Gardening At High Altitude

Watering

Even when it rains, the sun will dry our ground down four inches or more in a day. It is essential that you water your gardens, some more than others depending on what is planted in the garden. You can water:

1. With a watering can
2. Stand with a hose and a spray nozzle
3. Leaky hose (this is what I use in my vegetable garden)
4. Drip system (plastic tubing with emitters)
5. Sprinkler

Fertilizing

Every year in the fall, I (really my husband) put at least a truckload of well composted manure on most of my vegetable garden. I do use 10-10-10 on my corn during the growing season as corn is a very heavy feeder.

Be careful where you get manure as I introduced a very noxious weed in my vegetable garden from some manure that I got at a local horse ranch.

I plan where my potatoes will be the following year and don't put manure on that bed. Manure will raise the pH of the soil and potatoes prefer an acid soil. Most years I put sulphar pellets on the potato bed in early spring to lower the pH.

Mostly, I don't fertilize my rock gardens.

Garden Gold

I did not have any flowers or many plants in my rock gardens as they are open to every critter that comes along. Chipmunks and ground squirrels will eat everything. Then one year I discovered what my husband dubbed "Garden Gold".

Garden Gold is male urine, it can't be female urine. This deters all the small critters but not deer or elk. I have an endless supply, thanks to my husband. After a rain or about every two weeks, I spray lightly with Garden Gold. It doesn't leave an odor except to the critters and adds nitrogen as well as repelling.

I don't use Garden Gold on my vegetable garden. The aluminum foil works to repel chipmunks and ground squirrels.

Homemade Deer Repellent

You can buy deer repellents based on rotten egg such as Deer Off or Liquid Fence. Feather meal works well also, we used that several years at the Pine Post Office.

Here's my recipe for homemade deer repellent:

• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp tabasco/hot sauce
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp dish detergent
• Enough water to make one gallon

I use dried, very hot peppers because I don't have any Tobasco or hot sauce. First, I soak the peppers in boiling water to soften. Then I put the peppers, garlic cloves, the cooled water, eggs, milk, and dish detergent into a blender and liquify it. After letting the mixture settle and ripen for two or three days, I strain it very well, add enough water to make a gallon, and spray my plants.

Composting

I compost all vegetable scraps from the kitchen and small, immature weeds from my gardens. However, if a weed has gone to seed, I put it in a pile that I'll just let rot and not use in my gardens. I don't think a compost pile gets hot enough to kill weed seeds up here. I never put bones or any type of meat scrap into the compost as I don't want to attract preditors.

I put straw or old hay bales around my compost pile. They really help to keep moisture in the pile and, when rotted, make great mulch. It takes about 2 years to get fully decayed compost.

A Rose

For years I'ved searched for a rose that will thrive up here and have the perfect bud. Most high altitude roses do not have enough petals to form what I think is the perfect bud and open flower. This is Emily Carr, a rose developed in Canada. I planted it last year and won't know until this spring if the plant survived.

But, finally a rose...