Gardening at 8800 Feet

by Stuie Bernstein of Colorado

I currently live in the Colorado Rockies, high above sea level on a tiny farm with my family. Gardening at 8800 feet with a 3-month growing season, is quite a challenge. I have, with my family, worked with this some and have found a few things. Over the past few years we have been able to grow many crops at high altitude, with a few special techniques. By using Fungi Perfecti, a mushroombased product that increases chances and speed of germination, you can help crops get a head start after delayed planting, due to late thawing of snow. This helps with soil quality as well, adding nutrients and plant life to unhealthy soil. Placing several drops of fungi solution in with each seed before covering with soil is all that is needed. This product can be found at https://fungi.com/. By using floating row covers in the late spring, and in the autumn after the first frost, it is possible to extend the growing season considerably. These are lightweight, synthetic fabric sheets laid over plants to protect them from frost. The row covers are staked down if it is windy in the area, and are lifted only for harvesting then replaced.

Something called a hotbox (also known as a cold-frame) has been very helpful. This is basically a box of wood or, in our case, refrigerator foam, buried 4 feet down. It comes up about 1 foot above ground, is bottomless and has a plexi-glass top. The dimensions of the box from above are 3×7 feet. Inside this, winter hardy crops such as maché and endive are planted. Even beets and carrots survived through the winter. As protection from the wind, as well as some degree of warmth if afforded, it is possible to have cold hardy salad greens growing all year round. In Colorado the sun is very intense and can overheat the soil if the box is not ventilated. To counter this, we use a Gigavent. This is an “arm” designed for greenhouses, which opens when the temperature gets too warm. A good book describing this form of growing is Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest.

Crops that have worked for us using the above methods include: Tomatoes, chilé peppers, many types of squash, radishes, lettuce and other salad greens. At some point, we plan to put in a greenhouse. This could increase the growing season considerably, allowing for experimentation with other crops.

In the future, I wish to have a completely sustainable farm, located at a lower elevation. Being 15, there is only so much I can do to begin this. I have been taking steps in this direction though, in the past year, with learning as much as possible from books, as well as beginning to work with draft horses at a farm nearby. The inspiration to have a completely sustainable, self-sufficient small farm, allowing exploration in other fields of knowledge has come for me, in a large part, from Helen and Scott Nearing. Their book, “Living the Good Life,” has inspired many to make the move back to the land. Although their books may be dated, the idea that farming can support other interests, as well as a source of enjoyment in its own right, has motivated me considerably. ‘The good life is never stable, never secure, never easy and never ended. It is a series of steps or stages, one leading into the other and all, in their outcome, adding, not subtracting; augmenting, not diminishing; building, not destroying; creating, not annihilating.’ — Scott Nearing, 1965