Welcome to the Timber Garden

Welcome to the Timber Garden! Toby and I purchased our first home on 3 acres outside of McCall, ID in October of 2014. We couldn’t wait to put in a permanent garden and fruit trees! We had both grown up gardening with our families and tried to grow something wherever we lived…window herbs in Dallas, a container garden in Honolulu, an incredibly successful sprawling tomato jungle in southern Idaho.

McCall is different. Pessimists will tell you the growing season is only 60 frost free days. Optimists swear it is at least 90 days. As if the zone 3 weather wasn’t enough, an army of deer lurk in the shadows, waiting for the perfect time to attack your plants. And it’s not just bites taken out of your favorite veggies…no, they have to wrestle them to the ground, shaking all the fruit off with their tiny hooves. After the Container Garden Incident of 2014, we vowed to keep those sneaky Cervidaes out permanently…with a 7 and a half foot fence.

The first spring at our new house we built a 30′ by 60′ deer-proof enclosure and a 10′ by 12′ greenhouse (which makes our garden area bigger than our house). We put in 9 fruit trees and started loads of berries and rhubarb. We didn’t think the garden would do much the first year, but we ended up preserving a lot of food! We have big plans for the spring of 2016, including a chicken coop, expanding the berry beds, and creating another enclosure for two zone-hardy sweet cherries on the far side of the house. Now we just need the 4 feet of snow in the yard to melt…

I am currently taking the Master Gardener class with several gardening friends, and it’s been a great way to meet new people with the same interest – growing the best garden in a challenging, high altitude environment. I decided to start this site as a way to share information, keep records, and write about the failures and successes that happen here in zone 3. I hope it becomes a useful reference! Learn more about us here.

-Sam