Gardening In North Idaho (Coeur d'Alene, Lewiston: to rent, houses, purchasing)

[scarmor]

Hello all - My husband and I are planning our move to North Idaho with our two young sons at the end of this month. We live in TN currently, having moved in with family temporarily 5 months ago. We lived in Atlanta before that. We are looking for a better life out west away from the hustle-bustle where we can live a more self sufficient lifestyle. We are also looking for more lenient gun and homeschooling laws. Over the last 2-3 years we have fallen in love with Idaho and can't wait to get there!

My main concern is the growing season. I don't mind the thought of snow and cold weather, but I'm a bit nervous about gardening in North Idaho, as we consider this a very important aspect of our self sustainability mindset.

We are considering the area around CDA initially and plan to rent for 1-2 years before purchasing property. Rathdrum and Spirit Lake seem to be close enough in for shopping and work opportunities, yet small enough and far enough away to be more rural.

Can you give me some imput as far as gardening challenges in the area? We seriously want to build up to where we are growing most of our own food. Is this possible in North Idaho?

Thanks in advance!

[Sage of Sagle]

Originally Posted by scarmor

Hello all - My husband and I are planning our move to North Idaho with our two young sons at the end of this month. We live in TN currently, having moved in with family temporarily 5 months ago. We lived in Atlanta before that. We are looking for a better life out west away from the hustle-bustle where we can live a more self sufficient lifestyle. We are also looking for more lenient gun and homeschooling laws. Over the last 2-3 years we have fallen in love with Idaho and can't wait to get there!

You can't beat Idaho for homeschooling freedom and gun rights. We have never regretted our move here.

My main concern is the growing season. I don't mind the thought of snow and cold weather, but I'm a bit nervous about gardening in North Idaho, as we consider this a very important aspect of our self sustainability mindset.

We are considering the area around CDA initially and plan to rent for 1-2 years before purchasing property. Rathdrum and Spirit Lake seem to be close enough in for shopping and work opportunities, yet small enough and far enough away to be more rural.

Can you give me some imput as far as gardening challenges in the area? We seriously want to build up to where we are growing most of our own food. Is this possible in North Idaho?

Thanks in advance!

We do have a very abbreviated growing season here. And it varies greatly by area. For example, Coeur d'Alene's growing season is a couple weeks longer than Sandpoint, even though it's just 50 miles away. In the spring, they are playing outdoor sports on grass almost 3 weeks before us every year. Rathdrum and Spirit Lake are colder, like Sandpoint. If you go south of Coeur d'Alene it gets warmer and the growing season longer.

But you're correct that places like Spirit Lake are more secluded and rural while still having decent proximity to things. Rathdrum has rural acreage, but a big chunk of that town is spreading onto the prairie as suburban tracts.

The problem we see with gardening here is the unpredictable late spring freezes. So we're already planting things in pots indoors, and we hope to be on track to put things in the ground on schedule, but it is REALLY hard to know. Always safest to have LOTS of row covers and supports, and the ability to get out there and get everything covered up.

So you can grow plenty of stuff here in our brief growing season...but North Idaho isn't exactly the place I'd target for "maximum food production" on the same token...

[IdahoMormon]

Your concern is well founded. You can certainly grow most of your food if you live in North Idaho, but you won't be using the Ruth Stout method. More likely Eliot Coleman's Four Season Harvest and Winter Harvest Handbook techniques. I would review them here but his web site and books are found easily and you may have already read them.

The one thing I'd like to point out is that at first I thought renting for a couple of years would be a disadvantage. This is because most serious gardeners I know in North Idaho sooner or later get to the point where they have permanent greenhouse structures of some type or another. But then I realized renting might actually be a good thing, because they all (myself included) had to go through several iterations with adjustments and modifications to come up with the structures they have now.

The thing we did that helped a lot was build a small greenhouse onto the South side of our house. My dad did the same thing with his house, and cut a hole into the wall from the wood-stove-heated living room. Whenever the weather report said it would freeze, or if his temp alarm went off, he'd open up the hole and turn on a small fan. Some years he was eating tomatoes in December. We just vented our laundry drier into the greenhouse and saved a load or two of laundry for the middle of the night. It works great for seedlings and starts.

[scarmor]

Thank you Sage and IdahoMormon for your responses!

Sage - I have heard that lower down is warmer, particularly Lewiston, but we want to be near CDA at first in order to be close to work and shopping. We also believe we'll be able to know more where we'd like to be permanently after living in the area for a year or two.

IdahoMormon - I've heard of these books but haven't yet purchased them. I will look into them further. The greenhouse idea sounds fantastic! I'm sure we'll learn a lot from the locals once we get there.

I guess looking into short-season varieties is important for better success as well.

[Landlockmermaid]

CDA IS WARMER THEN Rathdrum or Spirit lake. They get more snow then we do here in CDA. WE ARE NOW HAving warmer and longer summers. I use to have a huge garden. The only problem I had was with corn and melons both should be ok now that we have warmer longer summers. Gotta watch out for deer in your garden. I've been here over 30 years. North Idaho has a ton of lakes rivers and streams

[Landlockmermaid]

Southern Idaho is better gardening but flat no trees and TOO HOT

[oldafretired]

I'm in Spirit Lake but haven't been here long enough to know about the "normal" growing season here. So far the weather has been much warmer than usual I think.

The only thing I planted so far are a few maple trees. They were bare root trees and just after I planted them, the deer damaged two of them. I ended up putting a circle of 6' high steel mesh around each one after that. Now I found out there are gophers here and one was digging around one of the maple trees so I bought some gopher poison and pushed some into the tunnels. Hopefully it worked. If I plant any more trees, I think I will use the backhoe and dig a huge hole and put in metal mesh a few feet below ground level in addition to the mesh above ground around each tree to keep the gophers out. Don't know what will come after the trees next though.

My brother and his wife, who live about a mile from me, are much more serious about growing things so they put up a big greenhouse to grow all kind of vegetables. I think that is the way to go.

[volosong]

On a related question . . .

What is the purpose of having "raised planter boxes" in yards for growing plants? Is the soil/ground too cold when seeds need to be sowed? Raised planter boxes appear to be quite common in NID.

[Cnynrat]

I think there are general advantages that aren't necessarily unique to north Idaho. One of the big advantages of raised beds is that it allows you to have 12-24" (depending on the height of your raised bed) of high quality weed/seed free soil because you decide what to fill the beds with. They are also a little more convenient because it brings the garden that much closer to you so you won't have to bend over so far to weed and plant.

I've done a little digging around our place and it seems that the soil has quite a few small stones and rocks in it, but that is obviously going to vary from one location to another.

It wouldn't surprise me if they warmed up a little sooner in the spring as well.

Dave

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by volosong

On a related question . . .

What is the purpose of having "raised planter boxes" in yards for growing plants? Is the soil/ground too cold when seeds need to be sowed? Raised planter boxes appear to be quite common in NID.

The are also easier to make cold frames for. A cold frame- a piece of glass in a frame, set at a good southern angle, allows warmer zone crops to be grown successfully in a colder zone. They're essentially little cheap greenhouses with limitations.

A raised bed makes tending the early garden more convenient, and they allow more flexibilty with the cold frames. Cold frames that are level with the ground become too hot to use by late spring, while a planter box can be easily modified for better ventilation, warming and cooling. A late snow storm won't kill starts in a cold frame, and the frame often melts the snow, so it doesn't always need to be swept clear.

They are great for getting tomatoes started! It's possible to harvest tomatoes as early as mid-July if the frame and location is good. (and the weather helps out a little)