What's New

All seventeen guides, First Season, the cheat sheets and the wall poster were reviewed line by line and rebuilt. About four hundred corrections and additions, led by these:

• Canning safety (Guide 12, Guide 17, First Season): dial-gauge pressure is 13 lb at 4,001–6,000 ft; water-bath times add 10 minutes at our elevation; tomatoes get 2 Tbsp bottled lemon juice per quart; untested shelf-stable recipes are now fridge or freezer only; garlic and herbs in oil keep 4 days refrigerated.
• Elevation: the ranch sits at about 4,450 ft, not 4,700. Canning bands don’t change.
• Frost dates from data (Guide 1 §9): last frost averages about March 26 — plant tender crops after about April 12; first frost averages about November 11, as early as late October one year in ten. Derived from NOAA 1991–2020 freeze normals for Benson, Pearce, Kartchner Caverns and Tombstone, cross-checked against calibrated reanalysis.
• Water and nutrients (Guide 3 §4.2, Guide 4): one acid — phosphoric pH Down — for the bicarbonate pre-treat and daily adjustment; the two-jug A/B stock system and 55-gallon barrel recipes as the canonical mix.
• What the ranch taught us: tie pump cycles to sunrise and sunset and check that they fired; feed container citrus lighter and watch runoff EC (the 2026 Meyer lemon salt burn, Guide 9 §7); a frost, freeze and wind alert ladder from a backyard station (Guide 14 §2.5).
• Fixes: no pyrethrin on flowering squash; short-day onions for 32°N; corrected thermal-mass math; hundreds of cross-references re-pointed.

New chapter in Guide 1 showing how the library transfers across the Madrean Sky Islands archipelago — the chain of isolated ranges that includes the Dragoons, Huachucas, Mules, Whetstones, Chiricahuas, Santa Ritas, Catalinas, and Pinaleños.

• Close fits (library reads as-is): Mule Mountains (Bisbee), Huachucas (Sierra Vista, Hereford), Whetstones (St. David, Benson foothills), Chiricahuas (Portal, Paradise), Animas/Peloncillo in NM.
• Partial fits (adjust chill hours and timing): Santa Ritas (Patagonia, Sonoita), Santa Catalina foothills (Oracle), Pinaleños (Safford), Patagonia/Canelo Hills.
• Poor fits (different references needed): Tucson basin, Phoenix metro, Mt. Lemmon/Coconino Plateau.

The "±1 week per 500 ft" rule of thumb is documented for shifting calendars across elevation. Guide 1 grew from 60 to 71 pages; search index expanded to 1,044 sections.

The reference layer of the library — the cross-cutting topics that crop guides previously each handled separately. Closes section B of the backlog.

• Guide 10 — Pest, Disease & Wildlife (74 pp) — IPM master reference plus Cochise wildlife exclusion. Harlequin bug, cucumber beetle, peach leaf curl, powdery mildew on the insect/disease side. Javelina, packrat, gopher, deer, bird, snake-as-ally on the wildlife side. Spray decision tree at the back.
• Guide 11 — Foundations: Soil & Seed (81 pp) — the two prerequisites every other guide assumes. Soil-building for the alkaline Dragoons baseline, four composting methods, manure sourcing, cover cropping. Seed-starting, germination temperatures by crop, propagation (slips, cuttings, divisions, air layering), seed-saving.
• Guide 12 — Harvest, Preservation & Storage (80 pp) — closes the growing-to-eating loop. Canning at about 4,450 ft with full altitude adjustments. Lacto-fermentation, drying (the Dragoons advantage), freezing, root cellaring, curing. Pepper specialties: ristra-making, chipotle smoking, fermented hot sauce. 12-recipe starter set.
• Guide 13 — Water in Cochise County (61 pp) — canonical home for water topics. Three Cochise aquifer profiles, well-water testing, the 5-step bicarbonate protocol (moved here from Guide 3 §4), rainwater harvesting math, RO units, greywater under Arizona law.
• Guide 14 — Season Extension Structures (61 pp) — cold frames, low tunnels, hoop houses, high tunnels. Three concrete build projects from $90 to $800. NRCS EQIP cost-share at full detail. Ventilation as the most important detail (overheating kills more than frost).

Homepage reorganized into four sections — Start Here, Crop Guides, Foundations & Systems, Protection & Yield. New filter pills for “Foundations” and “Reference.” Search index expanded to 1,032 sections across all 14 guides.

A library-wide quality pass: every guide now carries the same editorial conventions, cross-references the same canonical homes, and includes the new reference appendices.

• Glossary & Variety Index appendices added to Guide 1 — 50+ technical terms with cross-references, and 130+ named varieties indexed by crop family.
• Sources & References appendix added to all 9 guides — local resources (UA Cochise Extension, Native Seeds/SEARCH), books, and online references.
• Inline glossary first-use definitions across the library — EC, TDS, NFT, DWC, VPD, PPFD, SHU, Brix, TA, Pythium, Cucurbitaceae, chill hours, bareroot, etc.
• 14 field photos embedded across 8 guides where they teach more than prose — bato bucket setups, NFT lettuce tower, kitchen herb bench, citrus, the Dragoons vista.
• "If you're new here" callouts added at the top of long or complex chapters — Guide 4 nutrients, Guide 1 master calendar, each crop family chapter in Guide 6, each crop chapter in Guide 7.
• "Where do I start?" decision matrix added to Guide 4 (Hydroponic Nutrients) for newcomers facing the four-part structure.
• Version + revision date on every guide's title page (Version 2026.05 · Revised 2026-05-16).
• Related Guides blocks in every guide now consistently list all 9 with one-line descriptions.

Three new guides close the largest content gaps in the library and bring it to 9 guides total.

• Guide 7 — Warm-Season Companions (97 pp) — tomatoes (full soil + hydroponic depth), eggplant, cucumbers, summer squash, melons, beans (with cultural depth on teparies and heritage dry beans), heritage sweet corn, sweet potatoes. The warm-season counterpart to Guide 6.
• Guide 8 — Herbs in the Dragoons (51 pp) — annual herbs (basil, cilantro, dill, parsley) plus Mediterranean perennials (rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano) that thrive in caliche drainage. Standalone mint chapter with the invasive-species containment warning.
• Guide 9 — Backyard Orchard in the Dragoons (68 pp) — the Dragoons classics (figs, pomegranates, jujubes), stone fruits with the February frost-protection mandate, low-chill pome fruits, container-only citrus protocol.

Homepage reorganized into three sections — Start Here · Crop Guides · Systems & Reference — and the “Crop coverage gaps” section of the backlog is now fully closed.

First addition to the new Cool-Season Track: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi. Full soil + hydroponic methods, plus the Dragoon cool-season window from late August through April.

Subsequently expanded into Guide 6 — Cool-Season Crops, which now covers brassicas plus alliums, cool-season greens, and root crops in one volume.

Eliminated significant duplication that had accumulated as the library grew. The pepper trilogy (A + C + I), the nutrient trio (E + F + G), and the bato bucket pair (B + I) were all collapsed into single authoritative guides.

• Pepper trilogy (old A + C + I) → Guide 2 — Peppers in the Dragoons. Soil track, hydroponic track, variety-specific staking in one volume.
• Bato bucket guide (old B) → Guide 3 — Bato Bucket Hydroponic Systems. Now the canonical home for the 5-step Cochise water-treatment protocol.
• Nutrient trio (old E + F + G) → Guide 4 — Hydroponic Nutrients. Four parts: Masterblend, locally-sourced DIY, pH Up/Down, Indoor & Precision (LED/VPD/automation). Resolved the 1.5 vs 2.4 g/gal Epsom conflict.
• Hydroponic primer (old D) → Guide 1 — Hydroponic Primer & Library Map. Repurposed as the front door, with the new master multi-crop Dragoons calendar.

Established the hybrid repetition rule (one canonical home for procedural recipes; intro/context paragraphs can repeat) and codified the editorial principles in PRINCIPLES.md.

Replaced the original stark-green palette with a warmer watercolor-inspired theme: cream paper, soft charcoal body text, sage green headings, terracotta accents. Applied consistently to the PDF guides (via a shared header.tex) and the website.

Side-by-side masthead added, featured cards introduced for the top two guides, thin SVG icons replaced emoji bullets, and the gallery page came online to share field photos from the Dragoons.