For a number of reason, one of which is to get a bigger yard, my wife and I are moving to the west Phoenix area. I’m upgrading from a 6500 sq ft lot to a 15,000 lot. It’s nicely landscaped, but only two citrus trees, a lemon and an unknown variety. There’s lots of open space for trees and a veggie garden.
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Congratulations!
I hope you are busy planning where all the fruit trees are going in. What’s your average water bill there if you don’t mind me asking?
Wow! Nice place!
Congrats looks nice!
Add more citrus, figs, pomegranates, jujube, looks like it’s 9b/10a lots more you can add. Have fun.
39th: According to the paperwork, the water and trash pick up is included in the $155/month HOA dues. I’m going to confirm this with the HOA,
Electric bills are going to be high. THE HVAC units are in the attic and my 4’ ladder was not tall enough to get me up there. There are two circuit breakers for the HVAC units, a 30amp (typical) and a 50amp. My first major project is going to be solar cells on the roof. The garage attic access is a pull down ladder, so I got up there. There is no insulation over the garage ceiling and the garage door is un-insulated, same as the current house. I blew insulation in the entire attic to bring it up from 4" to 9" and insulated the door. Summer electric bills dropped $100/month.
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San: Yup, started stocking up on trees already. :<). Went to Lowes last night and got a Valencia orange, Saturn peach, Santa Rosa and Sasuma plum and a goldkist apricot. The are getting a delivery next week with 3 types of pluots and 2 jujube. I’ll be in line there. LOL
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Jim,
You need some figs.
Tony
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Tony, Absoulutely! Any recommendations?
Jim,
A beautiful home and landscape. Congrats.
Are you sure that your Housing Association will not go after you when your turn your lawn into an orchard? Growing fruit appears to be addictive. The next thing you know, you’d not have any lawn left.
HOA is often known to be a pain when you divert from uniformity.
I hope not! The HOA rules state no fruit in the front yard, but it’s OK in the back. Looking at other backyards in google earth, there are a few trees, but nothing like what I’m going to do! LOL
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You will need to use the phrase “aesthetically pleasing” in your vocabulary when you talk to the HOA about your orchard 
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Kadota, Black Mission, Conadria, and Brown Turkey.
Tony
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HOA’s are bullshit… Move to the country!
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Completely agree, but other issues are taking priority. That’s life.
Grapes. Pomegranate. I’m guessing Surprise based on the size of the lot. Little skeptical that HOA will accept any and all water use…
I wouldn’t dream of moving into an HOA property if I want to plant fruit. Get out in the country where there aren’t crabby neighbors!
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Koko: Yeah, unfortunately you are right. I checked with the HOA and water is NOT included. Next step is to get ahold of the water utility company. Not looking forward to that! At least the roof has rain gutters. I’m going to put in some barrels to catch it.
Went shopping today. Picked up 2 Honey mandarins (they tend to alternate bearing, so I’m going to strip all the fruit off one to see if it will force it to skip a year), two figs, a clementine, a Moro blood orange and 4 grapes - Thompson & Flame. I’m about half way there with tree purchases.
On the outskirts of metro Phoenix you might consider ultra-low chill stone fruit.
Before the heat-island effect got out of hand, Apricots used to be fairly common. Hard to beat Apricots for appearance in the yard, too. More than any other stone fruit, the difference between the taste of store bought and tree ripened Apricots is like night and day. If you try it, plant it where you can take advantage of the tree as a landscape feature.
Zaiger has some good low-chill peaches these days. I think Amadio on this forum had a list. It’s not like Back East where you can do a lot of succession planting, but on the other hand, you get your fruit the week before Memorial day when store bought fruit bring top dollar. Bug pressures tend to be relatively light in Phoenix, too
Beautiful place. That’s really interesting about the insulating the garage. I wonder if it would help me as well. I don’t have any over the garage attic either.