Betty's Garden

Gardening in Central Oregon is tricky, because the high desert climate can change overnight and you can loose everything. We lost everything in our garden in 2007 and I was devistated. We look at it as we only have 60 days for our garden to mature, under the conditions that you plant your garden in the ground vs pot gardening and you do not use a green house, we have 2 seasons for gardening winter and august. The rule of green thumb for us is: If the snow is all off Black Butte then we can start planting and guess what I looked yesterday to the west when we were driving and Black Butte was clear so yesterday was planting day.

To the left you see marigolds, I plant them at the edges because my Mother Marie says they keep the bugs away. The photo below we have to take care early in the season with the tomatoes, by circling them with water filled towers which creates a hot house effect. The black gate you see is the vine trailer for the pea's. If you look real close you can see the pea's in their infant stage, I planted them from seed approx. 3 weeks ago.

The photo to the left is Glenn's raspberry's he is starting over with 2 new plants if they can get established this year then they will survive or maybe we need to cover them with straw this winter, note to myself.. The round cages is for, well you probably already know the DEER. No raspberry's for them this year....

As a side note we didn't have to plant sunflowers this year because we have apprx. 40 to 50 coming up volunteer from last year. I am not showing you photos of the baby plants because the photos to come will be wonderful of them.