photos of plants
If you planted green beans in May, and your garden survived our huge hail storm in June, you should be looking forward to your first harvest this month. While we sweat and complain about the record highs, beans like it hot and they’ve been growing like crazy.
There are hundreds of bean varieties, and even catalogs that specialize in beans of all sorts. I’ll share my favorites. Which ones are yours?
Imagine a petite petunia with intensely-colored, trumpet-shaped blossoms in shades such as magenta, violet, or copper. Flowers smother the slightly fuzzy, gray-green leaves from late spring until the first hard frost. Prolific flowering means that new flowers quickly replace those damaged by hail, a major asset in our area. Mature plants reach about eighteen inches in width and are less than a foot high. A relative newcomer on the garden scene, Calibrachoa has already gained a place of honor among annual flowers.
The best way to ward off insect and disease problems is to grow a healthy plant. Just as a wolf pack will target the weakest member of a herd, insects seem to zero in on a plant that is under stress. Good gardening practices—choosing the right plant for the spot, soil preparation, proper planting, feeding, watering, mulching, and the like, all go a long way to keep our gardens free of damaging pests.
But cultural control goes further than just having a green thumb. Sometimes our yards are invaded by insects no matter how good a gardener we are. In that case, it pays to know the enemy.
Colorado isn’t an easy place to garden. Drought, late frosts and early snow storms, soils of sand and/or clay… to grow anything here, you have to be stubborn—and so do your plants. Our recent storms were so destructive, I thought I’d post something about how you can avoid a lot of hail damage in the first place. At least for ornamental landscapes, the key to surviving hail is plant selection.
A tour of the garden after a major hail storm will reveal some plants that are totally destroyed while others have nary a bruised leaf. What makes some plants hail-resistant?
[This article, by Joan Nusbaum and I, originally appeared in the Colorado Springs Gazette in 2005. I have edited it to make it even more applicable after last week’s storms!]
Last week, our part of the world was hit by a horrific hail storm. Drifts (if you can call them that) measured four feet high. Houses, cars, and, of course, gardens were ruined by hailstones the size of golf balls (as this photo by Pam Woodward proves). It’s quite shocking to watch from your window and see thousands of hail stones plummeting your favorite garden. Do not despair—the plants may recover! Hail usually does not damage the root system. Here are some things you might do to help your plants survive and even thrive:
It had been raining all week, quite normal for western Washington in late May. We were near Seattle, visiting our brand new granddaughter (our first) and her parents. But then, unexpectedly, the constant drizzle turned into blazing sunshine and dazzling blue skies! Being a gardener, I immediately looked for the closest public garden to visit.
In this case, Pete and I took an afternoon off to spend some time at Lakewold Gardens Estate, just off I-5 in Tacoma. Once the home of Mr. and Mrs. Corydon Wagner, the estate is now owned by a non-profit group specifically dedicated to preserving the gorgeous plantings and lovely house. The property fronts Gravelly Lake and, weather permitting, provides spectacular views of Mt. Rainier.
Girl eggplants? Boy eggplants? Does one taste better than the other? And what does all this have to do with plant sex?
In researching my recent post on eggplant, I discovered a bunch of discussion about “male” vs. “female” eggplants. We’re talking about the fruit—the eggplants that we eat—not the individual plants on which the eggplants grew.
From a botanical point of view, this whole debate is nonsense. Let me explain:
Eggplant Parmigiana, Moussaka, Moroccan Eggplant Salad, Baba Ganoush… there are plenty of delicious ways to eat eggplant. Growing it in Colorado is a whole different story. A native of warm and humid southeast Asia, it takes a bit of persuasion to convince this tomato family member to thrive in our cool, dry climate.
As Colorado gardeners, we have all sorts of tricks to modify the microclimate around our plants and extend a too-short growing season. Cloches, cold frames, copious use of plastic and accessories such as Wall ‘ O Water are all helpful. However, choosing the right varieties can mean the difference between crop failure and Ratatouille. (For more on how to grow eggplant, see the CSU Fact Sheet on “Peppers and Eggplants.”)
Spring flowers are finally filling the fields. Milk vetch, penstemons, wild onions and marsh marigolds all caught my eye as I hiked though the towering cottonwoods along Fountain Creek, at the base of the Rockies here in central Colorado. I was particularly impressed by huge swaths of a foamy white flower I didn’t immediately recognize.
Counting the petals—each tiny flower had four—and examining the foliage led us to conclude the plants were Crucifers, members of the mustard family. Sure enough, we were enjoying the pretty flower heads of Whitetop (Cardaria draba), an aggressive import from Europe and Asia that is listed as a noxious weed here in Colorado (List B). Oh dear.
Is your garden being bugged? While 95% of all insects are either beneficial or benign, that last 5% can eat us out of house and home—or at least out of cabbage and broccoli. If insect invaders are on the attack, sometimes you just have to fight back.
Pests may be persistent, but we gardeners are not helpless. I like to remind myself that I am smarter than an aphid and more cunning than a flea beetle. When it comes down to a battle for the harvest, there are lots of tools at our disposal. As a master gardener, I was taught the principles of Integrated Pest Management, or IPM. Rather than just reaching for a spray can, this approach is multifaceted. There are many ways to outwit a weevil.
Mountain Plover 