High-altitude growing

It has been a strange growing season here. I too have lost tomatoes twice, and in some beds the peas and such are coming up and others nothing is growing. My state of confusion though is brought about by the lack of black eyed susans........so far we have none this year and they are usually like a weed here. And the weeds, yeah they did not miss a beat here either!
Hope things start to bloom and grow for you soon.
Lyn

It has been a weird year this year. Usually when it is this bone dry and windy in NM, it is really hot, but it has been so cold I've worried about losing stuff. Fortunately my veggie garden area is well sheltered.

My biggest problem has been bird damage. All the neighborhood birds seem to have shown up in my area, ready to eat anything green and tasty. Am I the only one with green tasty stuff left? I've had to cover areas of my garden to save some for myself.

I've been trying to get rock flower gardens established, but it has really been a struggle, because of the wind and low, low humidity. I lost some hollyhocks that just couldn't take the beating they were getting. I planted a dwarf drought-tolerant butterfly bush, which is just barely hanging on. The rock garden on the east side of my house is covered in sand drifts.

Sea thrift is doing fine anyway, as well as several varieties of stonecrop. Also a couple of desert verbena, a lavender plant and a rosemary bush. Elsewhere I have several nice Mexican evening primroses which volunteered, some creeping ranunculus which also volunteered, and desert carnation. Thyme and oregano are doing well. Last night I noticed several moss roses just getting started from last year's seed. They got some water when the swamp cooler overflowed while we were getting it up and going. They usually don't appear until monsoon season.

I was talking to my neighbors last night, and they haven't been able to grow anything this year. They even put in grass at great expense (they're from out of state). They spent a small fortune on water, and it still burned out. All their veggies and flowers burned out too. They were understandably curious as to how I could be doing so well.
Pretty much location, location, and location. My veggie garden is tight up against my west block wall, which protects from wind and moderates temperature. The garden is 18" wide x 100 ft long, because anything that extends too far away from the wall, gets wind burn, frost, or burns out from too much heat. I arrived at this location after much experimentation.

Most of what I have growing in my rock gardens is known to be very drought tolerant, and half of the flowers are volunteers which came in with no encouragement from me, except I picked seed from plants in my yard, and put it where I wanted them to grow.

As soon as the monsoon season gets here, it will be time to plant some more. Hopefully the year isn't so weird that we don't get one. I usually start winter squash that late, as well as root crops, and salad greens as late as 1st of September. They often have to be covered on cold nights.

It is really is a strange year, so far. The weeds love it and if they were eatable we would never have to worry about food again.

This year has been a real challenge her in Montana too. We had some warm weather early in the spring, so alot of flowers started to come up. Then a cold spell with snow killed some and just slowed the rest to a crawl.
another cold spell a couple of weeks ago (nights in the upper 30's) almost did in my tomatoes. They were in Wall-O-Waters and I covered those with a tarp, so they survived. Some leaves & branches curled up, and they were much smaller than the plants usually were at that time of year. Finally the weather turned warm again and I removed the wall-o-waters. Went out the next morning and all the plants were GONE. Only an inch of stem remained. I zoomed to town and found a few remaining plants. My husabnd built cages of pvc pipe and wire, so now they're safer. Hopefully, I'll be able to get a few ripe tomatoes before fall frosts.

Everything is about a week or ten days behind 'usual', if there is such a thing as 'usual' here. The iris bloomed all during JUNE instead of all of May - I still have iris. The roses only just now got started - and they are usually very reliable 'june' bloomers. The hollyhocks have buds - some people already have flowers but they are more protected than mine. OTOH, the pansies seem very happy and the milkweed is just fine, thanks.

The corn is just about ......... one inch tall. I think we need to get some scare-the-bird things in there NOW - there are birds hanging out and I am sure they have bad intentions!

I broke down and bought sets of annuals. I had planned to plant seeds, but this has been a weird spring. I got some cosmos (love cosmos) and some nice colorful gazania, which I planted around the new mailbox.

We removed the elm tree by the sidewalk, which has changed the dynamics of the front yard by removing considerable shade - but the roses are thriving, at least. It is HOT! (suddenly) and quite dry. We are getting a lot of haze from the California fires, but when the wind changes a bit and it clears up, it is really beautiful just now. The hills are greening up nicely and there are wonderful fields of wildflowers. I prefer not to think about what nice fuel we are growing for the summer fire season, due to start any day now...

Our tomatoes are called Early Girl and they are getting ripe one at a time but plant is hugs and lots of green tomatoes. Two of our pepper plants are only 6 inches high and won't grow for some reason. But the corn, squash, eggplant are all great. I must tell you that I am a low lander.

At my Cabin in the Mountains we don't grow much but my 4 o'clocks did come up again this year. That is always a pink treat each summer when we get the chance to go up and see them.