Hi Sandy,
I live in Northern Arizona near Flagstaff. It definitely is a challenging place to grow anything. Where I live everyone water hauls and it is 7 cents a gallon if you have it delivered, so I don't water anything unless I have water in my rain barrels. If you have available tap water and fertile soil, then you can have a decent garden. Usually I save rain barrel water for seeds I want to sprout in the vegetable garden or newly transplanted trees. Our last spring frost is usually between June 1st and June 20th, but historically has happened as late as July. I have the clay soil as I am in the Ponderosa Pines.
Apples and pears seem to not mind the clay soil so much. Most of my fruit trees are standards that I grafted on Antonovka rootstock or I have some seedling trees from apples like honeycrisp. I have heard that on some apples you will only get fruit every fifth year especially due to the late spring frosts. I typically only plant things that are recommended for harsh environments like Fairbanks, Alaska, the Canadian Prairies, Minnesota, and Siberia. Rabbits, deer, or elk will eat everything if not fenced even lilacs and the flowers off all the irises.
Last year I thought many of my trees might die, because we had 11 months without really any precipitation. My apples put on about 1-3 inches of new growth instead of a foot plus, but they survived. They are only about four years old, so I haven't gotten any apples yet. For peaches, I dig out the clay about 6' across and 4' down and put some pine logs in the bottom of the pit and mix in pine needles, pine duff, and manure, otherwise they survive, but never take off.
For apples I am trying late blooming or frost tolerant varieties: Kerr, Trailman, Morden 360, Wolf River, and Northern Spy among many other less likely candidates. Many trees will grow, but not likely to regularly fruit. For peaches I am trying Contender (blossoms all froze last year), Reliance, Iowa White, and possibly Siberian C (in the future). We got a handful of seeded green concord grapes last year, multiple pickings of rhubarb, a few sour bush cherries (Bali, Carmine Jewel, and Romeo), and a few goji berries.
The wood lice kill most garden seedlings in a dry farmed garden for the water. Wood lice especially like to kill green beans. If you have water, then you will be more succesful as they will eat damp detritus instead. I have to use diatomaceous earth to keep seedlings and even tomato transplants alive or the wood lice decimate them, although the wild birds have found the bugs and are starting to help keep them in check. The birds also like to eat the garden seedlings, but poking sticks in the rows seems to keep the birds just far enough away to save seedlings from the birds. In the garden summer squash and zucchini always do well. We got some tomatoes, but the radiant cooling froze half of them back in June and the cool summers stunt them. I grow Austrian winter peas for the salad greens, Egyptian walking onions, black seeded simpson and green oak leaf lettuce, and have lambs quarters. Swiss chard grows well too. I haven't been successful fruiting berries yet. June bearing strawberries always freeze out their crop. I have Fort Laramie and seascape that bloom later, but they must need more water to produce more than a couple of berries. My gooseberries and josta berry have flowered, but frosted out. I don't water brambles enough to fruit and the wood lice and June beetle larva killed some varieties that I have tried. I am going to try sunken waffle beds this year instead of raised beds in the garden. Best of luck on your planting.
