Yes, it’s September. When I posted about a late snow in June, I had no idea that my very next post would be about an early snow in September, but here we are. This year, from our last snow to the first snow was 92 days. From the last day less than 32° to the first, it was 69 days. This was an unusually short summer, even here. In the previous 5 years (since I have been recording the weather) the days between last/first snow have ranged from 129-158 days (2020: 92); the days between last/first day below 32° have ranged from 82-113 days (2020: 69).
We had plenty of warning and had planned as best we could to harvest whatever could be harvested and protect any thing else that might be saved. Some things will be lost. I’m hopeful that the remaining brassicas, lettuces, spinach, and root vegetables will be okay and may even produce more growth. The potatoes, tucked underground, will be fine, but I doubt that the plants will grow any more. A couple of cauliflower were planted in July and were still small–I will be interested to see if they survived. Obviously the zucchini pictured here did not survive.
On another note, I don’t know how these other bloggers manage to produce blog content throughout the summer when they are busy in the garden. I obviously don’t do so well at that. But, soon I hope to catch up and provide new insights to growing food at 9,000 feet.
If that’s a question, the answer is YES. It can snow in June here in the Rockies. On Tuesday morning, June 9, we woke up to 2-4″ of soggy snow. It was pretty windy overnight so the snow drifted to make it hard to measure exactly how much. On the average I’d say there was a good 2″. The overnight low temperature was 29.5°, and was below 32° for about 5 hours.
What about the garden? We are well prepared for almost anything, including snow and below-freezing temperatures. We’d seen the forecast, so planned ahead and covered everything as much as possible. Of course, our shadecloth protects not only against the intense sun, but keeps out hail, and in this case, snow.
The most temperate plants (squashes and their companion flowers, and bush beans) are covered each night with plastic over the hoop frames, but on this night we added an additional layer of frostcloth directly over the plants inside those hoops. We have been covering many of our plants with various plastic containers at night primarily to keep the mice out, but in this case they provided extra protection from the cold and snow. The potatoes and other beds with cold-sensitive plants were all covered with frostcloth underneath the shadecloth. Additionally the smallest, most immature plants that do not have plastic over the hoops had water bottles placed around them for added protection against the cold, with frostcloth layed over the top.
In the morning we removed the snow from the shadecloth & frostcloth and opened up the hoop tunnels. By the afternoon, just about all the snow had melted and it reached 53°.
Everything seems to have survived and is doing well!
We have a weather station here on our property, which we placed here late 2014 prior to our move to this location. Our weather is transmitted to Weather Undergroundand Ambient Weather as Pike Trails Ranches. It currently comes up on Wunderground as “Guffey Station”; we’re hoping WU will fix this and put our local name on as it’s difficult to know which station you’re really looking at. My pet peeve with WU.
I have been keeping detailed records of our weather since that time. I’m including our weather information for anyone who’d like to compare their own information with ours, to determine whether the same plants that grow here may grow in your own area.
IMPORTANT CLIMATE STATISTICS
As weather pertains to successful gardening, we need to know:
first & last frost dates
season length
how hot or cold it is during the summer
how cold it gets in the winter
how many hours of sunlight per day
what is the UV Index during the summer
FROST DATES
There are different frost date finders here and there on the web. Here are a few. My favorite, which presents the results clearly and I believe comes closest to my experience was “Morning Chores”.
MORNING CHORES:This, for our location, is the most accurate. It chooses the location closest to our own climate.
DAVE’S GARDEN:For our location, this shows a few local areas to choose from. It’s up the you to determine which fits closest to your own climate.
GARDEN.ORG:Shows a detailed, somewhat confusing chart. It does not indicate exactly where the information is gathered. Links are provided for other nearby locations.
FARMER’S ALMANAC: This is by far the worst. It shows a location not even close to our climate.
Frost dates listed for our location aren’t close in proximity and possibly inaccurate. We are just under 9,000 feet in elevation. Some of the nearest published frost dates that come up when I enter my zip code are as shown below, with their distance from us “As The Crow Flies” (ATCF), the elevation and season length (# days from last frost to first frost). Our Golden Gaits Ranch (GGR) stats are based on the past 5 years I’ve recorded, an average of the last & first days at 32° or less.
Just looking at these, you might pick Antero Reservoir as a close choice because of our similar elevation, but it is wide open there and typically windier and a LOT colder that we are. We recently drove through the Antero Reservoir area when it was about +10°F at our home and -26°F there!
HIGH ELEVATION SUMMER & WINTER TEMPERATURES
In addition to last & first frost dates and the # days of the season without frost, there are summer & winter temperatures to consider. The winter temperatures are important to know for perennials—will they survive the winter? Nurseries that sell perennials will normally indicate which USDA Zones the plants are suited for. Unfortunately, they do not normally say anything about how long of a summer season it requires or how warm or cool the summer temperatures should be for success. That is my frustration, and I haven’t found resources to help me with that.
Summer temperatures and UV Index are important to help determine whether plants may require extra protection, either from too much heat or not enough. Frost cloth or plastic draped over hoops may help add warmth, particularly at night. Shade cloth can be draped over the hoops to help keep things cooler or to keep them from burning from too much sunshine (UV).
My USDA Zone is 4B (-20° to -15°). The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone finder indicates that our entire zip code area is Zone 5 or 5A, but our zip code area is large and varied. Here is a chart of our average temperatures and precipitation, 2015-2019 from May through September, showing Highest & Lowest Highs & Highest & Lowest Lows and Daily Averages.
SUNLIGHT & UV
I do not have average charts showing the UV Index for the area, but I know it’s high. We protect our garden plants by adding shade cloth to the beds, which allows approximately 70% of the sunlight to reach the plants. I believe that for most plants this really makes a big difference, keeping plants from too much of the sun.
Our latitude is 38.82, and on June 21st we get 14.53 hours of sunlight.
MY FRUSTRATION WITH CHARTS BASED ON ZIP CODE & HARDINESS ZONES…
Keep in mind that many of the “Zone 3” areas are in the northern part of the US, and receive more hours of light per day in addition to warmer summer temperatures and longer summer seasons. Therefore, I no longer trust that a plant that is considered hardy to Zone 3 will be successful in my location. I’ve tried a few that have not thrived or produced fruit.
This year everything started with a lot of excitement and ended with a crash. Literally. The garden had been going well and kept me busy all summer until my participation came to a halt on August 23 when I fell from my horse. My injuries kept me out of the garden the remainder of the season. With a fractured left hip and right clavicle, I had surgery on the hip which kept me in a wheelchair for 11 ½ weeks before I could walk again. I couldn’t use crutches or a walker because of the injured clavicle, and because of the nature of the fracture, the doctor felt it best that I stay off the leg until the bone was quite healed. Four months after the injury it is still difficult to walk, but I’m slowly improving.
Needless to say, the timing wasn’t helpful for the garden. It was just about time to harvest most of what had been growing all summer. For two weeks after the accident, I was in the hospital & then rehab, and Tim was doing all the necessary house and ranch chores before and after driving nearly 4 hours round trip to visit me each day. During this time there was limited time for Tim to do all the chores, so some things were left behind. At one point we called a few neighbors to stop by and help themselves to whatever looked good in the garden. We just couldn’t deal with it all.
Besides not being able to harvest everything when we should have, I was unable to cook or preserve things as they came in. Some things were easy to pull up and put in storage, like the root vegetables. Then there was lettuce, cabbage, kale, chard and broccoli, which I was able to help with indoors after Tim harvested them. Later there were beans, peas, squash, potatoes, carrots, onions & garlic. Then there was all the fall bed cleanup and preparation for winter to do.
In addition to the outdoor garden, the greenhouse had been planted with tomatoes, peppers, some squash and a few other odds & ends I thought would do better inside than out. Tim was picking tomatoes and bringing them to me at rehab to add to my meals, which was nice. Before the accident I had started some seedlings to grow in the greenhouse in the fall, and Tim was able to get them planted while I was in rehab.
Tim did all of this without my help, which put a lot of his projects on the back-burner. He was great, and did it all! I did a lot of sofa supervision, at times with the help of our iPads. Tim would take his iPad to the garden, walk around and show me things on Facetime, and I’d be able to tell him what to do out there. That came in pretty handy!
It was a crazy time for us. I realized I just had to let go of wanting to reap all the benefits of my garden work. Some of the vegetables weren’t harvested in time, and were inedible. Many things were given to the ducks. At least I had the fun of planning & planting this year, and sometimes I think that’s just as enjoyable as the eating. I know, I’m weird.
2018 GARDEN PLAN
For 2018 I had decided to grow more of what grows well in this climate and nix some of the things that didn’t do so well in 2017. A few things I was determined to try again and I did so, like cauliflower. That was a bust. Some things didn’t do as well this year as they had in 2017, and I’m not entirely sure why. For the most part, things did not mature as quickly as the previous year. On the average, it was a bit warmer this summer, with less rainfall, which meant more watering on our part.
One thing I did differently this year was that I kept the shade cloth over the beds all summer. I didn’t roll it up on the nice days like I had done the previous year. On one occasion, the hail would have ruined everything had the shade cloth not been there. Perhaps less sunlight was responsible for the slower growth of plants this year, so next year I will allow more sunshine in by raising the shade cloth on days I don’t expect hail, and see if that helps things grow more quickly.
On a personal note: Sadly, and with a lot of prayer and thought, we decided to sell our horses. We decided we are getting older, our bones are more brittle, and we decided it is not worth the risk to continue riding. We don’t want to keep “pasture ornaments” that won’t be used, so they were sold to some people who will be able to continue riding.
Before we started our garden we had seen a roadside stand not far from here and stopped in. We chatted quite a bit with the owner/gardener. One of the things I remember her saying was that “every year is different” and you just have to go with what you get, appreciating what does well and not fretting about what didn’t. That’s true in any location, to be sure, but especially in our high altitude. This year was rainy and cool, unlike the past couple of summers we’ve experienced.
The photo above was taken Sept. 21, 2017 the first day of autumn, and the same date the photo below was taken in 2016. See the difference!
It’s time to update the progress in the garden, which I have been putting off because:
I’m too busy working in the garden to spend time writing, and choosing & editing photos.
I’ve thought that what anyone wants to see is results. Results won’t fully be in until the end of the season.
It’s a big project and somewhat overwhelming.
But, I have several observations to share near the end of our first season of high-altitude gardening. Some things have gone well, others have not. I realize that even when I am a “seasoned” high-elevation gardener, every year will be different and will bring different results.
WEATHER
This summer, after some very hot days the latter part of June and early July, we have since had an extraordinary amount of rain and generally cooler weather. And I mean “extra-ordinary”; it has rained almost daily. We had 25 days with rain the month of July, and all but 4 days so far in August have had rain. We’ve had a total of 10.6” during the months June-August, which is a lot for our location. Last year we had 1.8” during that same time period. Some days are sunny and quite warm in the morning, then cooler and cloudy/rainy in the afternoon. Some days we’ve had close to 1” of rain in a day, occasionally with small hail. Other days are just a few spits. Needless to say, I have not had to water the garden much. This photo was taken just after a thunderstorm, showing the typical dark sky and that lush green pasture we have this year.
SHADE CLOTH
The garden beds are almost always covered with shade cloth. The sun is so intense at 9,000 feet, we felt it was important to provide protection. Think “sunscreen” for plants. One concern about the shade cloth would be, “can the pollinators get in?” Yes, the ends of each bed are open, and they should be able to get in and out easily. The birds certainly have figured that out! No worries about the plants getting enough rain, either. The rain still gets through and the hail does not. Some of the hail will sit on top, and as it melts, it drips through to the beds. The shade cloth has been a great addition, and the plants are certainly not suffering from lack of sunshine.
UNIQUE HIGH ELEVATION TIMING
To some extent, I don’t know if we’re “on track” regarding timing. I think that most things are maturing much more slowly than they would in a warmer climate. I’m not yet sure if things will ripen before the temperatures dive in September. This is a photo of our tomatoes today. I just noticed that these had begun to turn orange yesterday. As an example of our timing here, this is a Glacier tomato, with days to maturity listed as 55. This is my first tomato with any color, shown 74 days after transplanting outside. I was already picking ripe tomatoes at this time where we used to live, although the bulk of them didn’t ripen until September. The only winter squashes I have on the vines are roughly the size of a golfball. At this point, I’m not thinking they will mature before the frosts begin in September. Just about everything is a month behind here, which makes sense, as our last frost date is also a month behind. For the most part I have chosen varieties that should mature as quickly as possible.
PESTS
The only pests I have had any trouble with have been grubs, aphids, and a few cabbage worms. Not bad!
The grubs showed up in the soil in probably the thousands. As I was digging through one of the unplanted beds one day I began finding them. The more I dug the more I found. I counted as I removed them, and estimated 4-500 in the top 5-6” of just one bed. I threw them all in a bucket and fed them to the ducks a couple of handfuls at a time, and at least they liked them. Although I didn’t observe any obvious plant damage, I was concerned that all these grubs might become some kind of beetles that I wouldn’t want around (beetles that would lay eggs which would become more grubs next season and then more beetles). I wasn’t sure if they would eventually damage the veggies, or not. My best guess is that beetles laid their eggs in our pile of horse manure that had been aging for a couple of years—apparently they love that stuff, and I found that the remainder of that pile was also full of grubs. To get them under control I got some beneficial nematodes, and within a couple of weeks they were largely gone. There are still a few here and there, but they are no longer bothersome.
Bumble Flower Beetle
Just the other day I noticed a beetle buzzing by me, and remembered that during my grub research I had seen photos of a “Bumble Flower Beetle” that looked like this photo. I now think that the grubs may be these beetle larvae, and more beneficial than damaging. There were so many of the grubs, it’s probably just as well that they are under control, but it just may be that they never were that much of a threat.
Aphids have found us and have been eating lettuces, kale and spinach. Not too badly, but they are there and laying eggs. I have sprayed them intermittently with neem and insecticidal soap, which seem to help. I had some calendula planted in a couple of spots, which I removed because they had gotten too big for their locations. When I pulled them up, I discovered that they were covered with aphids, so they may have acted as a “trap” for them, keeping them away from the vegetables to some extent. Off to the compost pile.
The cabbage worms have been present, but not in too many numbers. The same spray has been helpful to keep them at bay. I found one on my corn the other day, but none over there since then.
GREENHOUSE PLANS
Our current project is building a greenhouse. I’ll add another post on that at a later date. Tim’s been working hard to plan and has begun to build our winter oasis. The greenhouse will be attached to the southern side of our house, under and out from the deck. It will have approximately 110 sq.ft. of bed space, and an area for starting seedlings. It will be heated with radiant heat in the concrete floor, and will have a pond inside for thermal storage and for fish–I’ll be able to use the fish’s water to water the plants. It should be enclosed (we think) in about 4-5 weeks, with the heating in the floor to come later . Therefore, I’m already starting some seedlings indoors that will be planted out as soon as I can. Wow! Can’t wait!
IT’S BEEN 74 DAYS: HOW ARE THE VEGETABLES DOING?
It is now 74 days after “last frost”, when most plants were planted outside, give or take a day or two.
The cold-hardy vegetables have all done very well up to this point (brassicas such as kale, cauliflower, mustard; lettuces, spinach, beets, radishes, onions). I’ve started a second batch of all of these to extend into the fall, with covered beds as needed.
Some other vegetables that I expected to do well haven’t met my expectations, such as peas & beans. The peas are there, but not in the numbers I had in our previous garden. The beans have lots of blossoms but very few beans.
The warm-season vegetables that I’m experimenting with are still questionable, such as corn, squashes, and tomatoes. Tomatoes have just begun to turn yellow and orange, the corn has ears that are small and don’t feel like they have much inside, the squashes are small and I doubt they will ripen in time.
Perennials in their first year of growth are (I think) slowly growing, as to be expected. These are asparagus, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries.
At the end of the summer I’ll post all my observations of everything I’ve planted, I’ll do a page for each vegetable or vegetable group to keep it a bit organized. Hopefully the information will help anyone interested.
Living in the mountains sure is different from the lowlands! We have been here almost 4 weeks now, and have had quite a taste of our new life here. We’ve had a couple of good-size spring snowstorms, which left roughly 10” of snow each time. Now we’re in the middle of the third since we arrived full time. At one point we were without power for about 4 hours, and another time it was out for about 34 hours. Today it was real glitchy, going off and on all morning. The internet has occasionally been down, which means we not only can’t get online, we can’t use our phones, since all we have right now are internet phones.
We’ve contacted the phone company about getting a land line. At first, they couldn’t verify our address, since the county hadn’t put us into their E-911 registry. We got that taken care of with a few phone calls, and after a couple of weeks waiting, the phone company came to discover the nearest junction is across the street from us; they will need to bury a line to our house. They’ll put it where the house will be, and we will need to put our own line from there to the RV. That should be done by early next week. Then we won’t feel quite so stranded when the power and internet are down.
Between the snowstorms we’ve had some rain & hail, and a few nicer, sunnier days. The roads get quite muddy when it rains or the snow melts, and are a bit difficult to maneuver. A few neighbors get out with their snowblades or a drag to even out the ruts, but other than that there isn’t much done for the roads. We had thought that the local association would maintain the roads during bad weather, but we haven’t seen them do that yet. We definitely don’t see as much traffic go by when the roads are bad. The horses’ pen gets quite mushy, too, and it’s difficult to feed them and impossible to scoop poop. The poop will wait, the food gets thrown over or under the fence.
Yikes! It’s 2:20 pm and I just saw a coyote about 100 yds from the house. We do frequently hear them in the evening/night, but I don’t like seeing them around during the day. Perhaps the snow brought him out. Fortunately, KK (the cat) is inside curled up on the sofa, and not out roaming around!
We are currently in Wellington, and it’s been interesting watching the weather from our weather station in Guffey, which broadcasts to Weather Underground. (WU)
The forecasts from WU tend to be incorrect, and during these winter months the highs are forecast 10 or more degrees lower than what actually happens. That’s a bonus for us! In fact, the past several days it’s been warmer there than here in Wellington. The lows in the mornings are often lower than the predicted forecast, but that’s not quite as frequent. The lows have varied a lot; sometimes a bit lower than Wellington, other times Guffey’s mornings are warmer than here.
It will be interesting to see whether these trends continue. I’ve begun to keep a log of the forecast temps in Guffey, compared with the actual temps, to watch for trends. I’m also logging Wellington, to compare the differences. It will also be interesting to see whether in time, the Guffey forecasts might become a little more accurate, based on the readings from our weather station.
What’s nice for us is that the Guffey winters appear to be not too different than Wellington–perhaps even nicer, especially considering it is less windy there. And the summers are most surely cooler than Wellington, which is another plus for us.
This week we’re wishing we were in Guffey!
We installed our own weather station, broadcasting to Weather Underground. It’s been fun to compare the weather at our new property to Wellington weather. We are SO looking forward to living in Guffey.
Right now I’m sitting here in Wellington, where it’s 48 degrees with 34 mph wind. Guffey is currently showing 50 degrees with 10 mph wind! It’s generally 10 or so degrees cooler in Guffey, but less windy. In the summer, Guffey temps are usually in the 70’s, which is perfect for us. 85 degrees would be an unusual high for them. The winters there are apparently pretty similar to Wellington; perhaps a little colder, but less wind there will make it really nice. Guffey is considered a sort of “banana belt” compared to the rest of Park County, where it can be quite cold and windy, and it’s really pretty temperate for 9,000 feet.
We had plenty of warning and had planned as best we could to harvest whatever could be harvested and protect any thing else that might be saved. Some things will be lost. I’m hopeful that the remaining brassicas, lettuces, spinach, and root vegetables will be okay and may even produce more growth. The potatoes, tucked underground, will be fine, but I doubt that the plants will grow any more. A couple of cauliflower were planted in July and were still small–I will be interested to see if they survived. Obviously the zucchini pictured here did not survive.
We installed our own weather station, broadcasting to Weather Underground. It’s been fun to compare the weather at our new property to Wellington weather. We are SO looking forward to living in Guffey. 
