Most of it is that it usually stays cold for quite a while in the spring, so things don't start moving all that early. Also, farmers there have a lot of frost protection equipment. Early autumn freezes never seem to get anything, as all of the crops are ripe and harvested (except all of the wine grapes, but that's an ok thing) by that time.

But, you're right that it's mostly the dry, dry weather (so basically no fungal problems or cracking on cherries) with abundant irrigation water from the snowmelt rivers.

Yakima is in a valley where the cold air settles. The fruit is grown in more favorable locations nearby, often on a slope or hilltop where the cold air drains away. Also many growers use big fans or other means to fight spring frost.

Look at the weather records for Wenatchee, WA. That is more indicative of a good fruit growing location. As in real estate, it's location, location, location!!

Most of the intermountain west is much worse than eastern WA for spring frost. This includes CO, NM, UT, and ID. There are a lot of other locations in that area which are much worse yet. Eastern OR is a good example. And while CA has many favorable locations it has some awful areas as well. Check out the country around Bishop, CA

The difference between east and west of the Rockies is amazing. Compare Palisade to Denver ~200 miles straight east. Denver is warmer in the winter but temperature swings are much more extreme. West Texas has areas with ave temperatures similair to CA. But here is the key difference, West Texas has a greater temperature spread in any single winter or spring month than Fresno CA will have from Nov 1 until April 1.

The Fruitnut

I know that parts of Eastern OR, like the Bend area, can have frost every month of the year.

Yes, we can (I live in Bend). :-) Our official "Frost-Free" dates are listed as being June 5 through September 5, but if you ask any local master gardener, nursery owner, etc., they will tell you that they actually start on July 1 and end on July 2.

I well-remember a fairly heavy snowfall on the 4th of July a few years back. It can and does happen here.

What can you possibly grow there, Jodi?

And how, is the more pressing question!?

Oh, it's definitely trial and error. I've spent the past 17 years working the kinks out of growing flowers (perennials, mostly... there are actually a few that seem to thrive here), and this is my first year with a kitchen garden.

Our adult kids finally moved out a few months ago (love 'em to pieces, but they're in their early 20s. It was time to go!), and that seemed to free up a fair amount of time, space in the house and yard, and money for us. So I bought myself a little greenhouse, along with frost blankets, row covers, etc. to extend our season out a bit. Hubby built me 3 nice 4' x 8' raised beds, and I started a number of the edibles early indoors. Now I have strawberries, lettuces, carrots, onions, a sweet yellow bell pepper, tomatoes, sweet corn, cucumbers, broccoli, basil, and rosemary in the beds. Also a dwarf blueberry in a big pot in the greenhouse (and 2 more cultivars of dwarf blues being shipped to me now, with their pots filled and ready for them).

So far, I've learned that strawberries and onions tend to do pretty well here. No problems so far with the lettuces, either, of course. The corn is growing nicely, and no complaints from the broccoli so far, either.

Tomatoes can be tough here, but I'm giving it a go. I'm having trouble with a Sweet 100 cherry (think it may have spotted wilt virus, but I'm watching and waiting for the time being to see if it comes back for me... it has flowered, so we'll see what happens). And of course the pepper plant may or may not ever fruit for me. Cukes are also probably hit or miss. But I've tried to watch the weather predictions and put out the frost blankets whenever needed.

Depending on how things go this year, I'm thinking I'll try peas and potatoes next year, which should do just fine. Melons are very tempting... I suppose if I get one of the early cultivars, I might be able to pull it off.

Of course, we could very well get one (or any number) of our sudden summer snowstorms, hailstorms, thunderstorms with torrential rain and killer winds... and it could very well wipe out most or all of my efforts in a matter of hours or even minutes. But since we're here, and we're not going anywhere (hubby's job... no moving at least until he can retire, a good decade or so away), I decided to make the best of it and give it a try, at least.

Greenhouses and frost blanket are wonderful inventions! :-)

Jodi, that takes some dedication! You live in a beautiful area, most definitely, but gardening sounds tough!

I looked at the records for May and June for Bend so far this year on accuweather.com - 97 degrees in mid May, a 24 degree freeze 5 days later, and a couple nights in June in the upper 20s...wow...that's got to be a totally different experience!

Bend is the kind of place where with a greenhouse like mine, you could grow the worlds best fruit. Your heating and ventillation bills won't be too bad. Especially if you didn't try to rush the spring warmup too much. In the three coldest months you could just hold the temperature above zero in cold spells and below 60F in warm spells. After that just maintain nights above damaging temp thru bloom and days below 80F. You'd have ripe apricots by May. Grapes and stonefruit would last thru November. This in a climate where it can freeze any day of the yr.

The Fruitnut

The especially "fun" thing about central Oregon is that it can indeed freeze any day of the year... and then it can be 95 the next day. Then a few more days of hot, dry weather, then a day of hailstorms (and marble-sized hail isn't all that unusual here; besides major garden destruction on several occasions, we've also incurred some nasty hail damage to my car and our house in the past) and winds gusting to 60 mph, with a nighttime low of 15 degrees.... A few years ago, we had a mid-summer "thundersnow." I had never heard of this before it hit, and it was freaky. It was a sudden, out-of-the-blue snowstorm (we're talking complete white-out conditions; an absolute blizzard on the tail end of a sunny, calm morning) that was accompanied by very loud, booming thunder. Seriously! It was really something else. I will never forget that storm. It lasted about 20 minutes and then was gone as suddenly as it had hit, with calm, blue skies again the rest of the day.

We have lightning fires occur all around us every summer... at least in a thundersnow, there's little chance of a lightning fire getting out of control! :-)

It cracks us up to watch the local news station weatherman try to predict our weather. He can start out telling you what Thursday will be like... then the forecast for Thursday's weather changes twice a day between then and when Thursday actually arrives. They might as well just look out the window and try for 15-minute weather predictions.