Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
It doesn’t seem fair. When I was an elementary-aged kid growing up in Northeast Arkansas, just a few miles from the main gate at Blytheville Air Force Base, my dad would start gardening in late February.
He had a huge garden plot, about a half-acre total, on the two my parents owned across from the flight line.
Dad started rototilling the spot, mixing in a little dry manure from a pile on a nearby farm. By March the peas went in, along with the cabbage and kohlrabi. He always planted potatoes on Good Friday, no matter when it came on the calendar. It was a family tradition he carried on from his father and grandfather 100 miles south in Lee County. He planted corn at the same time.
In late March, the tomatoes went into the ground.
He planted everything from seed. We didn’t know you could buy nursery plants. Who needed them in the veritable gardening paradise that is Zone 8 on the planting charts?
When you live in Zone 3 and 4, as most of Fremont County is classified, it’s a much different process.
Most of the mail we receive these days is junk. It’s either an advertisement for things we don’t want or need or during the months before the Republican primary it’s an endless onslaught of slick mudslinging one-page flyers claiming their opponents hate Christmas or puppies or were responsible for killing Abraham Lincoln, but I digress.
The advertisements that don’t end up immediately in the dumpster as I walk back to the house are seasonal, they begin in January and are as addictive as cocaine. I’m writing about seed catalogs, you know, Burpees, Gurneys, and new upstarts.
They are as realistic as those images of the University of Wyoming campus portrayed by UW media in both print and digital form. Every photograph of the Laramie campus is taken in the five weeks between frosts in Albany County in late June and July. Yes, it’s deceptive advertising, but how many out-of-state students would balk at attending UW if they realized just how vicious the winter months really are?
Seed catalogs are the same. The vegetables, fruit, flowers, and ornamental plants are worthy of a big city horticultural center. They’re as immaculate as those images of Big Macs that adorn your McDonald’s app or appear on the marquee of the drive-through window. Yes, they’re a bit of a stretch from reality.
I don’t care; the tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, and green pea plants are beguiling. Trying to recreate these gorgeous plants in our windswept, drought-stricken climate is the annual challenge. Sometimes you win, but most of the time you lose when trying to garden in our hostile climate.
It’s most likely always been this way but in my research on the original homesteaders arriving in the Wind River Country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the crops were much more bountiful. Some of that is the change in climate; the 1890s were wetter and warmer than today. The 1930s and 1950s were much colder, had shorter growing seasons and crops didn’t fare as well. We’ve had recent spring and summer seasons that varied just as much. In 2022, how many farmers didn’t irrigate their first cutting alfalfa at all, or if they did, made a quick pass? In contrast, last year, it took a lot of water to get things moving since Mother Nature didn’t comply.
Those seasonal differences are reflected in the livelihood of farmers and on a much smaller scale in your garden.
I’ve battled the Zone 3 / 4 conundrum for years. I’m losing the war but winning a few battles. Our apricot and pear trees thrive because of three things. The first is their placement on the east side of the house. The house and deck, along with my shop 50 yards to the northwest block most of the damaging winds. The overhanging deck prevents most of the damaging frost that can easily wipe out a crop while it’s still in bloom and the two sprinklers in our first zone hit the trees with water each day.
The apple trees aren’t as reliable since they must brave the full brunt of Wyoming’s psychotic spring weather. Some years it’s wheelbarrows full of apples, and others it’s almost none at all. Last year it was a single apple, high in the center tree that made it to maturity.
I experimented with hydroponics last summer and had good results. I bought two 10-foot sections of narrow-walled four-inch PVC pipe, four 90-degree corners, a lightweight pump, and 10 feet of clear plastic tubing. I used pool noodles with bedding plants placed inside the inner circle into two-inch holes cut into the pipe. I added liquid fertilizer to the 20-gallon reservoir (an old lick tub) and put it to work.
The peppers grew faster than the tomatoes, but the tomatoes produced a heavier crop.
In September, at the first hint of frost, I drained the pipes, and Sue and I carried them downstairs to an unheated daylight basement. We had tomatoes and peppers into late October.
It sounds like a lot of work because it is. The gardening bug is in my genes, and so is the fruit tree insanity.
My grandfather Eugene Gasser had a bachelor’s degree in horticulture from a Swiss university when he arrived in Fremont County in 1921. His first job at the ghost town of Hailey on Beaver Rim brought him into contact with Eli Signor, an enterprising farmer and rancher who had acres of apple orchards along Beaver Creek during that time.
I’m sure they hit it off. My grandfather had fruit and nut trees all around his place and it’s now skipped a generation with us.
My dad inherited his gardening mania from his father, my grandpa Forrest. Grandpa grew dozens of different varieties of tomatoes, peppers, melons, pumpkins, onions, potatoes and corn. My grandma Sally canned enough to last them until the following crop was ready to harvest. They lived through the Great Depression on that garden.
The nursery catalogs are piling up. I’ve ordered seed for this year’s garden and when it arrives, I’ll use a small, three-layer, growing tent that my dad used for decades to start them.
It’s always a dicey decision in late May to determine if the last frost has arrived. When the gamble pays off, it’s usually a good gardening year, when it doesn’t, well that’s why you keep tarps and extra buckets around to cover what you can.
In our suddenly unstable world of food costs and questionable supply, gardening may take root again.
I’ll end this with that bad pun.