'll be up early, early tomorrow to add the compost and sand that aztreelvr recommended. Then we'll get the plants back in the ground, apply a think layer of mulch then water them good and keep our fingers crossed.

There was a sprinkler system in the front yard that we are converting to a drip line for this new flower bed. We have an existing drip line that was in this area but it's the only drip we have and also runs in the back yard. And most of the back yard plants don't need as much water as what I'd like to have in this front bed eventually. So I think we have the water covered.

It has certainly been as experience learning how to garden all over again. We are still struggling in some areas but we just keep trying.

Thanks again, everyone, for the help.

You can use your old sprinkler system and convert it to drip, but remember to add a pressure reducer. Sprinkler systems operate on 50 pounds per square inch and above. Drip systems need to have the pressure brought down to below 30 or the fittings will blow right off. It's pretty easy to add the pressure reducer and there are fittings so you can convert pvc to 1/2 inch poly line.

I'd recommend you shop at an irrigation supply store like Horizon, Sprinkler World, Ewing, etc. They sell retail and know irrigation inside and out.

We had somebody who knew what he was doing convert the sprinkler line to the drip. My hubby ran all the lines to the plants for me. I did give in and buy some vinca and three daylilies. I love daylilies and saw these at Home Depot and couldn't resist. I'll try to post some before and after pics of the renovation this weekend.