Bringing Herbs in for the Winter by Sheilia Canada

Photo Edmunton Journal

Herbs can be grown successfully indoors if you give them a little extra care.

For gardeners who like to cook, few plants are as rewarding as herbs. When the outdoor growing season ends, you can still enjoy fresh, homegrown herbs in your favorite recipes.

You can simply dig up your healthiest herbs and bring them inside. By taking note of herbs' special growing needs, you can harvest basil, thyme, and more straight through until spring. Here are three steps for successfully bringing herbs inside:

1. Choose the most robust plants to bring indoors. Before the first frost, dig them out of the garden and pot them up in fresh potting soil. Choose pots that allow for at least 1 to 2 inches of space around the root ball. Water thoroughly. Check each plant for insects, and if there's an infestation, treat the leaves with a soap spray.

2. Reverse the hardening-off process. Keep the pots outdoors out of direct sunlight for about a week. This will accustom your plants to being in containers and to the lower light conditions they'll experience inside. Keep them watered. Prune any lanky growth.

3. Bring them inside. To stay flavorful, herbs need at least five hours of direct sun a day. Turn windowsill plants regularly so that every side receives light. Don't let leaves touch the cold window glass. Fluorescent lights, hung 6 inches above the plants and left on for 14 hours per day, give even better results. 

Most indoor herbs prefer temperatures of about 65 to 70 degrees F in the daytime and about 60 degrees F at night. Herbs also need humidity. Provide it by placing the pots on trays filled with gravel and about an inch of water. Protect plants from drafts, but give them good air circulation. Don't crowd pots together. Overwatering will kill most indoor herbs, so between watering's, let the soil surface dry out and use tepid water. Fertilize once a month with diluted fish and seaweed fertilizer.

Why We Should Save Seeds from our Gardens by Ed Powers

I have lived in many climates across the country over the last 40 years and I have tried to save seeds in most of those climates.  A key for me in saving seeds was to research seed saving through universities such as Colorado State University.  What I found was heirloom type seeds produced the same crops year after year whereas hybrid seeds would not produce exactly the same crops the following years.  Heirloom seeds are true to form that comes from open-pollinated plants and some cases have been grown year after year for over 50 years.  These heirloom seeds will adapt too many local areas after being grown in that area for 3 to 5 years.  However Hybrid seeds are across between 2 different plant varieties to get the valued attributes of both. That is done to make stronger plants.  But it holds true only in one year.

Enjoying the Last of the Season’s Tomatoes By Joyce D’Agostino

Are you already missing vine ripened tomatoes? It seems to hit us this time of year that summer is over and even though there might be green tomatoes still on the vine, they will likely not ripen. 

But there are a few ways to enjoy ripened tomatoes for a few more weeks. One solution is very simple. Pick your green tomatoes and then wrap them in newspaper or wax paper. Place them in a box in a single layer and then place in a cool, dry place.

Photo by Joyce D'Agostino

The tomatoes will then ripen over the upcoming weeks and allow you to enjoy a few more fresh tomatoes from the garden.This method works well but does require some regular checking to ensure that the tomatoes are ripening and not drying out or rotting. Each variety of tomato can ripen at different rates, so putting the box so it is accessible and can be regularly checked is advised. 

Bulbs 101 by Keith Rabin

Gardenphotos.com

Poet Emily Dickinson referred to herself as a “ Lunatic On Bulbs “ , while referring to her passion for daffodils, hyacinth and spring perennials in general. To Emily Dickinson the bulbs were not just flowers to her but were moral and and personal emblems to her and in her poetry. She was better known in her life time for her gardening expertise than her poetry. For me planting bulbs without reading her poetry without dirt on my hands from planting bulbs just feels wrong somehow...

She slept beneath a tree, 

Remembered but by me,

I touched her cradle mute, 

She recognized the foot. 

Put on her carmine suit, 

And see!*

Its customary to class plants having thickened root stock as bulbous. Botanically there are distinctions between the true bulb, made up of scales or layers like the onion, the tuber which is solid as a potato and the corm which is woody like. In addition to tubers, true bulbs and corms there are other plants containing thickened root stock or rhizomes, (peony, German Iris and flags also known as iris.) These four types comprise an enormous number of species and varieties. Most of these groups all have foreign roots, covering most of the world.

It's time to plant bulbs as soon as the ground is cool and before the ground freezes. Ideal air temps are (not constant) from 50 to 60 degrees. October and early November are prime time along the Front Range.

A Garden Journal by Sheilia Canada

Fall is a perfect time to get your garden more organized with a Garden Journal. With the falling of the leaves it is a lot easier to see the structure and dimensions of your garden area. Your plants successes and failures during the growing season are still fresh in your mind.

Mapping out specific annual crops for proper crop rotation is highly important to elimination of a recurrence of disease or insect issues.

Making a record of what happened every growing season will definitely help you get a closer look at all of the interactions going on in your garden.

Preparing Your Yard and Garden for the Winter by Lynn Leventhal

Photo by Lynn Leventhal

The leaves are turning golden and falling to the ground.  The temperature is dropping.  The days are getting shorter.  It is time to think  of putting our gardens to bed.  Here is an overview to get you started.

Before I start I like to take pictures and make notes on my successes and failures.  Then the majority of the work is cleaning up the leaves which have fallen and cutting the lawn for the last time.    

Pruning:  the majority or pruning is done in the winter and spring.  The reasons for pruning are to maintain a shrub’s shape, enhance flowering and reduce pest problems.

Lawns:  fertilize your lawn in the fall and water monthly.

Photo by Lynn Leventhal

Vegetable gardens:  pull up old vines and vegetable plants to reduce insect eggs which can survive in the winter and hatch in the spring.

Annual flowers:  pull up vines and foliage of annual flowers and compost them.

Perennials:  After temperatures hit freezing and the plants die back cut the stems on most perennials to within an inch or two of the ground.  However, there are many exceptions to this so be sure to research recommendations for each plant type you have.

Resources:   A Long Winter’s rest:  Preparing the Garden for the Off Season by Carl Wilson and Mary Hartman.

Dreaming of Compost By Joyce D’Agostino

Since keeping our garden soils healthy and amended is always recommended, I had on my wish list a composter. Previously I had done some minor composting of things like fall leaves which worked well but I needed to advance to a better system to produce good quality compost.

Composter photo by Joyce D'Agostino

I was lucky to have recently acquired a tumbler composter from someone who was moving. I have already started adding some good quality kitchen and canning scraps to the composter and giving it a daily turn. It was time for me to get serious about composting since my busy schedule prevented me from amending my soil as well as it should have been and I could see a marked difference between the beds with amendment and the ones that did not receive a good dose of fresh soil and compost.

Composting is not difficult, but there are guidelines for what can and cannot be added to your compost. Often you hear you can add  “kitchen scraps” but not all kitchen waste can do into your compost pile. For example, you cannot add things like meat scraps, bones, etc. Not only do these not break down properly they can attract wildlife to your pile or composter. Also, if you had any plants that had diseases, these should be discarded with your trash and not added to the composter. The reason is that some composters do not get to a high enough temperature to destroy the pathogens and this could result in the compost becoming infected with these diseases and spread the following year if used.

Much of our front range soils are packed clay, so adding compost to the soil not only enriches it with great nutrients, but also helps keep the soil quality high to allow the right balance of oxygen and water.

Growing and Drying Herbs for Year Round Use by Joyce D’Agostino

Garlic Chives photo by Joyce D'Agostino

When the fall comes and most of the annual garden begins to fade, those of us who enjoy gardening find that we miss the enjoyment of growing during the “off season”.

If you grow herbs, then many of these plants can be started inside (or the containers brought inside) and grown all year around.

Cilantro photo by Joyce D'Agostino

 When you begin to choose your herb plants, note that there are two types of herbs, the perennial type and the annual type. The annuals for our climate include tender herbaceous types such as basil, which won’t tolerate cold weather and hard freezes. Cilantro for example enjoys the cooler weather of spring and fall but also won’t tolerate a hard freeze. However there are perennials that have more woody stems such as thyme and Greek Oregano which have woody stems and can be harvested even during the cold winter months. These hardy plants establish new growth and fresh green leaves in the spring and many produce flowers that the bees and butterflies enjoy.

On The Changing Of Seasons by Keith Rabin

Photo by Carol King

“ I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown. For in going out, I found I was really going in.”  (John Muir)

As we all “ Go In “ our own ways and harvest each our labors of the seasons,  I look for signs that connect me back to nature. For no greater gift is there for our health and happiness.

“ The richness I achieve comes form nature, The source of my inspiration.“(Claude Monet)

Finding inspiration in the changing of the season is in finding the poems left us without words. Gifted to us by the Creator in the color and textures only found in nature. It lifts our spirits, our hearts and through our senses and in our mind we find solace within. I call it the art of looking.

“ The poetry of earth is never dead.” (John Keats)

To learn of ourselves from the silence of a wilderness we achieve more knowledge of nature and self than by any spoken or written words. Take the time to find your own wilderness and embrace the teaching in its silence....