Cedaredge got its name from where the cedars stop. The town sits at the top of the Surface Creek valley, right where the ground tips up into the Grand Mesa, and at 6,231 feet it is the highest ground we work.
That altitude is the whole story of gardening here. The last frost comes later than it does down in Delta and the first one comes earlier, which takes weeks off both ends of the season. Somebody who buys a plant that thrives on the valley floor finds out about the difference in October.
The water comes off the Mesa
Surface Creek starts up on the Grand Mesa and runs down through this valley, and it is why there is an orchard industry here at all. A post office opened in Cedaredge in December of 1894, which is to say people were already farming this ground by then — and they were farming it on Mesa water, because there is no other kind up here.
A lot of property in this valley still irrigates off ditch shares rather than off the tap. That means a pump, filtration for the silt, and a season that starts and ends when the ditch company says so rather than when the weather does. It is a different system to maintain and a different one to winterize.
What we see on Cedaredge properties
The season is short and it runs on a different clock than the valley floor. Sprinkler blowouts up here come before the ones in Delta, because the freeze arrives here first. Spring startup runs the other way round.
Deer are a design constraint, not a nuisance. Properties at this end of the valley back onto open country and the Mesa above it. A new planting on an unfenced lot is food until it establishes, and the answer is decided when the plan is drawn rather than after something has been eaten to the stems.
Orchard ground behaves like orchard ground. A lot of these lots were fruit trees before they were yards, and what is under the grass reflects it.
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