I live in a beautiful part of the Front Range, where many small hay farms are still productive and, increasingly, small vegetable farms are springing up. Another local struggle is looming though; our small airport on the edge of town wants to expand to allow corporate jets to fly in. Officials say it’s “good for business.” I guess we’re about to find out if all the people who love the local farmers market also value the remaining farms, ranchettes, and wildliferich areas that surround the city.

Meanwhile, summer is zooming along. Belle Starr & Bill McDormand of Seeds Trust were just here. Lyons was the last stop on their inspiring Colorado Seed Saving Tour. Bill exhorted us to save our seeds, as all gardeners used to do, even if we don’t think we know what we’re doing.

You may have read some of the astonishing statistics about the loss of agricultural (not to mention native plant) diversity. For example, 96% of the commercial vegetable varieties available in 1903 in the U.S. are now extinct. All seeds used to be in the public domain in 1900. By 2006 86% were owned and patented and four companies now own 56%. The famed (and first ever) Russian seed bank is poised to be demolished for condos. Yipes!

So start saving seeds. As Bill pointed out, it was amateurs who developed our major food crops. Seeds Trust also holds an in-depth Seed School in northern AZ this fall so Bill can share 30 years of seed experience and knowledge. (See article on p. 3 with Seed School info at the end.)

Other topics in our Harvest issue include the construction of a new rock garden in Fort Collins by Kirk Fiesler, and Gardens in Schools, specifically the Garden to Table project in Boulder, by Wendy Underhill. Wendy and I visited Kathi Taylor’s Loveland garden a couple of months ago, which she also describes for you. David Salman, owner of High Country Gardens and Santa Fe Nurseries, writes on spring flowering perennial bulbs for our region, while Mikl Brawner discusses three colorful maple varieties for our Western climate. Niki Hayden tells you about her easiest garden food preserving strategies, and Gary Raham focuses on beetles, including some of the jewellike colors they exhibit. In his Q & A Kelly Grummons tells you how to deal with blister beetles (my suggestion – they defoliated two clematis vines plus anemones), and living windbreaks for gardens. And don’t forget to peruse our lengthy calendar of gardening related events and classes on page 12.

Last year we covered the new Paul Smith Children’s Village at Cheyenne Botanic Gardens and this spring, the Mordecai Children’s Garden at Denver Botanic Gardens. Both are now open and fabulous!

Finally, start preparing your vegetable garden this fall for next spring. Good soil is your most important asset and building it takes some time. Add compost and manure now to enliven and transform beds for next spring’s planting. Reclaim some of your lawn for a vegetable garden using a back-saving no till, sheet mulching or “Lasagna” method. Start soon. There are plenty of books and internet sites to show
you details. Save your leaves and collect more for the garden. Water your beds this fall and mulch to keep moisture in.
Plant some spring bulbs – they’re easy. As Bill McDormand told me, beauty is sustainable. And don’t forget to water your trees a few times during the winter; at least give them a good soak before the ground freezes around Thanksgiving.
Our online version of the issue is available at www.coloradogardener.com. We’ll publish our Education Issue in early February, in time for distribution at ProGreen. Deadlines are in mid-late December and early January. Happy harvesting and seed saving!

Jane Shellenberger

I’ve been at talks at ProGreen and other seminars where I’ve heard lecturers, some of them with PhD’s, dismiss the benefits of mycorrhizae, compost tea, and humic acids.  Yet for all three of these garden amendments that support soil life and make nutrients (and water, in the case of myccorhizae) more available to plants, I’ve now seen dramatic results firsthand.  Mikl Brawner has been writing about these plant growth enhancers for Colorado Gardener since 1998.  So I bought a small 1-lb bag of soluble mycorrhizae.  It set me back me $30, and that’s a lot, but a little goes a very long way, plus it contributes to the soil’s long-term health.  Look for these ingredients in soil mixes or add your own.

In the last several years I’ve become a proponent of sheet mulching with thick flakes of hay in the vegetable garden. It works especially well in our dry climate though I find that most people don’t believe me.  In the fall I dump lots of shredded leaves on my beds, water well, and cover thickly with hay.  Over the winter I put my vegetable scraps right under the mulch instead of in the compost pile.  In the spring I have really nice soil for growing veggies – crumbly and loaded with worms.  I don’t till the ground anymore because I don’t need to.  It’s a chore I don’t miss.  I push the mulch back where I want to plant seeds, replacing it as the plants get bigger. The mulch is thick enough that hay seeds don’t sprout (seriously) and it prevents other weeds from coming up.

A number of people have been doing this for quite a while, especially permaculturists, but Ruth Stout was the original sheet-mulcher.  Her books are great reads – she’s funny, wise, and non-presumptuous – though most are out of print.  There’s also a video you can watch on You-Tube made when she was in her eighties.  I must also mention Barbara Miller of Boulder, because she has been a generous leaf-gathering, sheet-mulching mentor to many of us.  Her garden is so huge and beautiful that it’s difficult to comprehend that she does it all herself without employing a squad of workers.  But then, sheet mulching does make gardening easier.

Topics you will find in this issue include: Understanding Raspberries by Joel Reich, the architecture of lichens by Gary Raham, and best bee plants by Mikl Brawner.  Sue Whetten, who worked until recently as a horticulturist for Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, profiles Ross Shrigley, horticulturist extraordinaire of Fort Collins.  She also writes about the Mordecai Children’s Garden being constructed at Denver Botanic Gardens and set to open late this summer.  Penn Parmenter covers some more useful plants for mountain gardens, and the timing for planting out the high elevation vegetable garden. Peter Fossel discusses his most successful methods for planting his vegetable garden.

Besides bees and spiders there are several common beneficial insects that I’d like to better acquaint you with. Check out the photo essay on their various life stages in our center spread.  Most of the photos were taken by entomologists from CO State University in Fort Collins, and many are by Whitney Cranshaw who told me about the fabulous IPM Images site.

Garden designer Alxe Noden shares ways to think about and incorporate movement in a garden.  Three prominent Colorado gardeners talk about hail, in particular the big storm that hit the metro area last July, devastating Timberline Gardens in Arvada.

Finally, writers Sandra Knauf and Cheryl Conklin, both from Colorado Springs, write about a gender bending chicken and the return of the summer sun.  Yes, it’s finally warming up!

Have a fun and productive summer. Look for our Harvest issue in late August.

Jane Shellenberger

I’m writing this hurriedly, in the middle of a crashing thunderstorm and drenching rain. On our last deadline a blizzard caused power outages for a couple of days during the final stretch, so I’m especially mindful of my vulnerability and dependency on the grid. In the West our precipitation does tend to arrive dramatically, in big bursts all at once.

Last month I mentioned the current renaissance in gardening that’s based on a desire to grow food and live sustainably, particularly among younger gardeners. Wendy Underhill decided to explore this topic in more depth, so in this issue she introduces you to three young women in their 20’s who’ve become passionate about gardening or agriculture, though there was nothing special in their backgrounds to spark it. One, Emily Dowdy, an orchardist, says simply, “I must have seen some movie or read about farms in a book.”

Jodi torpey, author of The Colorado Gardener’s Companion, wanted to write something for CG about her work on a Plant A Row for the Hungry campaign in Denver. It’s part of a national effort started by the Garden Writers Association years ago. At about the same time, I received an email from a subscriber in Brighton with the tagline “Brighton Shares the Harvest” after her name. When I asked about it she told me that Plant A Row was also the impetus for her work on food distribution in Brighton. She and Jodi didn’t know each other or the work each is doing, but a quick exchange of email addresses remedied that. And unbeknownst to either of them, Loveland Youth Gardeners initiated a Plant a Row program in 2005. Read the article on page 24 and maybe you’ll decide to get something rolling in your community.

I saw Tim and Laura Spear of Forest Edge Gardens (near Colorado Springs) last fall when they were up here visiting friends. They mentioned all the new community gardens that a guy named Larry Stebbins was setting up under the umbrella of Pikes Peak Urban Gardens (PPUG). It wasn’t difficult to find a writer who knew about Stebbins and his assistant director, Elise Bowan. This dynamic duo has brought what Sandra Knauf calls a “Green Revolution” to Colorado Springs.

Yes, the issue is full of stories about food gardening. We also have a piece about growing beans by Peter Fossel, author of Organic Farming, Everything You Need to Know. Todd W. Smith studied fungi with Paul Stamets in Washington for a couple of years and writes about the healing properties of mushrooms - for the soil and our bodies - and how to grow them at home indoors from kits. Who knew you could do that? Apparently, it’s not that difficult.

But, a man cannot live by bread alone, and women certainly can’t. We need a little beauty! May is the merry and beautiful month of FLOWERS, when everything blooms all at once, perfume fills the air, and you don’t need any medical marijuana to feel giddy. Don’t forget lavender, poppies, roses, and daphnes in your rush of enthusiasm for eggplant and broccoli. (Now there’s a statement I never imagined I’d make.) There are loads of beautiful flowering plants available for our climate and garden centers are bursting with them right now. You don’t have to recreate Sissinghurst, just plant a few for the bees and the butterflies and your own sweet pleasure.

Every year Colorado State University and Welby Gardens in Denver hold plant trials to see which new varieties of flowering plants have performed beautifully in our climate. When I looked again at the photos from last year’s trial Gardens at CSU and remembered how pretty they were “in the flesh” I decided I really ought to show you some of their “top performers” since we so often bring you less mainstream plants. take a look on page 18.

Other topics in this issue include: Useful Herbs for Mountain Gardens by Penn Parmenter; Climate Change & Western Water Users by Joan Sapp; Leaf Botany by Paula Ogilvie; Penstemons by Cindy Bellinger; and Gary Raham on how insects find their preferred foods. John Hershey keeps on delivering some of the funniest prose I’ve ever read-anywhere. It’s a privilege to publish the work of so many fine writers.

Happy Spring!

Jane Shellenberger

I knew I’d come across the word Altai somewhere else recently, and then it dawned on me. Seeds Trust, a company that specializes in vegetable varieties for short seasons and high altitudes (along with wildflowers and grasses), offers a tomato called Sasha’s Altai. In their catalog, owner Bill McDorman tells the poignant story of acquiring seed of this “best tomato in all of Siberia” when he traveled there in 1989. Penn Parmenter mentions it in her list of favorite vegetable varieties for the mountains in this issue. In an email Bill’s wife Belle answered, yes, she knows Panayoti (who in the plant world doesn’t?) and knew of his recent trip. “In fact,” she said, “Bill may have helped influence him to go there.” Connections like these make my job interesting!

Many of the gardening events I attend are full of graying gardeners like myself. We are so enamored of and fascinated by plants that we’ll drive an hour or more in freezing rain and blinding snow to hear a talk at Denver Botanic Gardens, as Mikl and Eve Brawner and I, and many others did a few weeks ago when Gary Nabhan was in town. As we navigated the treacherous roads on our slow, white-knuckled drive home, Eve wondered aloud about what’s going to happen when our generation (broadly interpreted) of plant lovers and workers retires, or, I should say “moves on” since most of us will no doubt bite the dirt before we stop messing around with plants.

Don’t get me wrong; there are certainly some inspired and capable young plant “nerds” out there, but from all reports, not so many. On the other hand, there is a renaissance at hand in the sustainability movement with food gardening at its heart and people of all ages and persuasions participating. Judy Elliott, Denver compost guru and empowerment coordinator at Denver Urban Gardens (DUG), describes a burgeoning back-to-the-land movement among young urbanites. “I am by far the oldest person around at DUG,” she says.

Community gardens are exploding with energy in most Colorado cities and across the country. Small farm operations are springing up everywhere it seems, even in the mountains. Some of Colorado’s best-known garden centers that began as truck farm operations, then switched to ornamentals, are now selling a lot of vegetable plants. And just a few years ago vendors who sold flowers at local farmers markets were making a killing compared to those selling vegetables. I remember Jacquie Monroe of Monroe Organic Farms in Kersey telling me, (with the resigned frustration of a hard working farmer), that people really ought to think about where their food comes from. Today, the Monroe family farm, blessed with rich loamy soil, has 26 CSA distribution centers across the Front Range and busy booths at several farmers markets. Business is booming for other local farms and CSAs around the state, too. Sustainability has brought a sea change in food and gardening consciousness.

Many of those convinced that the sky is falling in America are also taking up gardening, as John Hershey describes in his inimitable prose on page 23. At least there’s one place where people with very different perspectives can find common ground.

Mikl Brawner lays out the underlying principles involved in gardening without chemicals. Judging from all the people who come into his nursery asking, he says there is a huge and growing demand for this information. After 35 years of research and practice with “alternative” gardening methods Mikl is in a good position to educate. (The alive “bugs” on this page are my daughter’s creations, drawn when bugs were still a source of wonder.)

Sandra Knauf, publisher of a gardening Zine called “Greenwoman,” writes about legal rainwater harvesting. Niki Hayden describes her garden of natives, Libby James recounts the summer when tomatoes took over her life, and Alex Noden discusses background color in the garden.

Our complete issues are now posted on our website at www.coloradogardener.com.

Jane Shellenberger

The High Plains Landscaping Workshop in Fort Collins and the Peak to Prairie Landscape Symposium in Colorado Springs will both be held in late February.  The Sustainable Landscape Symposium at Denver Botanic Gardens is back this year - “Down & Dirty,” with a special focus on soil.  Pueblo hosts its second Western Landscape symposium on March 6 with Judith Phillips, keynote speaker.  And Echters’ Echxpo returns this spring in Arvada with three days of seminars for home gardeners.

To shake you out of late winter’s doldrums there are also several plant society spring shows and sales.  If growing orchids, African violets, gesneriads, roses, cacti, succulents, dahlias, or all of the above is your pleasure, you’re in luck!  Check the Plant & Garden Shows & Sales section in the calendar.  Growing Gardens in Boulder is starting early this year, selling cool weather veggie starts, perennials and more on March 25 at their first of four plant sales this spring.

The Colorado Garden and Home Show at the convention center in Denver in mid February also features gardening seminars.  Proceeds from this venerable event fund scholarships and horticulture projects throughout the state.

Speaking of education, my boyfriend Oscar and I took the 9-week beekeeping class offered in Boulder County last fall.  By now Oscar has read nearly every book around on bees, and watched almost every film and video available on U-Tube and elsewhere.  Last night he showed me a really disturbing one on giant Japanese hornets that attack honeybees. Suffice it to say that a few dozen hornets, tipped off by a scout hornet, kill an entire colony of thousands of European honeybees in three hours (condensed into a few minutes), savagely cutting them all to bits like little Samurai warriors, then raid all their honey stores and take the brood to feed their own young.  Next a Japanese scout hornet is shown entering a hive of Japanese honeybees, which have evolved a successful strategy to defeat this terrifying predator.  First the bees seem to whisper the plan to each other, then they quickly surround the hornet and begin vibrating and beating their wings till the temperature rises to 120°, cooking the scout in short order.

This cautionary visual tale brought to mind the important adaptive relationships that develop between species that evolve together in the same place.  Which leads me back to this issue.

I read Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens by entomologist Douglas W. Tallemy this winter and found his argument for growing more native plants in our suburban gardens extremely compelling.  He goes beyond the usual discussions about creating a “sense of place,” the dangers of invasive exotic plants, and wasteful, polluting suburban lawns.  It was difficult to capture the gist of this in-depth, well-researched book in a 1000-word excerpt, but perhaps this glimpse on page 3 will inspire you to read more.

Niki Hayden writes about the seed industry, encouraging all of us to treasure the genetic “botanical gold” that seeds embody.  We include an extensive sidebar listing Colorado seed companies, plus some regional seed companies, noteworthy because they offer integrity and expertise, native plant & wildflower seed, high altitude, short season vegetable seeds, and/or organic and heirloom vegetable seeds.

Paula Ogilvie writes about how to grow tropical orchids indoors in Colorado when you don’t have a greenhouse.  In my experience, it’s easy to keep them growing but not always to have them bloom repeatedly, so I’m glad to learn what I was doing wrong.
Last summer Wendy Underhill was in Lake City when she spotted an amazing sight.  Check out page 16 to see what it was.

You might notice a new look in this issue.  Lise Neer is our new graphic designer/art director and we’ve had a great time putting this issue together.  Our next one comes out at the beginning of April and deadlines are the end of February.

Enjoy the warm-up!
Jane Shellenberger

Xeriscape Harvest by Mikl Brawner

“For most people, harvest time brings to mind a cornucopia of veggies and fruits. For me, the end of this 2009 growing season has been a fruition of over 20 years of cultivating a xeriscape where most of the trees and shrubs have been watered 5 times a year or less. These self-imposed watering restrictions have demonstrated which plants can survive and thrive under serious water shortages. I have done this both to encourage water conservation in Colorado and to demonstrate that a dry western landscape can be beautiful. So I would like to brag about not only my personal success but about the success of some really great Colorado-adapted woody plants…”

Growing Victory by Rebekah Doyle Guss

Southside Community Garden sprang to life in an abandoned lot with cement hard ground and cheatgrass moving in.

“I flooded the beds and let water work its way through the sun-baked crust.  Flyers invited residents to join the “new” Southside Community Garden. We rototilled and prepped beds. We watered in our first seedlings. From that night on I had a regular crew of 5-10 helpers under 12.  Local farmers and nurseries donated plants. Passersby smiled and waved. It was more than a community garden. We were cultivating victory of the aesthetic, nutritional, and educational variety. Some of my fellow gardeners had never tasted many of the herbs, flowers and veggies we were growing. I showed them how to know when a zucchini is ripe enough to pick. They taught me how to count in Lakota…”
    

Hydroponics: Past, Present & Future by Wendy Underhill

“… Small countries like growing this way because it’s a huge space-saver, netting as much as ten times the produce for the space allocation. Dry countries like it because hydroponics requires one-tenth the water of regular production, so long as the water is re-circulated.  Environmentally-motivated countries like it because far less chemical pollution occurs (nutrients don’t run off into open streams and pesticides aren’t required). Northern countries like it because, when combined with artificial light, hydroponics means fresh salad all winter long…”

Some like it hot—especially chili pepper plants  by Gary Raham

“A chili’s kick to the palate (not to mention a kick to the adrenal glands and a spike in heart rate) may be enough to explain their popularity, although chilies also help keep food from spoiling by killing certain microbes. The active ingredient in chilies—capsaicin—also is used as a topical salve to reduce the pain of arthritis (by temporarily overloading pain receptors) and may have been used by the Mayans to treat infected wounds, GI problems, and earaches.   But biologists have long wondered what plants get out of manufacturing capsaicin—especially when certain varieties of the same species don’t make the effort…”

Winter Squash by Niki Hayden

“Winter squashes need water, rich soil and time. But most of all, they need space.
Some have scrambled up crabapple trees with the squashes hanging like lanterns. Others take over a lawn, a lilac or a distant vegetable patch. They ramble, setting small squashes like ornaments along the way. Now I’ve banished them to lowly but large places: behind the compost bin, back by the fence, along a driveway. Keeping them contained in any ordinary garden space is impossible…”

Eating the Garden by Penn Parmenter

“Vegetables can sometimes grow too fast, bolting before you get to the food.  Luckily, many offer more than meets the eye, like the radish which gives food in all stages of its life.  We all know the nutritious root – the actual radish.  However, the young greens are delicious in salad, the larger greens are delicious lightly cooked in the scrambled eggs, and the flowers are a sweet smelling, sugary tasting surprise, beloved by bees and suitable for salads and cakes. The seedpods that follow are my personal favorite – a crunchy, juicy, zingy version of the radish.  Enjoy them with coarse salt and icy cold beer and just imagine them in the stir-fry!…”

Engaging the Senses, Improving Lives by Cheryl Conklin

“Delighting in the unexpected is a way of life for most gardeners. We take on difficult soils, extreme weather, steep slopes, and short seasons. These challenges seem to bring out our best. Even so, how many of us would willingly attempt to convert into garden an environment as depressing as an asphalt parking lot surrounding an industrial strength strip mall?   Enter Dana Seeleye. An intrepid and infectious optimist, he was challenged to create gardens for very special consumers in parking lots adjacent to buildings where they spend most of their days. To this challenge Dana happily said, “Sure!”…”

Bulb Botany by Paula Ogilvie

“Tulip bulbs can be exasperating. Darwin hybrids and the smaller yet lovely species tulips will bloom “true” each year, but many of the spectacular hybrids often bloom “true” just once. After the first year the flowers will be much duller. Consider them as a bouquet to be enjoyed one season without expecting much more. Under ideal conditions, many hybrids (even many sold as perennial tulips) might last 3 to 5 years. Bulbs labeled as best for naturalizing are the most likely to be reliable repeat bloomers. Tulips should be buried a bit deeper than normally recommended in well drained soil…”

What a summer to support the resurgence in home gardening! Though my heart goes out to all of you whose gardens were minced by hail, the moisture we’ve received has made it easy to establish trees, shrubs, and gardens of all kinds this year.

The cool wet weather delayed the wasps’ appearance in my vegetable garden and cabbage worms took advantage by chewing the brassica leaves to bits. A frenzied, single-handed campaign, (neither my daughter nor my mate were especially keen to join in), to handpick these green worms, very well camouflaged on the kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbages, eventually gave way to just squishing them in place with gloved or, if I’d forgotten them, bare fingers. After a half hour of this each morning or afternoon for a few days, their numbers dwindled; they became difficult to find.

I knew about Bt, (bacillus thuringiensis – a soil bacterium approved for organic growing that kills these and some other caterpillars), but never before felt compelled to use it. On the advice of a friend who gave up growing brassicas without Bt, I bought some. But I didn’t end up using it. I checked the leaves for a few more days and then the wasps started showing up. Cabbage butterflies are still flying around but there are few, if any, worms on the plants, which are healthy again. Patience and a lack of squeamishness paid off.

I moved to my house, a ranchette on a few acres between Boulder and Longmont, eight years ago. My neighbors and I share some water rights, which we use to irrigate in early summer, though it often isn’t quite enough to cover my more or less flat pasture. The house came with two sump pumps, one connected to an emergency generator fueled by a propane tank that exists solely for that purpose, in case the electricity goes out. That seemed a lot like overkill to me, considering how dry it was those first three years; then my basement flooded in 2004. This year the sump pump has been running for five weeks so far and I wonder where I would be without it. It’s a clear reminder that we go through wet and dry cycles all the time.

Conservation always comes to the fore when it’s dry and watering restrictions are imposed. Since we just turn on the tap whenever we want, it’s easy to forget about the dry years and the bigger picture. So, by all means, luxuriate in the moist, unusually humid and cooler days of this wonderful green summer. Just don’t forget that drought cycles are inevitable here. Dry years will come again and there will be more of us wanting water when they do.

Mikl Brawner has been a xeriscape pioneer for decades, seeking out and growing trees, shrubs, and plants that use less water and offering them for sale at his Boulder nursery, Harlequin’s Gardens. Most established plants in the gardens there have been watered five times a year. (Without city water or a well, he can’t “cheat” and turn on the water if he feels like it.) He writes about some of his favorite mature trees and shrubs raised under these conditions, which are looking especially good this summer. He calls it “Xeriscape Harvest.”

Once in a while someone sends me a well-written essay about gardening in Colorado out of the blue. Remarkably, this time I had three. Alas, there is only room for one, “Growing Victory” on page three. Rebekah Doyle Guss writes about her arrival in the Four Corners Area, where she doggedly pursued her vision to create a community garden for young people. The garden bloomed and produced on many levels and she makes it clear that anyone can do this. Look forward to reading the other essays in future issues.

Penn Parmenter from Westcliffe, who covered how to grow vegetables in the mountains in past issues, writes here about eating them. And Niki Hayden discusses winter squash, with their voluptuously rambling vines that would love to take over your entire yard and the deliciously hearty meals they provide.

Gary Raham explores what chili peppers get out of being hot, while Paula Olgivie describes how bulbs work in “Bulb Botany.”

Even though we earthy gardeners spend a lot time with hands in the soil, (mine certainly show it), we have at least heard of hydroponics. Wendy Underhill presents an overview – past, present and future – of this other cleaner and promising way to grow.

Creating gardens of sensory delight in the middle of asphalt urban alleys may sound like an impossible task, but Dana Seeleye, formerly of Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, has pulled it off. Cheryl Conklin tells the story.

We publish our Education Supplement in mid January. Until then, Happy Harvesting!

Jane Shellenberger

Features (excerpted)

Death

by Bob Nold

“A couple of times the compost pile, which is just four oak pallets nailed together to form a square, has caught on fire. So I didn’t realize that the charcoal briquettes weren’t completely out when I scraped them out of the bottom of the grill. That happened twice. It created a lot of smoke, and I thought it was funny. I didn’t think it was funny when one of the neighbors set part of the garden on fire shooting fireworks into the back yard, but this was funny…”

Late Starters: Basil, Tomatoes & Nasturtiums

by Deb Whittaker, Herb Gourmet

“Don’t tell my daughter I said this, but there are advantages to being late. Some of the most revered of edibles, tomatoes, basil and nasturtiums, thrive only in the rich, moist soil warmed thoroughly in the long days nearing the summer solstice. Sure, there are ways to get around the reluctance of these late starters, but let’s face it, fooling Mother Nature by artificially warming the soil and insulating plants takes a lot of work, a lot of money and meets with mixed results at best. Like the plants they love, late laid-back gardeners can take advantage of the benefits of waiting until the time is right…”

Four Steps Toward a More Sustainable Landscape

by Lise Mahnke

“Creating a sustainable landscape takes planning, especially in a region like the Rocky Mountains where conditions don’t support many of the plants we’d like to grow.  We can reduce the environmental impact of gardening while maximizing the benefits of our landscapes by breaking the task down into concrete steps. Consider “sustainable” the long-term goal, with the gardener on a journey toward a more sustainable lifestyle…”

Plants: Not green wimps but world changers

by Gary Raham
“Readers of Colorado Gardener understand the beauty and importance of plants. For many others, plants serve merely as salad fixin’s and pleasant backdrops for golf tournaments and Tarzan movies. Climatologists, paleontologists, and geologists, however, have recently made discoveries and developed models that reveal plants to be dominant players in the history of life and devoted caretakers of Earth’s climate. If you haven’t already, now is a good time to thank a green plant for its diligent efforts in creating the world we now enjoy…”

Growing Food in the Mountains – Yes, We Can!

by Penn Parmenter

“Many mountain gardeners come to us with big eyes and say, “Oh, but you don’t understand – we have WIND!”  Or shaking their heads they implore, “Oh, but we have HAIL!”  One high-altitude gardener tells tales of nightly visits from bears and another defiantly shares stories of elk jumping an eight-foot fence.  We know the feeling.  Though it may seem as if your garden is being singled out, believe me, we ALL have wind and hail, plus a whole lot more in the mountains…”

How I Planned & Built a Backyard Greenhouse

by Morris Miller

“My wife has been gardening nearly her entire life but has never had a greenhouse. A few years back, disheartened by our late spring frosts, hail, and early fall cold snaps, she asked me to build her one.
 

I’m the antithesis of a gardener, but I have an extensive design/build background. I wanted to build her a large, functional greenhouse, but in her usual conservative way she said, “Build me a small one so I can see if I like it,” and that is exactly what I did.

After growing crops in that very small space through the fall and winter, and starting her seedlings in the spring, she asked, “Ok, how about building me a real greenhouse for my birthday”?

So that spring we started planning…”

Oregano- Joy of the Mountain

by Greg Foreman

“Oregano libanoticum (Hopflower Oregano) is currently the outstanding species to grow in our region. It was selected by Plant Select and has very showy flower bracts that cascade wonderfully over a wall.  It works effectively in a garden setting, especially at the edges, keeping pesky gardeners from walking through your garden to inspect the stunning, profuse, rose-pink blooms. It has proven to be very drought tolerant, preferring a dry, sunny, well-drained site…”

Our Native Fruits

by Mikl Brawner

“In general, we could say that native fruits are wild and may need some training and cultivation for best fruit production, and to keep them from overtaking tamer varieties. However, wild fruits can be very tasty and far more nutritious than cultivated varieties. They have evolved to have strong defense mechanisms and survival vitality and can therefore be rich in vitamins, enzymes and antioxidants. In addition to the edible values, these plants like living in Colorado and therefore are usually strong and healthy…”

Primitive & Otherworldly, The Yellow Pond Lily

By Niki Hayden

“In our part of the world you may find a variety of sedges at a lake’s perimeter but only one water lily—a  primitive, taxi-yellow, waxy pond lily—dramatic and bold. Our wild pond lily, Nuphar lutea, can be discovered in many subalpine lakes throughout North America. But gardeners rarely grow the yellow pond lily in their home ponds. They choose hybrid hardy lilies influenced by impressionist painter Claude Monet, who painted his water lily garden at his home outside Paris…”

Tough Plants for Container Gardening

By Marcia Tatroe

“Anything that can fit in a container can be grown in a container—from the tiniest alpine to actual trees. But containers are most useful for annual flowers and vegetables and for non-hardy houseplants and tropicals. It isn’t surprising that a plant collector like myself has amassed an improbable number of containers over the years. More than one hundred spill out from obvious places like my front porch and back patio to sit  (or hang) on every unplanted surface in the garden…”

Vegetables Contained but not Restrained

By Jane Shellenberger

“Five hours is considered full sun in Colorado and that’s what vegetables need, but you can grow leafy greens with less if you have good light.

There are many stunning pottery containers available from all over the world that can really show off your plants.  I think it’s wise to make sure they don’t contain anything harmful like lead, especially if you plan to grow edibles in them. If your supplier can’t assure you on this point inexpensive lead testing kits are available at hardware stores or on the internet…”

Dry Irony: Formal Geometric Watersmart Gardening

by Panayoti Kelaidis

“While perennials don’t provide quite the punch of color that annuals do in July and August, a flower bed with perennials provides a much longer season of color. Eight months of color and interest surely trump three months of annual color, especially when you utilize a fraction of the water and can obviate the need of replanting and extensive soil prep every spring…”

After a warm and typically dry winter, our cool wet spring continues. Where I live the hay is high already while, despite irrigation, last summer’s yields were sparse. A local old time grower attributes this to the lack of lightning storms last year. He says that without electricity in the air the crops don’t grow. Our consulting meteorologist, Matt Kelsch, responds with skepticism. While it’s true that lightning fixes lots of nitrogen in the soil, he says, and that over half the usable nitrogen in soil may have originated with lightning, the buildup took place over millions of years, so in a year-to-year time frame lightning is irrelevant to soil fertility. Somehow I doubt my neighbor would accept that.

On a different weather topic, if your lilacs didn’t bloom this May you can bet they were nipped by frost. I hear very few flowered in Denver, though ours are still blooming in late May. Because of the cold weather I used row cover over the greens in my garden this year and what a huge difference it made! With the few extra degrees of warmth row cover provides, the lettuce, arugula, broccoli and other cool season crops I started from seed outside in mid March grew by leaps and bounds. It’s a great season extender. The thin white polyester sheeting lets air, light, and water through, but keeps out flea beetles and smaller hail, should we have it. I think it also provides some shade for young greens when spring turns hot, as often happens.

Penn Parmenter from Westcliffe elaborates in this issue on some of the mountain food growing techniques she mentioned in last month’s “Wild Mountain Gardening.” You’ll see a photo of the “warm start bed” her husband Cord built, and wait till you see the size of the corn they grow at 8400’!

Speaking of greenhouses, we have a detailed piece about the backyard greenhouse that Morris Miller built for his wife Barbara in Boulder. Barbara Miller is a new official test grower for Organic Gardening Magazine.

Herb Gourmet Deb Whittaker discusses three late starters in the garden: tomatoes, nasturtiums, and basil - warm season crops that don’t do much growing until the soil warms up. Marcia Tatroe writes about some tough but pretty plants for containers that need less water than most, and I’ve written on growing veggies in containers.

Mikl Brawner describes four of our native fruits, while Niki Hayden features the “otherworldly” yellow native pond lily that grows in high mountain lakes.

I finally twisted Greg Foreman’s arm enough for him to write about oreganos, which, as it turns out, have a complicated lineage. Some are beautiful, cascading ornamentals and several are highly medicinal. The lovely Dittany of Crete, now endangered, is known as “the gift of the gods.”

Mayor Hickenlooper broke with tradition when he decided on public water-smart gardens four years ago in Denver. Panayoti Kelaidis tells what we’ve learned from these four years later.

Sadly, Cindy Nelson Nold died on May 24. She was Bob Nold’s wife, the inspiration (and weeder) for his astonishing garden, and an extremely talented, botanical artist and photographer. If you know Bob, and maybe even if you don’t, you’ll see that his piece in this issue, “Death”, is just right.

In “Plants: Not green wimps but world changers,” natural science writer Gary Raham describes how plants have defined our world and climate beginning hundreds of millions of years ago.

Lisa Mahnke writes about four steps toward gardening sustainably and, in our Notables section, delves into the contents of the pending Farm Bill. Have you received one of those alarming emails about congressional bills that “could mark the end of organic farming?” Mahnke did her research. Afterwards she told me: “Never in my life would I have imagined the richness and diversity of information I’d be able to get from the internet—a person needs an advanced degree in BS detection to navigate the net!”

Check out our new and improving website at www.coloradogardener.com, where you can now access our calendar online. And don’t forget to take advantage of the specials and coupons offered by our advertisers in this issue. They want to make sure their marketing dollars are well spent so mention seeing their ads in CG and bring in those coupons for special discounts!

Enjoy your summer and look for our Harvest issue toward the end of August. Advertising & calendar deadlines are at the end of July.

Jane Shellenberger

Features (excerpted)

Wild Mountain Gardening by Penn Parmenter

“The mountains are full of every kind of soil and microclimate you can imagine. Learning how to identify them, enhance them, utilize them and re-create more like them are some of the keys to mountain gardening. We grow a lot of food amongst the trees because they provide shelter from hail and frost, and they break up the wind. Colorado’s sun is so intense even dappled light can grow a respectable amount of vegetables. Plant diversity, methods like relay, companion, and inter-planting, or covers and cloches will insure that something will be left standing after disaster strikes in the mountains…”

Jan & Charlie Turner’s Wildflower Garden by Wendy Underhill

“The Turners have taken a traditional suburban yard (cottonwoods, junipers, Kentucky bluegrass) and converted it into a laboratory for native, drought-tolerant plants. A happy byproduct of the conversion is that native pollinators in the area are well fed; often these birds and butterflies go hungry in a typical suburban landscape…”

Prickly Pleasure by Panayoti Kelaidis

“Mention “thistle” and most gardeners shudder with horror… All true thistles belong to the tribe Cynareae of the daisy family, one of 13 sizeable groupings in this immense family that has such great economic and aesthetic importance to humans. By far the most important economic thistle is the Artichoke, (Cynara scolymus) a common weed throughout the Mediterranean littoral where villagers would be thrilled to know that these often fetch two or three dollars a head at Whole Foods in America…”

Cheyenne’s Amazing Sustainable Botanic Gardens by Jane Shellenberger

“How did Cheyenne, a city of just over 53,000 and capital of our least populous state, manage to build and, for over 30 years, maintain a full-fledged botanic garden?… Shane Smith, founding (and still) director, had the vision to implement a community-based, renewable energy-powered public garden… The city is also home to the historic High Plains Arboretum, one of several research stations set up in various geographical regions of the US in the late 1920’s to test grow plant specimens, primarily fruits, vegetables, windbreaks, and some ornamental plants, that were collected all over the world by plant explorers…”

The “New” Soil Fertility, Part 2 by Mikl Brawner

“We have been taught to be afraid of bacteria, fungi and insects. We were told that they cause diseases, illnesses and allergies and that they kill our plants. Now the truth comes out that the vast majority of these creatures are beneficial… How can gardeners harness these hordes of tiny beings to improve their gardens’ fertility? I suppose the best explanation is: Be nice to them. They know their jobs, they have millennia of experience in creating nutritional systems and they live by a principle that humans lack faith in, which is that cooperation is more successful than domination so everybody does better when everybody does better…”

Siting Trees for Energy Savings by Joan Hinkemeyer

“Economic downturns force us to seek savings everywhere, even in our landscaping. Smart landscaping practices can save energy costs. Just borrow methods used by rural folks for generations that capitalize on the cooling and heating benefits of strategically placed plant materials… Planting deciduous trees so that their mature canopy shades the south and west sides and/or the roof of a single story house may reduce summer cooling bills by 50% or more. These trees drop their leaves in the fall allowing winter sun to warm our homes…”

Lessons from the Sustainable Landscaping Symposium by Jane Shellenberger

“In more urban areas storm run-off has become a liability rather than an asset due to pervasive “pave it & drain it” curb and gutter design… And all of our “designing for cars” has had many unforeseen negative effects. What used to be relatively minor 2-year storms now become 20-year storms because of the run-off from parking lots and streets. Iowa has had two 500-year floods in the last 15 years. Wherever we used to typically have one “run-off event” per year, we now have 20-30… But if landscapes were porous, precipitation could again become an asset…”

My 10’X 20’ Farm in an Urban Community Garden by Jacki Hein

“I must have some farmer blood even though I grew up in Chicago. There’s something about growing my own food that really hits home. But my backyard is for my dogs, two crazy things that run frenzied paths into the ground… So, needing a place last summer to dig, I searched out a community garden about a mile from my home. For a simple fee of $35, I had my name on a 10’ x 20’ plot for the entire season from April through October… By mid-summer, I was harvesting boatloads of fresh produce. I walked to the garden and trudged home with about 10 pounds of veggies several times a week…”

Early Front Range Tomatoes by Gerald Miller

“To get early tomatoes on Colorado’s Front Range you have to do things differently than in states with a longer growing season, but you can eat them early and often if you learn how… My tomatoes are transplanted into Walls of Water on a warm day about April 10. Very cold nights with frost, even after the average last frost dates in May, are common… I have had the water in the walls freeze solid and be totally covered in snow, yet the tomato plants inside have been kept warm enough to survive. In more than twenty years of using them, I have never lost a plant…”