April 2025 E-Magazine
- Jane Shellenberger
- Apr 2
- 5 min read
Spring is here and with it moisture and cloudy days that are perfect for dividing and transplanting perennials, and planting cool weather veggies.
I’m still shaking my fist at rabbits but have managed to keep them somewhat at bay with a combination of fencing, chicken wire, garlic & cayenne sprays, and organic smelly pellets that they don’t like - and which need to be reapplied often.
My young friend Tim came to town and pruned my fruit trees a couple of weeks ago. It’s always a pleasure to see him and see the trees well-shaped and cared for.
I’m about to plant my favorite Purple Majesty seed potatoes which produce abundantly so I’ve included an excerpt here about potatoes from my book, Organic Gardener’s Companion: Growing Vegetables in the West.
Mikl Brawner sent me a comprehensive piece on lilacs for this April e-magazine. Lilacs won’t bloom until May but you need time to peruse the many different varieties, plus, the time to prune is now, before they leaf out.
Keith Funk covers a lot in this month’s Q&A including: pruning roses, Fairy Ring Mushrooms in lawns, supporting tall perennials, season extenders for planting out tomatoes and peppers in April, Japanese Beetles, potting up hardy water lilies, moving peonies, and dividing snowdrops.
You may have heard that Brian Vogt, CEO of Denver Botanic Gardens, passed away recently. All who knew him considered him both a remarkable leader and human being.
If you didn’t have the pleasure of knowing or meeting Brian seek out the many tributes that are circulating plus this in-depth video about Denver Botanic Gardens which features him at: pbs.org
I subscribe to some terrific e-newsletters but I don’t always get around to opening them. In fact, I have rarely opened or read some that I was initially quite intrigued by and excited about. There is a ridiculous amount of competition for our attention these days so that’s understandable (and thanks for tuning in to this one!), but I do want to recommend Nautilus, a juicy online science newsletter. (You can be a free subscriber and read two articles per month or pay for full access.) That’s where I recently read “What Plants Are Saying About Us: Your brain is not the root of cognition” by Amanda Gefter, author of Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn. Gefter talks about the work of Paco Calvo who runs a lab and studies plant behavior at the University of Murcia in Spain.
Plants do a lot of amazing things says Calvo, including showing us that “The mind is not in the head. It belongs to the relationship between the organism and its environment.”
As far as keeping centered and sane in these alarming, tumultuous times I look to nature and the garden, and wish the same for you.
– Jane Shellenberger
Potatoes: Earth Apples (as the French say)
By Jane Shellenberger
When I traveled to Peru years ago to visit my daughter, we took the bus from Arequipa, in the south, to Cabanaconde, the end of the line at the top of the Colca Canyon, where the condors live. Late in the day, a few miles out from town, the bus stopped in a couple of spots to pick up sunbaked Peruvians, mostly woman, with thick, shiny blue-black hair who stashed huge sacks of potatoes and their shovels in the luggage compartment below then climbed onboard, usually with a baby or two tucked into their bright clothing. If they were lucky, the bus wasn’t filled with tourists and they found a seat; otherwise they stood.
In the little groceries we saw the the huge sacks, each one open at the top to display snowy white, pink, purple, red, brown, or golden yellow potatoes, round or oblong, from peanut-sized to small- and medium-sized. I’ve read that one Peruvian valley might have over a hundred different cultivars.
A few days later, as we headed back to the city early in the morning, the bus stopped to let off several Peruvian women, each with a shovel and an empty sack or two. As the bus roared off, we watched them climb the steep hillside for a day of digging and tried to envision them dragging such heavy sacks of potatoes down the hillside to the road.
By Mikl Brawner
Lilacs were brought to America by the earliest settlers and have been popular landscape shrubs ever since for good reasons. Tough, drought tolerant, usually healthy and long-lived, they have masses of beautiful flowers and most have a delicious fragrance. Even in dry Colorado air lilacs carry their rich perfume for quite a distance. Like most young boys, I was more interested in bugs than flowers, but my earliest memory of a flower was lying on a grassy hill next to a lilac hedge in full bloom, soothing my spring fever in the sweet, heady fragrance of the common lilac. This powerful aroma is one of their main attractions and the main reason why people forgive some other qualities, like their huge size and habit of suckering.
April Gardening Q&A
By Keith Funk
Q: My roses are starting to leaf out. Is this the time to prune them, and how?
A: This is an ideal month for pruning roses. I like to keep it simple.
Remove all dead, diseased and broken stems as well as any thin, weak growth from last year. Prune to an outward facing bud if possible. Open up the center of the plant for good air circulation, removing stems growing toward the center of the plant.
With the exception of climbing and rambing roses, reduce the overall height of the plant by half.
Climbing roses grow differently than shrub roses. They have 2 types of canes, main and lateral. The main canes, and lateral canes that originate from the main cane and produce the flowers. Remove all dead, diseased and broken stems as well as any thin, weak growth from last year. Keep the main canes as much as possible. Only removing those stems that have overgrown the space alotted for them. Prune back the lateral stems to encourage flowering.
Apply your first application of a good quality, granular rose food and repeat according to label directions through the growing season.
Read our Q & As with Keith Funk answering common Colorado gardening questions here. You can also hear him on the Garden Wise Radio Show.
Gardening Events
Lots of events are coming up! Check our Colorado Gardener Calendar for an updated list of events including gardening classes, webinars, conventions, plant swaps, and presentations.Do you have some Colorado Gardening events to submit to us?
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