photos of plants
When can I pick my tomatoes? Will these melons ripen in my short growing season? If I plant these flowers from seed, when will I have blooms?
“Days to maturity” is one of the most important factors in determining what we can grow in our high altitude gardens. Technically, this number tells the gardener how long a particular crop or variety takes, on average, to yield a harvestable crop. However, it’s all a bit fuzzy.
With giant, trumpet-shaped flowers facing outward around a central stalk, a blooming amaryllis makes an eye-catching houseplant. Colors range from white through pink to red (and even almost black), as well as salmon-orange. Stripes or contracting edges are common. “African” amaryllis have more compact forms suited to indoor cultivation. Dwarf amaryllis are smaller in size but can produce more blooms.
Not surprisingly, these striking, easy-to-grow bulbs are popular holiday gifts; perhaps you received one this year. There’s even a bright red variety named “Merry Christmas”!
Do you have the winter doldrums? Is your house full of bored guests? If you’re tired of being indoors and need some fresh (if cold) air, here’s a great excuse to get into a garden. Denver Botanic Gardens is worth a visit any time of year, but right now (through January 3), the gardens are decorated with over a million lights—with spectacular results.
We recently braved the cold and plunked down our $9.50 admission. (Entry to “Blossoms of Light” is separate from the $11.50 daily entrance fee. They shoo all the daytime visitors out first, then open the doors again from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.)
Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet? Christmas is only two days away! Well, if you’re still scratching your head searching for ideas, I have just the thing for that hard-to-shop-for person on your list. And if you are done with your shopping, may I add one more person for you to shop for—someone you don’t know and will probably never meet?
All during the holidays, garden catalogs have been piling up on my desk. I usually promise myself that I won’t open a single one until I have written all my Christmas thank you notes, cleaned the house, and packed up all the decorations. I know once I start reading about beans and lettuce, I’ll be distracted for weeks.
Except… there is one catalog that I open right away.
Winter used to leave a huge hole in my garden. Containers that were once jammed with vibrant annuals were reduced to pots of old potting soil. Flower beds that had hosted brilliant orange marigolds and salmon-pink petunias had become boring expanses of brown dirt. At least I covered the soil with a layer of mulch—shredded leaves, dried grass clippings, pine needles—but it all looked so depressing.
Not any more. A spontaneous trip to the Denver Botanic Gardens last March gave me the inspiration I needed to make my winter landscape far more interesting.
It’s November. Bushes have bare branches, perennials are dead, dried stalks. Except for a few hardy groundcovers and various conifers (pines, junipers, and the like), the landscape is asleep. Except… wait! Are those daffodils in that flower bed? And does that window box really have bright red, white and blue flowers in it at this time of year?
There seems to be a new trend in town. Maybe it’s because our growing season is so short. Maybe it’s because water is expensive and limited. Maybe people are just tired of doing yard work. But whatever it is, it’s growing… or, rather, it isn’t.
People are landscaping with (gasp) fake flowers! (more…)
The sky is bright blue, the sun is shining, the predicted high is well above freezing, and it’s been like that for months. Sounds like perfect weather—but not if you’re a plant. As I look out my window at my dormant garden, I can hear the plants crying for water. Everything is so dry! Desiccating winds have drained the last vestiges of moisture from exposed leaves and branches, and even the so-called evergreens are shriveled.
While the Midwest and Northeast get plenty of snow cover, and the Northwest gets rain all winter, Colorado gets neither. When the weather continues dry and windy, there needs to be enough water in the soil for our plants to replace what is lost to evaporation.
While I’m on the topic of wish lists (see my previous post), I would be remiss if I left out what the gardener in me would like for Christmas. See, I’m making this so easy for my family!
No hail. If I had to pick one item, this would be it. How many times have I planted a bed of eager lettuce seedlings that I raised from infancy, only to have them turned into lime sherbet by the next thunderstorm?
Cinderella rode to the ball in one. Peter kept his wife in another. At Halloween, we carve them into jack-o-lanterns. Today, we make pies* out of them.
Besides all that, pumpkins are nutritious (lots of Vitamin A, potassium, and fiber), delicious, and just plain fun. It’s not surprising, then, that I get so many questions on how to grow them.
Living at 7,000 feet as I do, pumpkins aren’t a sure bet in my veggie plot. Gardeners at the other end of town, 1,000 feet lower, are able to produce enough pumpkins to make them commercially successful. Here, I have to baby them along and hope for a long growing season.
With temperatures dipping into the low 20s and our first (finally!) snowfall, the bugs in our gardens are either dead or in hiding. But before we collapse into that comfy recliner with a garden book and a cup of tea, we need to take a good look at our houseplants. It might be winter outside, but indoors the bugs are having a field day.
At least they are at our house. I’m currently at war with some aggressive invaders. They’re about an eighth of an inch long, are covered with sticky, gooey, white fluff, and are wedged into the leaf axils of many of my favorite houseplants. Yup, my indoor garden has mealybugs. (more…)
Mountain Plover 