Growing Food in Your Garden

Silver Springs Gardening

Spring veggies
Early Spring Greens

RESOURCES:

TIMELINE:
  • February is the time to plan your garden. Draw a plan on graph paper, determine where there will at least 6 hours of sunlight for herbs and vegetables.
UNDERSTAND OUR CLIMATE AND ELEVATION:
    The Wasatch Mountains

The big weather maker in the state is the Wasatch Range, which runs north and south through 160 miles of the state. Air coming in from the West Coast drops its moisture as it climbs over the mountains, making the west side of the range the wettest, and most fertile, part of the state. The areas immediately adjacent to the Wasatch Mountains tend to have the coldest winter temperatures. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s hardiness zones for the northern half of the state range from zone 6b, which has an average low winter temperature of zero to minus 5 degrees, to zone 4b, with an average low winter temperature of minus 20 to minus 25 degrees.

    Frost Dates
  1. To determine when it’s safe to plant your vegetables, you need to know the average first and last frost dates for your location. The Utah State University Cooperative Extension Service (USUCES) has documented this data for communities throughout the state.
  2. In Summit County, the average last frost is around May 25th and first fall frost date is around Sept. 25. Providing between 78 to 90 continuous freeze free days.
    When to Plant Seeds Outside
  3. USUCES suggests you plant broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, onion, pea and spinach seeds four to six weeks before the last frost date. These are tough plants that won’t suffer if they happen to experience frost.Two to four weeks before the last frost date, you can plant beets, carrots, chard, onion sets and radishes.
    It is safe to plant on the week after the last frost date, beans, squash, corn and tomatoes.
    Sow seeds a week after the last frost date for tender plants like peppers, eggplants, cucumbers and melons.

    Starting Seeds Inside
  4. If you prefer to get a jump on the season by starting your seeds indoors, you should plant tomato and pepper seeds six to eight weeks before the last frost. Two to three weeks before that date, you can plant seeds for squash, cucumbers and melons.
 PLANTING IDEAS:

Elevated gardening

Hanging cukes peppers
Cucumbers in hanging basket

rolling tomato trellis    Frame-it-all     Inverted tomato tree   Inverted tomato tree with herb bed

ARTICLES OF INTEREST:
This year March may not be too early to get a start on your garden:

Beginning a garden along a south facing fence will gather light and heat for your plants.
South facing fence or wall can reflect heat and light to your plantings.

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF GARDENING IN OUR ALPINE DESERT NEIGHBORHOOD:

1. Planning and Design. Whether you’re starting a garden from scratch, or renovating an existing landscape, take the time to plan out your design before you start to plant. Part of the planning process involves creating water use zones so you can allocate water usage where it will most directly contribute to the beauty and health of your plants.

2. Use Native Grasses for turf areas whenever possible for optimum water savings use turf-type Buffalo Grass and Blue Grama grass.  These are excellent drought-tolerant alternatives to thirsty Kentucky Blue Grass and other turf type grasses.

3. Use Plants Matched to Summit County’s high altitude alpine desert. Use plants that are a good match for our growing conditions. Transplanted native plants need to be adapted to your yard’s soil pH, soil type, precipitation levels and weather (winter cold and summer heat).  Buy or trade for organic, genetically unaltered seed.

4. Create a Healthy, Living Soil. The key to any successful xeriscape is a healthy, living soil. When new homes have been built on sites where the top soil has been removed or badly damaged by disturbance and compaction, living soil must be started from scratch. On established sites with good soil, soil health simply needs to be maintained.

5. Use Mulches. Mulching is an essential gardening technique in our arid area. Mulching saves water, helps the soil absorb water, reduces weed growth, and creates a healthy root environment.

6. Irrigate Efficiently. Water deeply and less frequently to encourage deep root growth. Shallow, frequent irrigation encourages shallow root growth and thirsty plants. Irrigation systems need to be separated, one for garden and lawn, one for trees.

7. Harvest Rain and Snow Run Off. Harvesting water from roofs, sidewalk, driveways and other hard surfaces and directing it onto your landscape to be stored in the soil is a very practical way of supplementing irrigation from your well or faucet.  This is one reason why our neighborhood abandoned the underdrain system.

8. Maintain Your Landscape and Garden Properly. A well planned xeriscape planted with plants appropriately matched to our elevation, conditions and climate will naturally be a low maintenance productive type of garden. Whenever possible use organic products and techniques to create a balanced, healthy landscape in harmony with the environment.

Walled and some screen frame raised bed garden
Screened frames protect your garden.

Plant tunnel holds in heat and protects plants from late frost.
Plant tunnel holds in heat and protects your vegetables from late frost.
 
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