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GARDENING IN BEND, OREGON - UPDATED (AGAIN)

Before we moved to Bend, my brother checked the Web, and informed me that the growing season here was about two weeks, and I could expect to grow LOTS of kale!!

While that may not be strictly true, it IS a fact that over the last couple of decades, Bend has had a frost on every night of the year save a couple of random dates in August…so this is a challenging environment.

Nevertheless, people DO garden in Bend, and I was determined to join them. And not solely with flowers…...lovely as they are.
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So, I made a cold frame with scrap wood and a big double-paned window (a mistake, for those taking notes—too heavy. It was cheap, but better to spend the money on something intended for the task). Now that the threat of genuine frost is minimal, and the plants are larger - I’m keeping a lot of large pots inside the frame:
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You’re seeing two pots of tomatillos on the left, a big pot of zucchini in the middle and some little tiny tomato plants (Sweet 100 - cherries) on the right. In front are a small pickling cucumber on the right and a much bigger pumpkin (from seed removed from our jack-o-lantern of last fall) plant in the middle. I need to repot those—and soon.
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Here is the first zucchini we’ll eat - in another three or four days, I’m guessing:
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And here is the squash blossom that I gave passing thought to eating, as the “first fruits” of the garden - but…...
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The Sweet 100s are still very puny, and I have my doubts about harvest this year….
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After a month or so or dragging the hose out every couple of days, and trying to arrange for “irrigation” when we were out of town, I spent the money (less than $100.00) on a nice drip system to keep things well-watered…..
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Filter, timer (every other day for a 1/2 hour does the trick), and pressure reducer…..watch for the drip hose in subsequent photos.

In addition to the cold frame, I’ve got Vic’s kale (plus chard and kohlrabi….and a grape, mint, an extra pumpkin, and a few flowers) growing on a table under the kitchen window….
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The “orchard” is down the west-facing wall of the house…..
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First in line is Thor’s tree—the one that we planted over his placenta at Papa’s place on the hill in Ukiah….later moved to PUC, and now dug up and potted in Bend…..
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I cut it back VERY severely because of the loss of so many roots….but it seems to be happy here, and I have hopes that we’ll get some apples in a year or two.

Next we have the potted rhubarb - roots from a friend up the hill toward Mt. Bachelor….
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We’ve already eaten rhubarb from these roots—I picked the stalks off when it arrived and made about 1/2 a cup of sauce!

The basil is doing very well, and with four pots I may even get enough pesto to freeze for winter—and these plants will fit into the cold frame when things get frosty in September!
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And finally, the orchard—these are all grafted from trees here in Bend…trees from which I got apples that went into applesauce last fall. They grow well, bear without any care, and withstand the climatic extremes of this area.
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I have Jonathan, a variety of Rome, and an unknown apple—each on two different rootstocks - one dwarf and one mini-dwarf. One of the Jonathans is Sophia’s apple….I don’t know that she’s decided on which rootstock she prefers….the others we’ll just have to see about. I’ll keep at least one of each, but think that I may be able to sell them at some point. Why everyone shouldn’t have a dwarf apple tree in their yard is quite beyond me!
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And that’s the agricultural report from Bend—lots of fun, and any harvest will be a bonus….albeit one that is much anticipated!

UPDATE:

About an hour after I finished the post, it began to hail. We were alerted by the sound of hailstones hitting the skylights—it was LOUD! Out front, it looked like this:
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The hailstones were bouncing in the streets and off the lawn, and building up on the sidewalk….
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Suddenly, I thought of the garden….out there in the open cold frame - standing too tall to shut the lid for protection….Oh NO!
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As I got to the door, I was not relieved by the sight of the hailstones building up along the west side of the house….
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...and the view out to the cold frame was a bit scary…..
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In fact, it probably wasn’t even necessary to rush out and drive the car around to put it in the garage….on the other hand, in TN we had the roof of the Civic severely dented by a much less intense hailstorm, that nevertheless produced much larger hailstones—Voila!
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UPDATE #2

Well, I spoke too soon, thinking that the hail had done no real damage to the plants….not entirely true. Poking through the basil pots, for instance, produced the following:
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I rinsed off all the dirt, then shook off most of the water, and will use it later tonight to make sauce for the Bowtie Lasagna I have in mind, so no great loss.

Other plants didn’t fare well, either. The cucumber vines lost a number of leaves, and parts of others….
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...while the tomatillos also had numerous leaves and portions knocked off….
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and the rhubarb, which was actually under the eaves of the house, got ripped up a bit, too….mostly the leaves stretching out toward the lawn, away from its protection….
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But, the very worst damage was on the “Greens Table” where the chard, kale and kohlrabi….these are the newest and smallest of all my plants, and thus the most tender - it’s kind of sad…..
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As I was walking home from delivering Sophia, I talked to a lady with raised beds along the driveway behind her house - she said they hadn’t been badly injured, but she’d thrown blankets over her tomato cages in the side yard. I guess one gets used to this kind of thing if one is going to garden in Bend….I’m still learning.

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GARDENING IN BEND, OREGON - UPDATED (AGAIN)

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