Forgetting the rules

Have you ever ignored your own gardening rules, even though you know they work?

I've long used a "wall of water" on my tomatoes every year through mid-July, when the weather around here finally breaks into dependable heat. But through some crazy combination of denial and optimism I took the things off my plants during a freaky-hot day in May (90, can you believe it?).

Then out of laziness I left them off all through the June Gloom, even though night temperatures dipped dangerously close to that tomato-leaf-curling zone of the mid-forties.

What brought on this destructive behavior?

So far I've been lucky - only a tiny bit of leaf curl on one tomato - but a windstorm a couple of weeks ago did blow over my brandywine. Luckily it's still short and didn't have far to blow.

Fits and starts of a Montana spring

I can see snow at the tops of the ridges that surround my house, but I got a pretty bad sunburn last week while downtown for a microbrewery festival. The signs of spring are strong - the farmer's market is running, we have outdoor festivals downtown again, there is sunshine, which comes with more exposed skin, and then in the last few days this has happened:

Adequate chicken protection ain't pretty(before)

The big payoff! (after)

The good part of spring has legitimately arrived here. Now, that isn't to say it is warm out, or that frost danger is over, or that I can safely plant broccoli starts. It is more like a frame of mind. Instead of debating leather clogs or lightweight hiking boots, I'm debating sandals or Crocs. I shouldn't get ahead of myself, however. In 1996 Missoula had a freak weather event that dropped six inches of thick snow on June 1st. You gotta stay on your toes in a climate like this.

Happiness is tulips under the office window

We've been busy with planting prep lately. I bought some locally grown organic potatoes that I intend to chop in half and then plant. This method is cheap, easy, and effective. The locally grown part ensures that the potatoes are adapted to our soil and climate. The organic part guarantees that they haven't been sprayed with anti-sprouting chemicals (most store-bought potatoes are, because people don't like it when they sprout). And cutting the potato in half doubles your potato investment without, as far as I can tell, affecting your final harvest. Then you drop your potato half into a 6" deep hole surrounded by well turned soil. Done! Harvest those spuds in September! I'll do this tomorrow because today it is blustery and chilly, which is bad weather for gardening with a eight-week-old baby strapped to your back.

I broke down and bought lettuce starts. My lettuce from seed is 1/4" tall right now. Pitiful. And I hate buying lettuce at the farmer's market for some reason. It angers me that I am so bad at growing it that I need to buy it. So instead I'm cheating and I bought six starts. That ought to ease my lettuce pain until the lettuce from seed gets moving on up.

On the other hand, I always buy tomatoes as starts, and I always buy from the same little farm because they harden off their tomatoes very nicely before they sell them. This year I got excited and bought six instead of four. I'm not sure why. I buy the same cherry tomato varieties every year - Sweet 100s and Sun Golds. Why mess with a good thing? On the other hand, I vary my Roma and Slicer purchases. One year I had Cosmonauts and Early Girls, another year Juliet and Oregon Spring. I have yet to say to myself, "YES! This is the correct breed of Roma for my garden!" so I just keep trying. One year it will happen, I am sure.

My tomatoes are currently in a foster home of sorts - they are still at the farm, yet they have been earmarked for me. At their greenhouse on their farm they are kept in much better shape then I'm capable of, so I just order them through my co-op and hope that they don't get delivered until at least May 15th. I can't plant them until June 1st in good conscience, and even that is risky business. I've checked the NOAA website during the first week of June before and found myself grabbing big plastic tarps at 9 p.m. to protect my tomatoes and basil from imminent frosty destruction. My neighbor, who is 90 and has lived with her 91-year-old husband on their tiny city lot for 73 years, is almost always out there with me. We both curse the weather from our respective sides of the tidy fence that separates our lots as she covers her ten Early Girl tomato starts with tattered flowery bedsheets and a very, very practiced hand.

What a difference some rain makes!

It's amazing what a difference rain makes in the garden. Over the last 30 days our rainfall total is 0.88" above normal and you can see it in our plants - everything is thriving. The zucchini seeds we planted have sprouted and already put on their first true leaves; the cukes, peas, and beans are all finding their way up our trellises; and you can see the beginnings of blossoms on our bell peppers and tomatoes. For this gardener there's nothing more satisfying than a nice steady spring rain followed by a day of sun. Plants seem to respond with explosive growth so rapid it makes you think you can see the cells multiplying if you look hard enough.

Of course I'm not naive enough to think this good fortune is going to last as we head into June. Our soaker hoses are down and our rainbarrels are full and at the ready. I still need to buy a pump I saw at Harbor Freight Tools that hopefully will deliver water from our rain barrells to the soaker hoses with enough pressure to push water through the pores in the hoses. Even though the rain barrell in the picture below is about four feet off the ground, gravity alone isn't enough to push the water out of the soaker hoses. However, this set up does work great for watering our blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, asparagus, hops, and strawberries, all of which are down hill from the barrell.

The fruits and veggies aren't the only things benefitting from our spring rains. Our perrennials in this bed seem to really be enjoying themselves as well. Even our chickens are benefitting from the rain. Since the coop is right next to a rain barrell their waterer gets filled from the barrell, which is also convenient for the chicken keepers.

I guess about the only downside to our rainfall is that the weeds are doing very well too, but given the "exceptional" drought we went through last year I'll take the weeds with the rain.

Harvesting the cover crop

While sitting around waiting for the ground to warm enough for planting tomatoes, we decided to harvest the cover crop. We chopped it all up and put it in the compost bin. To be frank, it had gotten pretty ugly. It looked gangly, like an awkward teenager.

It turned out to be great family activity. Everybody got into the act.

Finally my compost is really starting to heat up. In the fall, I get tons of leaves from the neighbors. The carbon to nitrogen ratio is so high that my greens immediately burn up and disappear. Over the winter, the pile gently breaks down, more from worm activity and leaf molds than anything else. But now, it's finally gotten to that heat that kills weed seeds. And it makes a good seed warmer too!

The Mile-High Club: Short-season gardening in Denver

For whatever reason, Denver maintains a reputation as an agriculture-centered cowtown set in the heights of the Rockies. The reality is that we're set just out of the mountains on the plains along the front range. It's quite a drive to ski, and any agriculture other than the oft-forgotten stockyards is way out of town. That said, we are at a mile elevation - the statehouse steps mark the 5280' point, meaning very dry air and for goodness sake, don't forget your sunscreen.

Our house is actually in the northwestern part of town so we're pretty close along the foothills, but Denver has any number of micro-climates which can be experiencing vastly different weather at any given moment.
What we all share is a short growing season: around four months long, with our last frost date around May 15, and the first frost of the winter expected mid-September. We've usually got good snow coming around October 1. Through the summer the thin, dry air brings temperatures regularly breaking the 100 degree mark and cooling off significantly at night; this makes for great flavor in tomatoes and, if you can manage it with the very short season, melons.

My husband and I both grew up gardening and have truly enjoyed sharing it with our little ones, now five, two and a half, and six months old. Our oldest daughter really became interested a few months ago when she planted a few pea seeds in a bare patch in the lawn. It quickly became her garden and was carefully mowed around. She ate all the peas straight off the plant and we spent hours watching the bugs and digging for worms in her tiny plot. Now the five of us share a good-sized vegetable plot - maybe 15' by 8', with an additional 15' by 2' patch along the brick wall of our garage where we grow melons on a trellis to take advantage of the heat from the wall to try and extend the season a bit. We also grow perennials and plant bulbs, but that's become a secondary interest since the children get so much enjoyment out of the vegetables.

This year I was ambitious and had most of our cool-weather vegetable seeds in the ground by late-February. I've been very pleased with how it's turned out, and maybe a bit surprised. So far we have sugar snap and snow peas, mesclun, 'heatwave' lettuce blend, beets (a family favorite), gai-lan/broccolini, rhubarb, and a chartreuse and purple flower mix.

We'll be adding haricots verts (filet beans, or french green beans), along with cantaloupe, pumpkins, mini yellow bell peppers, and alpine strawberries we've started inside. This is my first time starting seeds indoors and I didn't plan very well in that the pumpkins sprouted in about four days, the cantaloupe and peppers in five or six. But the alpine strawberries germinate in (get this) thirty days. I'm not sure how I'm going to work this out, but for now I've taken the cover off of my mini-greenhouse and am using cling film to keep the strawberries' cells moist. Oh, and fingers crossed!