Gardening in Central Oregon is always a challenge, but those obstacles keep changing. Our 3,000-foot elevation doesn’t change, and the risks for late spring frosts appear to be present every year.My initially memories of gardening go back to my youth house in Seattle in the late days of World War II. My parents had a Victory Garden, one of many adjustments made to manage scarcities due to the war effort. We grew lettuce and onions, peas, cucumbers, zucchini; I don’t keep in mind corn. Maybe they reasoned the summers weren’t warm enough.When Ginger and I relocated to Alaska we attempted carrots and lettuce in Sitka without impressive success. In Anchorage, the longer summer season daytime hours facilitated higher success. Potatoes were simple. Our cabbages were big, however not like the cabbages of legend at the Alaska State Fair.In Oregon we resided in Bend and Island City–
outside of La Grande– prior to transferring to Redmond in 1975. The elevation in the Grande Ronde Valley is almost as high as here, but the growing season was appreciably longer and more reliable. We might grow nearly anything, including apples and pie cherries.Here we have an exceptionally big garden. Our city lot is almost half an acre.
When we had actually planted all the yard we thought prudent for upkeep, we committed the balance of the west side to a veggie garden.Tomatoes are generally our outstanding crop. We start 3 or four varieties from seed in early April, letting
them suffer in our living-room windows until early to mid-May when we move them to our garden shed for solidifying, usually putting them in the ground the last week of Might. This year a cool May delayed tomato planting till June 3. Whatever else we plant straight in the ground as soil temperature levels permit. The primary distinction in the garden calendar I credit to worldwide warming. In the mid-1970s we seemed to fear a killing frost shortly after Labor Day. Our response to the frost alert was to strip all of the staying tomatoes for storage in the garage where they would ripen over the next two months.As I write this in mid-October, we have had no frost, not to mention a killing frost, and there is no frost in the two-week extended forecast.
The extreme heat we had in July prevented pollination of many plants, specifically tomatoes, so our tomato crop has actually been late this year.Other challenges to Central Oregon gardening: the very sandy soil needs modifying with raw material to retain the precious moisture, and a variety of critters can eliminate many verdant crops. Deer are usually the prime culprits, even in the city. Our fences are low enough to keep them out. This year they have actually eliminated our beans, drastically pruned our zucchini, and munched their way through the remainder of the backyard and garden. They are not specifically fond of tomatoes, however they forget, so they’ll take a bite out of numerous and knock others off the vines as they amble through.A couple of years in a row in the 1980s we had uninvited porcupines marauding our corn crop in the middle of the night around Labor Day. We have actually had no success with carrots and beets most recent years, due to the fact that the community quails meander through the garden and devour the tender little shoots as they emerge from the soil.Rarely have actually rock chucks been a problem in our garden, although one year I shot one in our spinach patch. It was not an eliminating shot, and the marmot escaped under the garden shed where it subsequently died.The odor of his rotting carcass was an unpleasant tip for several days till an unwelcome raccoon drug it out in the open, so we had the ability to appropriately dispose of it. We’ve had skunks, too, but we have not identified that they have actually triggered any damage.Despite these problems, we still take
pride in our garden, enjoy its bounty, and will continue to handle the obstacles. Carl Vertrees has actually resided in north Redmond given that 1975 with his better half, Ginger. He was publisher of The Representative from 1975 till 2001.