This summer has totally gotten away from me. Late monsoons mean a longer fire season which means more time away from my apartment and less time to tend to my garden.
Last year, I wrote about the beginning, middle and end of our summer gardening experience.
But, this summer has been so busy with work that I’ve barely had time to tend to my garden, let alone write about it.
So, let’s start from the beginning!
Gardening is notoriously hard in Flagstaff. Our typical last frost date is in early June (!!!), which means we have a short growing season here. We also have extreme temperature swings between night and day due to the elevation (7,000 feet above sea level), as well as early season drought and late season storms with heavy monsoonal rains (and sometimes hail) that can damage tender leaves and vines, and waterlog fragile root systems.
In addition to the challenging growing conditions, my job requires me to spend a good amount of time working 14-16-hour days away from home during wildfire season.
The odds are never in my favor here.
But, since gardening is just a hobby for me — and not a means to an end — I try not to take it too seroiusly. Keeping my expectations low helps quite a bit when it comes to the failures.
(And there are plenty of failures.)
Earlier this spring, Ryan and I took a look at what worked well for us last year (like… zucchini) and what didn’t (those damn onions) and adjusted our planting plans accordingly.
We ditched the onions, carrots and bell peppers this time around.
Even though they didn’t turn out so well last season, we decided to give cucumbers, tomatoes and snap peas another try this summer.
Given that our beets, kale, romaine, spinach, pole beans and zucchini all worked well last season, we planted those again.
We also added something new: rainbow chard.
Our peas and spinach took off immediately. I learned from last year and hung bird netting up before anything even started sprouting.
However… we STILL had a critter problem.
Come mid-June, all of my Kale sprouts, all of my cucumber vines, half of my pole bean leaves and half of my romaine heads all disappeared.
Must have been a squirrel or a mouse.
I replanted my kale, lettuce and the beans that disappeared, but at that point, it was too hot, and my kale and romaine never sprouted.
Regardless, come late June, the rest of my garden was looking to be in pretty decent shape!
Then, of course, fire happened. I spent a week staying up in Tusayan to work on two fires in the Grand Canyon area, and left my garden to fare for itself for a little over a week.
It didn’t fare too well.
My spinach had bolted, yikes!
Oh well. Work is unavoidable during fire season.
Come mid-July, I finally had some time to give my garden a bit of attention, since I’d been neglecting it for a while.
I pulled up all the bolted spinach and harvested SO much chard.
Chard grows so well here and I’m glad I listened to my friends that told me to plant it.
My snap peas also fared a little better this year with the bird netting, and at this point, I was able to harvest a few handfuls to snack on.
In addition to snap peas, I also harvested a TON of rainbow chard.
We ended up sautéing it up with toasted pine nuts and parmesan cheese and eating it with dinner for like three nights straight.
Then, I took a quick trip back home to Michigan, returned, and discovered my romaine was bolting as well.
Regardless, I still saved it to eat since it wasn’t bitter at all. Ryan and I had caesar salads for days.
At this point as well, my tomato seedlings died. I hadn’t planted them in the raised bed since I’d been planning to plant them in separate pots so I could bring them inside once the fall frost started creeping in.
I’d had a friend that was willing to water them during fire stints, but sadly, my seedlings never really took off, and they died before I could even transplant them into bigger planters with cages.
“Oh well” seems to be the recurring theme of this post, right?
Then, after that, I took off for two more wildfires, and returned to find…
…the zucchini-pocalypse has started.
Oh yes.
I got home Sunday night from two different wildfires and walked straight outside to my garden, where I pulled my first zucchini of the season out of the dirt.
There are already several more threatening to consume my diet over the next month.
We planted one zucchini plant last year and had more zucchini than we knew what to do with, and this year — thanks in part to my fire-induced negligence — we have two zucchini plants. I didn’t realize until it was too late that I hadn’t thinned my seedlings enough. Now, we have two side-by-side plants sharing a root system. Oh well.
Our beets are starting to shoulder as well.
I decided to try for a fall harvest since chard and beets can tolerate cold temperatures and are relatively fast to grow, so I planted a few more beet and chard seeds in the now-empty space in our raised bed.
No clue if my seeds will sprout, but I figured I might as well give it a try since I have nothing to lose.
So, that’s where our garden is sitting right now, in mid-August.
Like I said — Flagstaff is a difficult climate for gardening, and my job makes it difficult to commit to anything during the summer. So, I’m not devastated by this year’s failures by any means.
But, I am seriously considering a garden that’s 50% chard 50% zucchini next year.
Happy harvesting!
