My Contribution to Growing Food, Not Lawns

Well, my backyard garden is finally in and growing, using a drip irrigation system. So, no green grass here in the desert. My current list of plants and trees is as follows:

2 dwarf Meyer lemon (A few fruits this year. One small and one huge lemons are growing now.)
1 dwarf Bears lime (No fruit this year.)
1 dwarf Valencia orange (No fruit this year.)
1 dwarf Rio Oro grapefruit (No fruit this year.)
2 pomegranate bushes (No fruit this year.)
1 golden delicious apple (No fruit this year.)
1 red delicious apple (No fruit this year)
1 Santa Rosa plum (One small plum grew this year.)
1 asian pear (I got a huge crop of small pears this summer, some of which went to the local birds.)
2 Bartlett pears (No fruit this year.)
1 peach (Some fruit this year that the local bird population enjoyed enormously.)
1 apricot (Some fruit this year that I shared with the local birds.)
1 pineapple guava (No fruit this year, but the flowers are edible and YUMMY!)
3 bay laurel bushes
8 or more aloe vera plants
4 different grape vines (No fruit this year because they got attacked by the western grape leaf skeletonizer, which hatches from eggs laid by a small, white, day-flying moth. I definitely hope they don't return next year. Here's a link for more information about them: http://ag.arizona.edu/pipermail/arid_gardener/2006-May/004088.html)




I may not be living sustainably, but as a desert city-dweller, I'm doing okay; I even grow basil in my kitchen window. I could be doing better. So, I've thought about using hydroponics to grow plants indoors that would never survive the blistering sun, low humidity, and extreme high temperatures of a desert summer. However, these systems are fairly pricey. As an alternative, I'm going to have to contact my city's Master Gardeners to find out which vegetable and herb plants do better here. Then I'll put in organic soil and grow organic plant seeds and/or plants in my small, raised-bed vegetable area. All this will happen when my back "goes back" into place again. I "threw it out" while walking my dogs. In the future, I'd like to start composting. Any ideas on this?