Category: Plants

photos of plants

Posted on in Gardening, Green Gardening Tips, Seed Starting, Veggies

Seeds for Colorado

Glass Gem Corn. Photo: Seeds Trust Facebook page
Glass Gem Corn. Photo: Seeds Trust Facebook page

I love getting seed catalogs in the mail. The flowers are so big and bright, and the veggies are worthy of blue ribbons. Everything looks absolutely perfect. Just order these seeds and you too can have results like this!

Except, we live in Colorado. There’s a very good reason most seed companies are situated in places like South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Oregon, where the soil is fertile and the climate is conducive to growing most crops. With our erratic weather, often we don’t have time to ripen those luscious tomatoes. Long-season flowers freeze before they bloom. Isn’t there a seed company for us?

Yes, there is. Appropriately named High Altitude Gardens specializes in short season, cold-hardy varieties that thrive at higher elevations. If you live in the mountains, this is the seed catalog for you!

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Posted on in House Plants, Plant Profiles

Beautiful Begonias

Begonia 'Kismet'Alive and green. At this time of year, all I want is a plant that’s alive and green. I’m desperate for an actual leaf (not a conifer’s needle). Flowers would be nice too.

January is a hard time for gardeners. Planning and ordering seeds and plants, spiffing up the garden tools and flower pots—it’s all necessary, but almost none of it involves actual plants. Sometimes you just want to touch a leaf, admire a flower.  It’s for January that I grow so many houseplants.

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Posted on in Gardening, Surviving Winter

Nothing to Do?

Winter landscape with grasses @XG LAH 002Our gardens are sleeping, waiting for the warmth of spring. Here in Colorado there’s not much a gardener can do this time of year—or is there? If gardening is your passion, you can always find something garden-y to feed your soul!

Travel. It’s hard to leave our flowers and veggies during the growing season. Weeds put on a growth spurt the moment we leave town, zucchini grows to humongous size, and our favorite perennial blooms and fades while we’re gone. In winter, the garden lingers in a state of suspended animation. We’re free to leave knowing everything will be more or less the same when we get back.

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Posted on in Gardening, Surviving Winter

Dreaming of Spring

Dormant_DBG_LAH_6943The holidays are over, winter has settled in. The reawakening of spring is so far away, it might as well be never. In spite of our best attempts at landscaping for “winter interest,” let’s face reality. A garden full of dead grass, dried stems, and bare limbs is drab, boring, and gloomy.

Sure, winter isn’t all bad. It’s nice to have time to relax while the weeds sleep. The mower is idle, pots are empty, and not a whole lot needs doing. Still, if you’re as enthusiastic about gardening as I am, January can be a bit depressing.

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Posted on in House Plants

Cat Grass, or How to Save Your Spider Plant

Starla_ErieCO_20091219_LAH_5709It was my daughter on the phone: “Mom! Starla has been chewing on the spider plant again! What can I do?”

No, Starla isn’t our granddaughter—she will know better than to chew on the houseplants. Starla is one of our grand-cats. And like our own pet feline, she loves to chew on foliage.

Our pets are all indoor cats—it’s safer for the birds and other wildlife, and it’s safer for them too. (Did you know that birds may carry diseases that can kill your cat?) While they contentedly preen on the window sill and shed on the sofa, they retain their instinct to munch on leaves. Since the only leaves available are houseplants, that’s what they eat.

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Posted on in Gardening, Veggies

Development-supported Agriculture?

I’ve mentioned Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) as an alternative to growing one’s own fruit and veggies. Well, the developer in this NPR story is taking the matter one step further:

If I have to live in a housing development, I would love to live one that has its very own farm. I could still have chickens and get dirt under my fingernails in a garden, yet not need to hire a house-sitter when we’re going to be away. It seems like the best of both worlds.

Having access to food grown in one’s very neighborhood is the ultimate in eating locally. I’m not sure how successful this would be in our neighborhood (at 7,000+ feet elevation), but it could certainly work in most of the country.

Who knows—maybe Pete and I will “retire” (hah!) to Ft. Collins. If so, this is the first place I’m going to look for our next house.

Posted on in Public gardens, Surviving Winter

Hunting for Warm and Green

Boettcher-DBG_LAH_6632As I stare out the window at brown and dead, I’m dreaming of warm, green, lush gardens. In past years I’ve had to make do with visits to Denver Botanic Gardens’ greenhouses (left) or the Butterfly Pavilion in Broomfield, Colorado (another walk-in greenhouse full of tropical plants). This year, however, we’re heading south to where plants are green and you can walk around outside without lays of insulation. I can hardly wait.

As we aren’t leaving quite yet, I have some time to ponder which direction to go. We’re driving, we have no reservation, and we can be as random and carefree as we like—at least until the money runs out.

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Posted on in Gardening, Plant Profiles

Colorado’s “Holly”

Pyracantha berries@ColoSpgs LAH 131We’ve succumbed—an artificial tree, fake garlands, silk poinsettias. As I pull our Christmas bins out of storage, I wonder—how did a gardener stoop this low? Isn’t there something Christmas-y I can grow here in Colorado? It would be so nice to simply go outside and snip a few branches to grace our mantle.

While holly isn’t really adapted to our high and dry conditions, and the mistletoe growing in the Ponderosa pines differs from the pretty parasites of England, there is one plant that not only produces red berries in December, it’s one of the very few broad-leafed evergreens to survive in Zone 5!

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Posted on in Gardening

Five Gardening Gifts to Avoid

Sometimes knowing what not to buy is just as valuable as a list of the hottest items. Here to help you out: five items not to give your gardening friend or relative.

plastic trowelA wimpy trowel.  A good trowel is a treasure, and hard to find. Cheap ones (like the one shown here, which has a plastic handle!) either bend or break. It’s rather frustrating to stick the blade into the soil and have it bend backwards instead of moving the dirt! Even worse is when the handle comes off. You can jam it back on, but from then on, the handle will be unreliable. Make sure any trowels you buy are sturdy and have a blade that can be sharpened. Even better: get on with a red handle (or paint it yourself), so you can find it in the garden.

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Posted on in Gardening, Veggies

Winter Squash at High Altitude

Cranberry Squash diffuseAs I pulled up the driveway and into the garage, I noticed a large object in a plastic grocery bag, nestled against the front door. Upon inspection, I realized it was a Kabocha squash. What was it doing on my doorstep? My first guess proved correct—our elderly neighbor, a former master gardener, had grown it and was showing off his gardening prowess by sharing his harvest with us.

I was quite impressed. We live at an altitude of about 7,000 feet and long-season veggies don’t have time to mature during our short growing season. Still, the evidence was right in front of me. Somehow, Oscar had managed to grow a (very delicious) Kabocha squash. I was determined to do likewise.

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