title: How can I increase the frequency of xticks/ labels for dates on a bar plot?
body: <p>I am trying to increase the xtick and label frequency of dates on a barplot. It currently puts labels for every 2nd month, and I'd like to increase this to every month. </p>
  
  <p>The code I have so far is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>fig = plt.figure()
  ax = plt.subplot(1,1,1)
  
  # defining the spacing around the plots
  plt.subplots_adjust(left = 0.125, bottom = 0.1, right = 0.9, top = 0.9, wspace = 0.2, hspace = 0.35)
  
  handles = []        # for bar plot  
  
  bar1 = ax.bar(dates, clim[loc,:], label = 'climatology (1981 - 2013)', color='darkgray', width=width_arr[:], linewidth=0, alpha=0.5)
  
  handles.append(bar1)
  
  bar2 = ax.bar(dates, chirps[i,loc,:], label = str(year1), color = 'blue', width=width_arr[:], linewidth=0, alpha=0.45)
  handles.append(bar2)
  
  
  # setting the plot tick labels   
  for tick in ax.xaxis.get_major_ticks():
      tick.label.set_fontsize(10)
  
  for tick in ax.yaxis.get_major_ticks():
      tick.label.set_fontsize(10)
  
  ax.set_ylabel("Precipitation", fontsize=10)
  
  # plotting the legend within the plot space
  plt.legend( loc = 'upper left', numpoints=1, ncol = 3, prop={'size':10})
  plt.ylim(0, 110)
  
  # rotating the tick marks to make best use of the x-axis space
  plt.xticks(rotation = '25') 
  </code></pre>