Gardening - 8000' Challenge

Raising farm animals is one thing but living at 8000' in the Rockies presents us with a rugged terrain that makes it challenging to grow anything. We were actually told by a local nursery worker that nothing grows at 8000'. We're stubborn though and want to grow our own food so we'll keep at it until we can move to a lower altitude.

Last year I think we started the garden over like 4 or 5 times and then ran out of time to actually produce anything. I mean, we did get some yellow squash and zucchini, oh and some garlic and small red potatoes, but that is all that we got to eat from the garden last year.

2021 attempt is that we are using hugelkultur raised garden beds. We filled the bottom half of the beds with tree branches and leaves from around the property that we had trimmed. Then filled in the gaps with local dirt from the property, and finally the top layer, about a foot or so, is garden soil that we had delivered.

Here is Tray (Conrad) putting them together.

We transplanted some pepper, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, squash and strawberries.

The sun rising on our garden bed. We had to put a fence around the garden to keep our pup from playing in the new veggies. And standing front and center here is our crabapple tree. Yummy jelly, I tell ya.

Corn has finally emerged. And oh, that's Russell T-Bone in the back.