edible garden
MOUNTAIN HARVEST
With faith and hardiness, you can grow edibles at high altitude.
WRITTEN BY AMY HARRIS
PHOTO BY CAROLE TOPALIAN
Donna Caravelli’s garden is full of native plants and raised beds, as well as cherry, apple, plum, and peach trees. While her apple trees have never fruited, her peach tree produced fruit the first year she had it. Last year, on the other hand, it was too cold. You never know what you’ll reap when you live at Lake Tahoe, a location known for its picturesque grandeur, but not its friendliness to backyard gardeners.
“The guy at the nursery says I have climate denial,” Caravelli says. “He told me my fruit trees wouldn’t bear. But they do beautifully. I just keep hoping the apple trees will bear fruit.”
Caravelli is president of The Lake of the Sky Garden Club. The club was formed in 1990 by a group of women interested in the environment and their own backyard gardens. The group organized around an annual garden tour, which serves as the club’s main fundraiser. The tour takes place on July 28, starting in Tahoe City and ending in Brockway. Prominent Lake Tahoe gardeners invite guests into their backyards to see their beautiful, adversity-conquering gardens.
Money raised from the garden tour goes toward scholarships for youths venturing into agriculture, horticulture, landscape design, or a food-related field. Community organizations also receive grants from the club that go toward beautification, mostly in the form of planting flowers and native plants.
Learning Experience
Gardening in the High Sierra is a constant learning experience. The club brings in a diverse collection of guest speakers who discuss soil health, environmental issues, pest and weed control, native plants, and other high-altitude-related topics.
“The hardest part about gardening up here is getting the ground warm enough early enough to produce anything,” Caravelli says. “We baby the plants. It takes a lot of care.”
Her care has paid off. Last season her garden produced lettuce, chard, green onions, and tomatoes. Her cherry trees bear fruit in August. Her native plants do well in drought and snowy weather and her herbs grow beautifully, except for basil, which is more of a Mediterranean plant, she says.
“To garden up here you have to have faith and hardiness,” Caravelli says. “Just like the plants.”
Getting Started
To get started, Eric Larusson, owner of The Villager Nursery in Truckee, suggests that edible gardeners find a good growing location in their yard. This means observing sun, wind, shade, heat retention, and other environmental factors. Then decide what you want to grow. The next step is a big one: soil.
“Dirt first!” Larusson says. “Build your soil, mulch, use local manure, and rotate crops. Also use organic fertilizers and mature compost.”
Larusson starts tomatoes, peppers, and mini-eggplants indoors in early March. They go into containers in late May and he covers them every night. He also grows cold crops such as kale, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, chard, and spinach. He starts these crops from seed in early March for outdoor planting in May.
For beginners, Larusson suggests starting small and growing plants that are easy to succeed with. It’s challenging for beginners to know when to protect from frost, Larusson says, so a smaller number of plants is easier to manage. He recommends growing tomatoes in containers on the deck or driveway. Potatoes, beets, chard, spinach, lettuce, and radishes can all be easily grown in containers.
Some herbs are easier to grow than others, such as oregano and tarragon. And some berries and fruit trees do well in the mountains if they are planted in the right spot.
“I love lemon thyme for cooking,” Larusson says. “And, get this, it is 100 times more effective at repelling mosquitoes than Citronella.”
Raspberries, gooseberries, currants, elderberries, and blueberries do well in Truckee and Lake Tahoe. As for trees, apples, a few pears, sour cherries, Modoc plum, and the rare peach bear fruit if they are in just the right spot, Larusson says.
“If you are just getting started, for goodness’ sake, plant a fruit tree or two and a little thicket of berries now!” Larusson says.
Amy Harris is a writer and Lake Tahoe local. She’s looking forward to planting some container crops and watching them grow in the High Sierra sunshine.
Resources
Garden Shop Nursery
3640 Mayberry Drive, Reno
775-825-3527
www.Gardenshopnursery.com
Rail City Garden Center
1729 Brierley Way, Sparks
775-355-1551
www.Railcitygardencenter.com
The Villager Nursery
10678 Donner Pass Road, Truckee
530-587-0771
www.Villagernursery.com
The Lake of the Sky Garden Club
Annual garden tour, starting in Tahoe City and ending in Brockway
Saturday, July 28
For details, call Richard Caravelli at 530-583-4066, email Rlc814@sbcglobal.net, or visit www.Lakesky.homestead.com.
