I can’t believe how close we are to August!
With that said. It’s been a few weeks since I posted about my first ever high-altitude gardening attempt, and so I figured I’d do a little check-in now that it’s been six or so weeks since that post.
So, first of all: My expectations.
I really did not think a SINGLE thing would grow. I’ve never gardened at 7,000 feet before, and our side yard gets a few hours of direct sun every day, but the hill we live on and the tall wall/fence separating us from our neighbors presents a challenge.
We also deal with extreme drought followed by extreme monsoonal rains, all while wildly swinging between below-freezing night temps into June and daytime temps close to 100 at the same time.
So, I was just pleased to see some plants germinating!
Ryan also installed a Bluetooth-enabled remote irrigation system, which is great! We’re both absent SO much on fires that it was a godsend to be able to click a button on my phone from across town and know my garden was getting watered.
Let’s take a little look from left-to-right:
So, a challenge right away. Our peas and romaine took off as soon as we planted them!
…and then the birds ate everything.
So, we had to replant.
However, once we resowed and hung bird netting: our romaine and peas started thriving! (There aren’t any in this photo because, well, I already ate them.)
Our pole beans also took off. They maxed out our trellis in a few days and now they’re on their way up and over our neighbor’s fence. Sorry Bill!
Our carrots seem to be doing great so far (though —who knows until we pull them!) and our zucchini is obviously taking over our entire garden. I had to trim a few leaves so our carrots, peas, tomatoes and beets would continue getting some light. Small garden problems for sure.
Our kale is thriving, but: We have aphids. I’m going to have to spray for them today or tomorrow.
The right side of our garden isn’t faring quite as well as the left side.
We have a few onions that seem to be doing great. I started my seedlings indoors this past spring, but Yukon got into them and chewed them up, so most of them didn’t survive the transplanting.
I planted a few beets into the empty space because I’m trying to maximize my harvest over here!
Our beets immediately started thriving, but I think some of the heavy monsoonal rains have started damaging their delicate leaves… which is a shame, because I LOVE beet leaves.
I’m hoping for larger fist-size beetroots (you guys know my opinions regarding borshch!), so I’m going to leave them in my garden for as long as possible to let them keep growing.
My tomato plant is doing OK. I had really low expectations for it because tomatoes are notoriously hard to grow up here in Flagstaff, but it’s growing enough that I’ll need to get a cage for it soon, which is a surprise!
And, finally, the saddest side of my garden.
Our cucumbers never took off. By the time one of the two planted seeds finally germinated, I think the beet leaves kind of deprived them of their sun.
Also, our pepper seedlings died before we could transplant them, so we decided to plant a second tomato seedling in their place. That seedling also never really took off —likely for similar reasons. Darn spinach.
Which, speaking of. Our spinach has long since bolted, but we did harvest quite a bit of it before that happened! Earlier this month, we picked it all right when we noticed the leaves beginning to change shape, and cooked it with tomatoes from Ryan’s friend’s tomato farm and made it into a penne pasta dinner dish.
I left the bolted spinach in the garden because… well… fire season.
Anyway, that’s a late July check-in! Like I said, I’m honestly surprised anything even germinated, so I’m beyond thrilled with how my garden is progressing so far.
I’m learning a lot, which was the intent of my little gardening experiment. Hopefully one day, Ryan and I will have enough space to maintain a bigger garden, so a lot of what I’m learning now will come in handy then.
And — it’ll even come in handy next year when I try gardening once again!
In the mean time, I’m excited to keep snacking on my snap peas every day, and I can’t wait to see if my garden yields beets, carrots and onions.
