Rocky Mountain gardeners?

I'm trying to boost support to get a Rocky Mountain area forum added to DG. Between the hot sun, the altitude, the "brown" winters, the wind, the lack of water, and the sandy/clay soil, our needs aren't the same as other areas of the country or world. Our bugs are different. Our plant diseases are different. I think we need a gathering place of our own.

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/629763/

If the Rocky Mountain forum doesn't get enought support, how about a Western Mountain/High Desert gardening forum? In reading many of your threads, I can see the same challenges that I faced when I lived on the north shore of Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevadas. High altitude gardening = short growing seasons, extreme temperature fluctuations during the short growing seasons, water shortages, larger wildlife population.....and did I mention poor soil and lightening or tourist started brush and forest fires? ;-)

My mom and I would watch the nightly weather report religiously. As you know, in the mountains, frost can occur any night during the growing season. Frost alerts would have us hauling the hanging baskets of blooming fushcias and begonias into the living room, bathrooms and garage and throwing frost blankets on everything else ouside that might need protection, only to reverse the process early in the morning.

Gardens had to be built up from the ground granite dust+pulverized pine needles that presented themselves as soil! We started a wormbin in the garage to make compost. The first season we accidently froze the worms. The next season we moved the bin closer to the furnace and accidently roasted them - they got so hot they crawled out of the bin and freeze dried to the garage floor! We finally got the hang of it with an outdoor wormcompost setup that gave us a large trash barrel of great compost each year......until the racoons and moles discovered the tasty worms.

Coyotes, bobcats, prarie dogs, three types of squirrels, Stellar's Jays....they all impacted the garden! Can you relate to any of this in Colorado?

We definitely need some kind of Rocky Moutain or Mountain/High Desert forum. It is very hard to get information on what grows here at an altitude of 7,300 ft. Even the locals don't know since a lot of these places were never farming communities.
A good example is tomatoes, eggplant, and okra. The locals told me that tomatoes wouldn't turn red here due to cool nights and short growing season. Luckily for me, my first garden here was in a community garden. The person next to me was planting tomatoes. I told her they wouldn't turn red here. She told me they did for her. Then I learned she was a master gardener. She and I both tried okra and it didn't get more than 1 ft. high and had one pod per plant. I tried eggplant and it did nothing.
Then I moved my garden to my house. The community gardens were in a very windy spot. My house is in a sheltered area and I discovered that I could grow eggplant in my yard in sunny spots and it did very well. I am eager to try okra again. One never hears about such problems in regular gardening forums.

pajaritomt - eggplant, pepper and okra REALLY need heat to grow well, or sometimes to grow at all. They especially like to have warm feet (roots), so try watering them with warm water (~80 degrees). If the weather is warm enough, you can sit a bucket of water in the sun and then use that to water when it warms up.

We were able to harvest red tomatoes and peppers at 6,500 ft in the Tahoe Basin by using plant protection such as Wall O' Waters ( http://www.wallowater.com ) and row covers. If you use two layers of row cover, meaning one cover directly over the plant and another row cover a foot or more higher using a wire support, you can get better warmth/frost protection.

Have you read Eliot Coleman's book Four Season Harvest?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1890132276/sr=8-1/qid=1154290050/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-5775262-9727835?ie=UTF8

Coleman is growing fresh vegetables through the winter in Portland, Maine. Many of his techniques are adaptable to mountain climates.

How does one get a new forum created on Dave's Garden site?

What a great idea! I love this site, but was disppointed not to see much for my area. I am in Golden Co at 6300 ft with a sheltered garden with southern exposure. So far I'm not treating it too differently from my gardens in New England (Vermont, Connecticut, and then New Jersey) with the exception of regular low flow irrigation. Would love to know more about what people do here and what microclimates they create in their gardens.

From the description of your obstacles in the Rocky Mt region I don't envy you, but wish you all the very best in your gardening quest. I have the luxury of gardening here in God's Country, the Great Lakes region. (Check back with me in six months during "lake effect snow" season about that God's Country comment!)

Oh, I know all about "lake effect snow." I'm originally from Chicago.

I definitely would go for something like this! I'm not as high in elevation as some (4200 ft), but I am in the dry, wind-swept (dust stormed?!), Great Basin of Nevada. Sand, sand, and more sand. People keep telling me that you don't grow trees and you don't garden here. So, of course, we've planted over 20 trees and I'm desparately trying to grow a cottage garden! Drip irrigation, shade cloth and imported top soil are my friends!

BTW, Garden_Mermaid - I made the opposite migration from you - I moved from Brentwood (near Antioch) to Nevada. Used to work in Mt. View and Corte Madera. Miss my zone 9, but love the lizzards more than looking into the neighbors house every time I looked up. I hate the rabbits and chipmunks, but I'd rather be doing battle with them than with cars on the road! Just couldn't stay in the suburbs any longer and didn't have a million dollars an acre to buy land in CA.

Native seed search has their selections rated for low desert, high desert & mountains. http://www.nativeseeds.org -- I think the mid-south is turning into the low desert. We need rain bad!