Gardening Success in the High Desert

When we moved to Bend in 1987, I was like so many newcomers who DID NOT UNDERSTAND the short growing season we have in most of the High Desert. It took years for me to get it through my stubborn head!
I had grown near the Oregon Coast with its mild climate where we could start our veggie garden in March and keep harvesting into October.
At least I knew enough not to start a garden that early in Central Oregon because most years our snowpack and freezing weather can still be in high gear through April. It's May that is the downfall of new gardeners here. In May the days get warmer and the nurseries have all of these plants that get gardeners all excited. For years that was me.
The nurseries love people like me. They are going to love the thousands of new residents of Central Oregon who have migrated here from longer growing seasons in the last two years as well.
I would buy a bunch of baby tomato plants and stick them in the ground on a warm day only to have a hard freeze happen a few days later. I would go back and buy more tomato starts. Some years I went back to the nursery three times before the end of the freezes for the summer.
September was always the killer month. Like clockwork, I would have a huge crop of big green tomatoes in early September. Like clockwork, a hard freeze would happen around the second week of September, annihilating my tomatoes. And like clockwork, the weather would warm up again well into October before the next hard freeze. Year after year until I gave up altogether.
I realize that I could have resorted to herculean means to try to save my tomatoes, but with my husband gone most of the time commercial fishing in Alaska, raising two young boys, and running a homebased business, I was mostly a flake when it came to diligently watching the weather report.
Years went by and our wellness business took off enough for Jerry to stop fishing and be home full time with me and the boys.
Imagine our excitement in 2011 when our parent company asked if we wanted to "test market" a vertical growing system that used no soil, had a 30 inch footprint, used hardly any water, and could be put on wheels so you could roll it into the garage on nights that were going to freeze! This instantly added at least two or three months to the growing season! AND NO WEEDING!!!! I finally had my first fully ripe tomatoes that year!
The next year, Jerry built our greenhouse using windows and a glass door that we had salvaged when we did an addition onto our house. We had been planning to donate to Habitat for Humanity, but had never gotten around to it. This was a game changer for certain crops. Now I was growing peppers, eggplant, cantaloupe, various squash, cucumbers and other frost sensitive crops. I could start my own seedlings and get them into the greenhouse by end of March, and the everbearing crops like tomatoes, peppers, strawberries would continue producing through November!
A few years in, the company added LED growlights and now we're talking year around gardening! Greens, kale, herbs are always in season now. Getting a two to three month head start with tomatoes, peppers, etc. by starting them under the LED lights and moving the towers to the greenhouse in March.
Each year we now have a few towers in the greenhouse and come June will have a couple on our deck to grow outside. If it freezes we can roll them into the kitchen for the night or use the weather blanket provided by the company.
This year I am planting extra tomatoes and peppers and squash so I can sell them at the Farmer's Market!

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