The most exciting part of the editing/publishing process is when all the stories, photos, and ads come in and the issue begins to take shape. I always notice serendipitous, interesting parallels and coincidences. Gardeners make up a small world community based on our common interest – a love of plants.

Here’s what’s in store for you in this issue.

Lee Curtis writes about “Froggy Bottom,” a garden she first visited 15 years ago. Ann & Dick Bartlett’s diverse and multifaceted Lakewood garden changed the direction of Lee’s gardening life. Because this is the season when gardeners plant seeds, we have a basic botany piece on seed coats by Paula Ogilvie, plus a profile of Mike Bone, chief propagator and plant producer for Denver Botanic Gardens.

Last year in April, we ran an article on spur pruning grapes. In this issue, John Martin of Stonebridge Farm in Lyons discusses another common method – cane pruning.

With our cool nights, Colorado’s climate is great for growing cool season vegetables. Thea Tenebaum writes about the fava bean, an ancient, Old World bean, that’s really a pea, while Larry Stebbins explores the Goosefoot family of spinach, chard, and beets.

Fragrant lavenders are beloved by bees and gardeners. Rand Lee tells you how to grow them and lists many unusual cultivars now available in the trade.

Don’t jump the gun and prune your roses yet, advises Peggy Williams of the Denver Rose Society. She offers pruning, fertilizing, and other spring rose care tips on our back cover.

Natural science writer Gary Raham challenges us to imagine the world through insect antennae, those “hairy, beaded, and sensor-filled organs,” instead of using our acutely visual primate awareness. His detailed illustration helps with this.

Penn and Cord Parmenter are authentic mountain people – hearty, hardy, undaunted, and down to earth, and they’ve grown an amazing food garden for 16 years. When Penn told me the garden failed last year I suggested she write about it. We’ve all been there, put in our place by plants. Read the story in “Megaflop.”

Over the years John Hershey says he cultivated an image of himself as an expert gardener. But, like the Parmenters, he was humbled last year when he “confidently strode” out to his garden on Thanksgiving to harvest parsnips to roast for anxiously awaiting dinner guests and returned empty handed.

Mikl Brawner doesn’t always set out to write in-depth research pieces, but they sometimes end up that way because Mikl isn’t a superficial guy. He’s been researching sustainable, environmentally sound gardening methods and products for several decades, and has folders of information on many topics that he adds to continually as he learns more. In this issue he focuses on GMOs and food safety, a heated topic, and presents the research that shaped his “intelligently prejudiced view.”

By the way, there are lots of goings on at Harlequins Gardens, Mikl and his wife Eve’s Boulder nursery, because it’s their 20th anniversary. Check our calendar on page 20 for these and many other spring events, sales, and classes.

In the last issue I excitedly told you that my book, Organic Gardener’s Companion, Growing Vegetables in the West, would be out in mid February. Well, I was wrong about that due to a production delay. By the time you’re reading this, though, the book should be available in stores and online. It took two years to finish. I’m fortunate to know many skilled and generous Western gardeners through Colorado Gardener. Their expertise and wisdom is in the book too, so I hope you’ll have an opportunity to read it. See Fulcrum’s ad on page 11 and check coloradogardener.com and Facebook for updates.

Enjoy the spring and we’ll see you again May 1st.
Jane Shellenberger

Jane on Tarzan Swing In Costa Rica

This year marks 15 years of publishing Colorado Gardener. At the beginning, once we finished the layout of each issue, we copied the files onto Zip discs, and later CD’s, which I hand-delivered to the printer in Denver. Today it’s an upload. We didn’t have an online edition or even a website, and social networking still meant working a cocktail party.

Today, as magazines fold and newspapers shrink, there still seems to be a place for niche publications, (even the permaculture community still has a print magazine, The Permaculture Activist), but they better be at least as valuable as the stock they’re printed on. The U.S. lags in use of recycled paper, and electronic devices, with extremely high hidden environmental costs, aren’t yet a much “greener” choice.

I feel fortunate that Colorado Gardener remains popular with readers and supported by quality advertisers who are important local and regional resources for gardeners. It has always been about the plants, the western gardeners and plant people who grow them, and an awareness of what’s going on in the natural environment. Plus, it’s “Still Free.”

The Education issue offers an opportunity to present new ideas. This time the topic is a view of biology where microbes rightfully take center stage. Microbes predominate everywhere, including in our bodies and in soil; in fact, they are soil, according to the new science. Be sure to read both Mikl Brawner’s piece on Biological Farming and Gardening, (this year marks the 20th anniversary of his Harlequin’s Gardens Sustainable Nursery in Boulder), and Gary Raham’s tribute to pioneering biologist, Lynn Margulis. With her astronomer husband, Carl Sagan, Margulis wrote; “Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking.”

Panayoti Kelaidis of Denver Botanic Gardens writes about horticulture trends over the last few decades, including: the replacement of seed-grown plants with tissue culture clones in the trade; the explosion of vegetable gardening; and the gradual emergence of a regional, Colorado-style to replace what had long been the dominant, water-thirsty aesthetic of green lawns with conifers and English garden plants.

Wendy Underhill gives an update on the CSA model, which has morphed in creative ways as local farms and food-growing operations continue to proliferate.

It’s time to start seeds indoors for spring gardens, but for those itching to grow something easy and healthy with quick results, Larry Fontana from Colorado Springs explains how to grow sprouts of all kinds, including wheatgrass.

After high winds that roar through like freight trains and early, heavy snows, advice on pruning should come in handy; look to Kelly’s Q & A. Kelly Grummons is another stellar western plant pioneer. His nursery, Timberline Gardens, is in Arvada.

Eva Rose Montane of Durango contributes our gardener profile. Karen Fuller’s garden at over 7000’ contains natives and western-adapted plants, but wasn’t easy to establish on heavy clay.

Also check our extensive Calendar of late winter/early spring events, classes, workshops, and symposiums. There’s plenty of opportunity for learning and mingling!

For many of us, the gardening season starts long before May. You can plant out perennials, shrubs, and cool-season vegetables in March or April along the Front Range; early spring snows won’t hurt them. When buying seeds and plants, always shop

independent Colorado and regional companies first. They make an educated effort to offer the best plants and products for our climate and conditions.

This past year I lost two family members. It happens more and more the older we get and each sad loss helps us cut through the trivial clutter that usually occupies our thoughts. I think gardening holds such rich appeal because it features life, death, growth, transformation, and amazing transitory moments, gently reflecting our mortal predicament.

As an antidote to grieving my daughter and I traveled to Costa Rica in December for a change of scene and mood. Though the country has definitely been “discovered,” adventure and wild nature still abound. When I noticed a zip-line canopy tour that included a “Tarzan swing” finale (I’ve been told, “Me Tarzan, you Jane” all my life) we simply had to do it. You can see how much fun that transitory moment was from the photo.

Last year I also finished my book (Yay!), Organic Gardener’s Companion, Growing Vegetables in the West. Check out Fulcrum’s ad for the book on page 13. I’ll be signing copies at Peak to Prairie Landscape Symposium, The Tattered Cover, Boulder Bookstore, and other places. Visit coloradogardener.com, Facebook, and Twitter for details.

Finally, any current subscriber who would like to attend our 15th Anniversary Celebration March 1st in Denver please email us at cogardener@gmail.com by Feb. 16.

Jane Shellenberger

In Tapped Nestle, Coca Cola, and Pepsi come into small towns across the country, obtain permits to build bottling plants and begin pumping millions of gallons of free public ground water, refusing to stop or slow down even during severe drought, to resell in toxic PET plastic bottles at a 1000% mark-up. More than half of the empties end up in oceans and waterways, especially in states like Colorado without bottle deposit laws. (In July 2010 in a complex deal, Nestle acquired a permit to pump 65 million gallons of water per year from springs near the Arkansas River for its Denver Arrowhead bottling plant after a protracted fight with Chaffee County, CO residents.)

In Gasland residents of Colorado, Wyoming, and Pennsylvania flicked their BICs and lit tap water on fire thanks to nearby natural gas wells that were exempted from environmental regulations in 2004.

Other films illuminate different facets of our 21st century predicament such as: Collapse, on the consequences of current energy policy; Crude, the story of oil; Food, Inc., on the cheap factory food we produce and consume; The Future of Food, unlabeled, genetically engineered foods fill American grocery stores; and Farmer to Farmer, interviews with American farmers growing GM crops (available on YouTube).

Something happens almost every day to remind us that these issues hit close to home, whether it’s food recalls or stock market swings. In July the USDA paved the way for the sale of Scott’s Roundup Ready Kentucky bluegrass. And Boulder County, where I live, is about to set policy on planting genetically engineered Roundup Ready crops on public, taxpayer-financed Open Space lands.

Yikes! I think it’s time to take a friend’s suggestion and intersperse old Mel Brooks films with sustainability viewings.

John Anderson has retained a sense of humor. He’s part of a Fort Collins group called Salon Duct Tape, which has been publicly screening these films. Seventy or more people often show up. Discussion and sometimes constructive action follows. Anderson is a well-known worm composter who helped bring permaculture courses to Larimer County last year. You can read more about him in this issue.

Other Harvest issue articles include: Marcia Tatroe on Rose of Sharon, a lovely, old-fashioned, durable shrub with late summer blooms that hold up when others succumb to the heat; Paula Ogilvie on plant dormancy in “Trees Tell Time;” and science writer Gary Raham on beneficial assassin bugs that specialize in ambush predation.

As nights grow cooler and vegetable gardening winds down, consider planting another round of cool season vegetables using simple season extenders to prolong growth and harvest into winter. Eric Johnson is a master at this and explains an easy way to do it.

Penn Parmenter profiles two impressive Colorado gardeners: a young woman growing medicinal herbs in the mountains near Westcliffe and Penn’s 83-year-old mother who created a memorial garden at her church in Pueblo West with the help of volunteer “Gardenin’ Angels.”

The rush hour trek from Hygiene to Denver can be tiring, but I’ve made the trip several times to hear fascinating presentations at Café Botanique, a free art/science salon at Denver Botanic Gardens. Wendy Underhill tells you more about this brainchild of Mervi Hjelmroos-Koski, coordinator of the Botanical Art and Illustration program.

While searching for photogenic winter interest at Harlequins Gardens Nursery in Boulder last January I found a spiky agave poking out of the snow near dried red sedum flower heads and put them on our Education Issue cover. I didn’t know this would be the year the 13-year-old agave finally bloomed, but it did, along with several others in Front Range gardens. The breathtaking development of its spectacular flower spike caused nursery staff and visitors to gawk and gape, and presented Harlequins’ owner Mikl Brawner with a topic for this issue.

Last winter I wrote about systemic pesticides that many beekeepers believe play a major role in honeybee die-offs. I’ve included an update here on further developments in Italy and the U.S., including a pollinator protection conference in Denver last May that left beekeepers feeling “had.”

This is the end of our 15th publishing year. Check coloradogardener.com for news and updates until we publish again early next year. And since several of you have asked, my book, Organic Gardener’s Companion: Growing Vegetables in the West, will be available next February. Meanwhile, prepare the vegetable beds! Add organic materials like compost and herbicide-free grass clippings, then water and cover with leaves to protect the soil life and make spring planting easy.

Enjoy the harvest and remember to water trees a few times during the winter, especially young ones.

Jane Shellenberger

Spring bulbs that received moisture stayed in bloom for a long time and it’s been just right for growing delicious, crisp salad greens, especially with some extra protection from floating row cover. Season extenders (wall o’ waters, cold frames, row cover, plastic bottomless jugs, etc.) make a huge difference for vegetable gardeners in our climate both during spring and fall.

The wind has been relentless this year on both mountain and plain so I asked vegetable gardener Penn Parmenter to write about it and let us in on her coping strategies. Fire, fueled by dry, windy conditions, was prominent this past year, too. It’s a part of Western ecosystems, but human landscapes have changed everything. Bill Melvin tells you about some simple, effective things you can do to make your property safer.

When Wendy Underhill visited Trinidad last summer she found a marvelous complex of historic buildings and gardens. Among other things, the Trinidad History Museum, now undergoing a major revitalization thanks to newly hired Gardens & Programs Coordinator Karen Wolf, creates a different ethnic vegetable and herb garden every year in what used to be formal flowerbeds. Read more about it in this issue.

Other topics include: Mikl Brawner on the possibilities and feasibility of converting lawns to meadows; a volunteer, community revitalization effort at Riverside Cemetery in Denver; and a morning devoted to digging knapweed on 20 acres of shortgrass prairie by Kay Galvin. Marcia Tatroe describes how Carol and Randy Shinn became rock gardeners during the process of creating a new garden in Fort Collins.

Botany instructor Paula Ogilvie writes about plant movement, while natural history writer Gary Raham focuses on Hawkmoths (a.k.a. Hummingbird moths).

Walter Pesman was a landscape pioneer whose design work left a distinguished mark on Colorado. A new edition of his seminal book on native plants, Meet the Natives, is in the works this year. He generously left the rights to Denver Botanic Gardens, which he helped found. You can read his story in this issue, too.

Summer is garden tour season and there are many to choose from. The Native Plant Society tour in Lakewood and Denver looks like an especially good one this year and it’s free to members. Right now they’re offering a special membership rate so this would be a perfect time to join.

Colorado Springs hosts the annual Colorado Federation of Garden Clubs tour and the first Open Garden Tour for the CSU Ext. Master Gardener program. There are others to inspire you in Denver, Boulder, Longmont, Fort Collins, Evergreen, Jeffco, Steamboat Springs, and Loveland, plus the annual Parade of Ponds featuring 40 different water gardens in the Denver area.

It’s difficult to choose topics for Colorado Gardener because someone or something is always left out. In this issue we cover the open daylily gardens in Denver (see Notables) because there’s a regional meeting with special programs. But the annual Old Garden Rose Show and sale at Denver Botanic Gardens and the Fairmount Cemetery Heritage Rose Sale are also worthy events in June. Local rosarians are knowledgeable, ebullient gardeners who are delighted to help you choose beautiful, fragrant, non-fussy, climate-appropriate roses for your garden. If you already have or are considering a water garden the Colorado Water Garden Society is another stellar group with a June sale and August Water Blossom Festival. There is even a Bee Hive & Honey Tasting Tour in August in Denver.

Summer is the season for fruit festivals on the Western Slope, plus a new Lavender Festival in Palisade this July. And finally, the Green Roofs for the West Symposium happens in mid June and this year includes a workshop on water harvesting. Check our calendar on page 20 and our Marketplace Page on 22 for more details.

Our Harvest issue comes out at the end of August.

Jane Shellenberger

Just in time for Spring we have a couple of pieces in this May issue full of valuable vegetable growing tips for Colorado gardeners, written by two old pros who have both been gardening here for over 40 years: Gerald Miller of Pueblo and Larry Stebbins of Colorado Springs.

After talking with Paul New of White Mt. Farm in Mosca, Penn Parmenter wrote for us on best practices for growing organic potatoes. No slouch herself when it comes to spuds, she also explains why we’re told to buy new certified seed potatoes instead of planting our own or those we buy at grocery stores.

Two other extraordinary vegetable gardeners, Tracey Parrish and Barbara Miller, tell you how to make homemade potting soil using many found ingredients close to home.

John Hershey is back! Once an attorney, now a writer working fulltime from home, at least when he isn’t in the garden, John discusses why he runs his family garden like a business in “Vegetable Husbandry.”

I always learn new things while putting together each issue of Colorado Gardener and this one is no exception. For example, I didn’t know there was such a wonderful garden of natives, Mrs. Walsh’s Garden, open to the public right in downtown Estes Park. Joan Sapp describes it and shows it to you in her photos. The clematis on our cover is from this garden, grown by Barri Bernier from seed she collected in Rocky Mt. National Park, I believe. Panayoti Kelaidis says this would be an incredible coup since it is considered absent from the northern Colorado Rockies though it’s common in other places.

I saw an intriguing presentation on Green (a.k.a Living) Walls listed at the ProGreen Expo last February, but I went to a different seminar and missed it. Since Deb Whittaker attended I asked her to cover the topic for us. Patrick Blanc is a French botanist and designer whose vertical gardens (known as Mur Vegetal), some on a massive scale, will astound you. In a search for photos of other Living Wall examples I found Peter Kastan who, with his wife Mai, has created some stunning hydroponic “jungle” walls in Miami. As with green roofs, there are special challenges in our climate, but the applications are so broad that we can have them here, too.

Mikl Brawner of Harlequins Gardens Sustainable Nursery in Boulder has been growing and selling xeriscape and Colorado-adapted plants for many years in gardens that receive little if any supplemental water once the plants are established. So when he says that a plant performs well in our climate from his experience, you can trust that. He’s especially pleased with the Plant Select offerings this year (and he’s not always thrilled every year) so he decided to write about the plants.

We have two articles about critters that sometimes share our garden habitats. Gary Raham writes about slugs, which turn out to have amazing sex lives (who knew?),

while husband and wife team Margaret Rogers and Scott Porter write about their amusing vole odyssey at “Bee Haven.”

Invasive weeds is a controversial topic, one that came up at the Beyond Pesticides conference I just attended last Saturday in Denver (see Notables p. 6). In this issue, lifelong herbalist Brigitte Mars discusses some common noxious weeds from a different angle – their medicinal uses. Synchronistically, Timothy Lee Scott from Vermont, who has recently published a book called Invasive Plant Medicine, was a speaker at the BP conference.

Finally, Lisa J. Peraino, Plant Health Safeguarding Specialist with the USDA in Aurora, wants to alert you to be “Emerald Ash Borer aware.” Quarantines are in effect in 13 states and though this destructive insect has not shown up in Colorado, exclusion and early detection are our best defense.

Enjoy our prettiest month of May!

Jane Shellenberger

On the ornamental side, Marcia Tatroe offers plant solutions for a difficult situation, dry shade. Niki Hayden presents five very different gardens that changed her gardening forever. One of these, Cathy Abelson’s, appears on our cover. It’s hard to believe that when Cathy moved in, the steep up-sloping yard was windswept, bare, exposed – an already scraped “scraper.”

Many of us want to garden with plants that thrive in our high and dry climate without much water or pampering. These are usually described as adaptable, drought tolerant, water-wise or xeric, or “thrives in poor soils.” Thanks to the pioneering efforts of our regional plant people, there are many such beauties available now. However, all plants are different and it’s rarely as simple as just putting these plants in any old piece of ground and waiting for them to amaze us. In order to survive in harsh, low water environments some have long taproots, which take time to develop. Many of these plants, including natives, need good drainage, regular watering – but not too much of it – and some protection until they become established. Depending on the plant, this can several months to a year or more. Often grown in greenhouses and pushed to flower because that’s what people buy, new plants can struggle with the abrupt transition into a garden. But once they adapt and take hold they can be tough as nails. Kelly Grummons elaborates on how to succeed with new plantings of all kinds.

Speaking of tough, beautiful plants, we also have an article by Cheryl Conklin on the Carnegie Library Garden project in downtown Colorado Springs, made possible by partnership with many different local groups and organizations.

A few Saturdays ago I drove east with Wendy Underhill, who’s always up for a good story and is always good company, to visit “Arborland” near Milikin. As we sat inside their garden shop, Gene and Jan Kammerzell related a complex tale of a family farm that became a tree farm that grew into a forest. The story took a harrowing turn about 10 years ago as they were on the verge of selling their land, retiring, and moving to Idaho. So much happened that it was difficult to zero in on the heart of the story – that is, until Gene took us out to see the trees. (Thanks to Judith Rice-Jones, retired librarian and CG reader, who told me about “Arborland.”)

After reading our Buffaloberry piece in the last issue, Laura Spear of Forest Edge Gardens wrote to report that it is also a fantastic bee forage plant: “About two weeks after dandelions bloom the Buffaloberry flowers open and feed hungry wild and domesticated bees – in fact, they hover around the plant in eager anticipation waiting for the flowers to open.” (Sometimes difficult to find at nurseries, you can order Buffaloberry through CSU or local soil conservation districts.) Another reader, disturbed about pesticides and bees after reading our April issue, emailed to say she had written the EPA and urged me include contact info for others. Here it is: Lisa Jackson (head), jackson.lisa@epa.gov, 202 564-4700.

During the last two years I’ve been working on a book about organic vegetable growing in the West for Fulcrum Books. Final revisions are still in the works, but the writing is essentially finished. It’s a much different process than putting a magazine together, one that involved some tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth. It took me an entire month to find the right book-writing spot and make it comfortable and cozy enough to sit for hours on end, a process that included several bookshelf reorganizations, plus acquisition of a special wedge-shaped seat pillow – and three foster kittens.

Still, I had trouble getting started. When Bob Nold confided that he played endless games of Magic Carpet on the internet for a year while supposedly working on Penstemons, I felt only vaguely consoled because I know Bob can turn out elegantly written, humorous or scholarly work in a heartbeat on any number of topics when he is so moved.

Then I visited intrepid mountain gardeners Penn & Cord Parmenter in their tiny mountain home and saw her book-writing spot at the kitchen table – engulfed by books, dishes, and their remaining potato harvest. I was shocked, but in a good way. I thought, “If she can write here, amidst the potatoes and the rambunctious distractions that must come with three sons and a husband, surely I can get down to it, too.”

And so I did. In 2012, if the world hasn’t come to an end, the book will be available and, hopefully, some of you will be inclined to read it. In the meantime, here are two self-published local vegetable growing books you can check out: Don Eversoll’s Secrets from My Grandma’s Garden, and Bunny Henderson’s Digging It: How to Garden your Way Out of the Recession.

We publish two more spring issues at the beginning of May and June. Please support our advertisers and don’t forget our Marketplace Page on p. 22. Now, get out in the garden and enjoy yourself!

Jane Shellenberger

Online Edition Now Available

Click here to access the online version of the Education Issue 2011.

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Education Issue Feature Excerpts

The EOL: “Facebook” for Garden Communities – and everything else

Gary Raham

“Facebook confronts its online members immediately with a supermarket of human beings. Some of them are friends—and friends of friends…and yet all of them are just a fraction of the 6.7 billion human souls that roam the planet. Now there is a “Facebook” that’s even more exciting. It’s called The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL)—an online listing that is on the way to profiling the 1.8 million known species of living things on earth and aiming to corral a significant fraction of the 10 million species thought to exist…

E. O. Wilson, an “ant scientist” perhaps most famous for his eloquent book, Biodiversity, helped launch the EOL when he won the million dollar TED prize in 2006. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. Its goal is to bring together talented people from these three worlds and try to fulfill the most ardent dreams of some of them. Wilson said in his acceptance speech that his dream was to create an encyclopedia of life—an absolutely vital step in saving the global environment…”

EPA Permits Wide Use of Bee-Killing Insecticide Despite Warnings

Jane Shellenberger

“As beekeepers continue to lose 30-60% of their hives each year in what has been labeled colony collapse disorder (CCD) the U.S. EPA has allowed Bayer Crop Science to register and sell a bee-killing pesticide for use on commercial canola and corn – all 88,000,000 acres of it – in the U.S., for 8 years against the advice of its own scientists. In a memo released to Colorado beekeeper Tom Theobald of the Niwot Honey Farm in November 2010, EPA scientists warn that the study used to determine that the insecticide clothianidin is safe is, in fact, seriously flawed.

While other pesticides killed a lot of bees in previous decades, the way they were applied made it possible for beekeepers to cover or move hives before spraying took place if they were notified in advance. But the new seed treatment technology of imidacloprin and clothianidin ensures that all parts of the plants are toxic all the time, making it impossible for insects to avoid them…”

The Great Sunflower Project Wants You

Jodi Torpey

“The Great Sunflower Project studies the number of bees in different areas of the country and how that affects pollination of garden plants and crops. Data collected in 2009 provided a pleasant surprise for researchers because they saw similar rates of bee visits in rural, suburban, and urban areas. The results for 2010 haven’t been released yet.

What started as a small project has grown to over 90,000 volunteers and LeBuhn hopes to recruit the 100,000th volunteer this Spring.

The Great Sunflower Project depends on volunteers to plant ‘Lemon Queen’ sunflower seeds in their gardens, observe honeybee activity in 15-minute increments over the summer, and report the findings on the project’s website (greatsunflower.org)…”

Kelly’s Gardening Q&A

Kelly Grummons

“Last winter was wet and cold enough that the ground froze solid all winter. This year it’s one of the driest winters on record. Certainly, you should water the landscape. Newly planted trees and shrubs are especially susceptible to winter drying because their roots are still very limited and shallow.

It is important to get the water into the original root ball in your situation. When the ground is frozen or semi-frozen, it can be difficult to get water to soak in…”

Transpiration

Mikl Brawner

“Water moves from the soil into plant roots, up through the sapwood into the leaves. Warmed by the sun as it rises, the water turns into vapor (evaporates), and passes out through thousands of tiny pores (stomata) mostly on the underside of leaf surfaces. This is transpiration. It has two main functions: cooling the plant and pumping water and minerals to the leaves for photosynthesis.

Plants need to cool themselves for several reasons. When temperatures are too high, plant metabolism slows so growth and flowering slows or stops. In extreme heat, most plants are severely stressed and can die. Transpiration is an evaporative cooling system that lowers the temperature of plants, but since it also leads to water loss, it must be accurately regulated…”

Seeds of Sustainability: Preserving the Past One Plant at a Time

Bill McDorman & Stephen Thomas

“The privatization of seeds has its legal origins in the Plant Patent Act of 1930. This landmark bill allowed for plants propagated through cloning to be patented and privately owned, but it specifically exempted seed-propagated crops. This wall was breached in 1970 with the Plant Variety Protection Act, which extended intellectual property rights to plants grown from seeds. A wave of seed company mergers and buyouts followed, but a 1980 Supreme Court ruling opened the floodgates. The case of Diamond vs. Chakrabarty cleared the way for the patenting of life forms based on their genetic coding. Prior to this, a plant could be owned but its genetics could not. For the first time, the genetic wisdom in a seed could be held as private property.

Shortly after this ruling, more than 1,800 such patents were filed. The final nail in the coffin came in 1992 when then Vice President Dan Quayle announced the “coordinated framework” for regulatory reform of biotechnology and GMO crops. This proclamation essentially assured the biotech corporations that no new laws would be passed to regulate the emerging industry…”

Start a Library & Check Out Local Seed!

Penn Parmenter

“A Seed Library (or Seed Lending Library) is different from a Seed Bank, which stores and protects seed for the future. And while this is crucial to saving plant diversity, a seed library allows the seed to be grown out each year, thereby adapting it to the surrounding environment. This is no small thing; imagine how much more effective regionally adapted seed can be for the extreme conditions of the mountain gardener/farmer. Our town lies in a high valley with two very different mountain ranges surrounding it and we have many different microclimates, but seed can adapt to all sorts of conditions – it’s built right in.

At the Seed Library you check out seed for free, grow it out in your garden, and return twice as much seed as you took…”

Common or Silver Buffaloberry

Ray Daugherty

“For over a century, Buffaloberry has been valued as a shelterbelt and landscape plant that will tolerate occasional flooding, frequent droughts, bone numbing cold, and some of the worst soils on offer. Hey, you have to respect any plant that tolerates infertile soils (because it hosts its own nitrogen fixing bacteria), tolerates soil salinity levels that kill other fruits and vegetables, has no problem with the alkaline soils of the west (to pH 7.7 or higher), plus survives the heat of southern New Mexico or the cold windswept plains of Manitoba, Canada.

But, it is the contrast between the leaves and the (nearly) annual crop of beautiful red, or sometimes yellow, edible berries that are the main reason for growing the plant. I’m sure that had the trapper Pasquinel (of Centennial fame) really existed he would have been quite accustomed to snacking on these thirst-quenching quarter-inch berries after frost in fall or enjoying them as a sauce with Bison meat in winter…”

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 wildlife rich 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