Cotoneaster Gives Color Through the Fall by Heirloom Fan

When we moved into our home, we found a low growing woody shrub in the back yard that provided color and interest for several seasons. If you have not tried a Cotoneaster in your landscape, you might want to consider it.

Cotoneaster is from the Rosaceae family, which includes apples, peaches, plums, crabapples and 250 other common landscape plants. There are several varieties of Cotoneaster, including those that are deciduous and evergreen types. Some of these are even used in bonsai applications.

Growing and Harvesting Lavender by Heirloom Fan

I am a big fan of growing herbs, and love the scent of lavender but found many of the products made with Lavender very pricey. So my next step was to find a Lavender plant well suited for our climate that would provide my own harvest of Lavender each year.
Lavender is a native of the Mediterranean region but the good news is that you will find some types very easy to grow here in Colorado. It is a semi-woody perennial shrub plant, so once it is established, will return year after year to produce the wonderfully fragrant blossoms.
Pruning encourages Lavender to have continual and healthy growth and to keep blossoms producing throughout the season. The plants also are  attractive to bees which is a great side benefit because as we all know, bees are so important with any landscape and garden.
Here are a couple of great publications that will help you choose the best variety of Lavender for your garden and what growing conditions that will produce the most favorable results: http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/garden/07245.pdf and http://www.ext.colostate.edu/ptlk/1015.html.

Hope you try this wonderful herbal shrub and enjoy the results!

Harvesting Chili Peppers by Heirloom Fan

 
This time of year, you can find many of the Farmer’s Markets and farm stores roasting chili peppers. The fragrance of these peppers is irresistible.
Chili Peppers are fairly easy to grow. They are a member of the nightshade family, which includes tomatoes and eggplant, so some of the same growing conditions as well as the diseases for that family apply. I found good luck in growing peppers in containers – it not only helps contain the plant but the pots generally can give additional warmth to the roots that peppers like.

Enjoy Your Leafy Greens This Fall by Heirloom Fan

Many of you know that growing leafy greens such as lettuce and spinach is very easy and provides wonderfully flavorful vegetables for your salads.  Other greens, such as Kale, Chard and Collard greens also provide great flavor and are packed with nutrition as well and should be considered as an important addition to your garden.

Asters Bring Jewel Tones to Your Fall Garden by Heirloom Fan

As the summer days wane, some of our annual flowers will be fading as well. While it is hard to see garden favorites like petunias leave for the season, we still have time to enjoy some wonderful flowers that bloom at this time of year through October.

Asters provide a wonderful array of deep purple and lavender tones to liven up those last days of the growing season. They are very drought tolerant and love the Colorado climate. They are perennial flowers, which mean that you plant them in your garden, and with very little care, they will come again year after year to display their beauty.

Peaches and Squirrels by Heirloom Fan

I know this sounds like an odd combination, but this year I had an unusual “crop” of persistent squirrels visiting my trees and garden. Some people consider them cute and some are annoyed by them but however you feel about them, squirrels can do significant damage to your landscape and garden.
While squirrels are all part of our ecosystem, knowing how to safely control them is a must. Last year, my big challenge was that I had major damage to my garden due to the July hailstorm of 2009. This year I was looking forward to a big recovery and I was very happy to see that we had abundant peaches and apples, and that my vegetable garden was also doing well with producing tomatoes and other favorites. But it seemed as soon as the plants and trees became full of ripe fruit and vegetables, the number of visits to my yard by the squirrels also became “abundant”.

Welcoming the Peach Blossoms by Heirloom Fan

After the devastating hailstorm which hit in the middle of the summer last year, I wondered how the trees, bushes and perennials would handle that type of trauma and still survive. After the storm, like many people, we found our trees had sustained damaged such as snapped branches and even part of the bark “skinned” on the branches and limbs. I wondered not only what this would mean to the health of the tree last year but what would happen after it went through the winter dormancy and if we would see a good recovery in the spring.

Home and Garden Show Provides a Wealth of Information by Heirloom Fan

If you have never attended one of the Home and Garden shows, you must give yourself a treat next year and plan to attend. The garden displays are well planned and give inspiration to those who want suggestions or help in choosing the right plant for their location.
This year, I volunteered as a Master Gardener at the CSU Extension Service booth. There were four of us as volunteers, and we were all kept busy for the entire 4 hour shift, answering questions and providing Garden Notes and Fact sheets for the many people who came to our table. It was fun to meet so many enthusiastic gardeners who want to improve the beauty of their home and yard with Colorado tested plants, trees, shrubs and lawns.

Early Fall Review by Heirloom Fan

This summer certainly posed its challenges in my garden and for many of you as well. We had the cold, wet spring. Then things warmed up and the flea beetles and aphids began chewing on everything. And of course the devastating hailstorm in July.

Wasps, Hornets and Sunflowers by Heirloom Fan

When the hailstorm hit my garden, I had just started getting a nice crop of bicolor sunflowers. I did some pruning in the days following the storm, and only one of the sunflowers has survived. But I am impressed with how fast it is recovering and setting new flower buds each day.
One other thing I noticed is that there are a lot of wasps and hornets crawling all over this plant. In reading some of the garden notes, I did find that there are beneficial wasps and hornets that are not only pollinators, but also feed on the destructive insects in the garden.

There appeared to be three types of wasps and hornets, one a solid black thin wasp, yellow jackets and one other wasp. Taking pictures of wasps and hornets is not easy – they are not busy like bees which can ignore you as you take their picture. As you can see, they zoned in on my presence right away, they turned and looked at me and their antennas went up. That was the end of the picture taking - I exited quickly!
I had a pretty good handle on controlling the yellow jackets but noticed right after the storm, they seemed back in full force. My guess is that many of them probably had their hidden or exposed nests disturbed or destroyed and they were back to work rebuilding.
Right now, none of the buds have opened on this sunflower but it does make we wonder when they do if the wasps and hornets will still be around. This of course can make it really hard to pick any of the blooms , but one solution will be to try in the evening when the temperatures are cooler and the wasps and hornets have returned to their hives.
So for the time being, I am enjoying the recovery of this sunflower, keeping my distance from the wasps and hornets and anxiously awaiting to see what the flowers will look like.

Report From the Aftermath by Heirloom Fan

I am still doing some garden cleanup and the "wait and see" regarding which plants will make it and which may not.

I was surprised to see that some of my tomatoes began immediately leafing out again, some I am still waiting to see any signs of life. A few were shattered badly and had the foliage stripped so they will most likely not survive. But some of the more vigrous ones such as my heirloom pear tomato
have already leafed out. My two Japanese eggplant, which were stripped down to the stem both have new leaves going. I did some pruning the day after and then waited a few more days to reinspect to see if any more of the foliage or stems looked dried out and beyond help.

My vining crops like the cucumbers, squash and pumpkins were also hit hard. I did find two small Wee Be Little and Boo Be Little pumpkins still hanging in there, so transplanted them to the raised beds. I had a large stand of volunteer sunflowers which sprung up under the birdfeeder. All were wiped out but I was amazed this morning to see another crop starting, along with a few small corn plants.

I did put most of the plants that seem to be surviving under walls of water.
With this recent cool and rainy weather, they say that more wind and hail could be in store.

One thing, it will be interesting to see which plants seem to have the ability to withstand a dramatic assault like this and still try to keep on going. I don't know if I can get any tomatoes this year unless we get a later frost than normal, but not much has been "normal" this year!

Snow Peas in July by Heirloom Fan

As we all know, this has been an unusually cool and rainy spring. One good thing though is that my cool weather crops are hanging in there. We are enjoying a nice crop of snow peas – I planted them a little later than normal in May and then they recently seemed to like the right combination of rain and temperature and began blooming and producing handfuls of crisp pea pods. The variety I planted was Burpee’s “Snowbird”. The packet promised “large yields of edible pods” and they fulfilled their promise nicely. We have had some to eat ourselves, to share with friends and I may try to freeze a few bags for the winter.



Our lettuce and herb beds are also doing well. Some of the varieties that I planted that are still going strong include Burpee’s Buttercrunch, an organic small head variety, and a baby Romaine called “Freckles” (Lactusca sativa) which is a green romaine with maroon red splotches. This one comes from a seed company called Botanical Interests and is labeled as an heirloom. I also planted a mixed variety of loose leaf lettuce and it yielded some interesting types including a ruby red and an oak leaf type. I included some spinach which is mild and tender when picked young and included with the salad greens.

July is always the month for my garden to pick up speed and for the warm weather vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash to also begin an accelerated growth. The cool wet spring kept things growing but my tomatoes and cucumbers are finally blooming and setting fruit and I can see tiny Butterstick zucchini on the plants. So this is an exciting time for the garden. With the very warm weather predicted this week, we should be seeing some fast progress.

Now if we can just keep the hailstorms away!

A Bumper Crop of Lilacs!

This year I was so excited to find my lilacs producing a bumper crop of beautiful blooms! When we moved into our home in July,2002, the entire lawn and yard were in bad shape. The builder had never installed a sprinkler system and the former homeowners just didn’t care about the condition of their lawn or gardens. They put tons of chunk granite rock into any flower or vegetable space and our backyard was infested with all sorts of persistent weeds.
You know how they say you should have the 3 B’s in your yard (birds, bees and butterflies), well because so much had been neglected for several years, all three had apparently been used to nothing going on in the yards and gardens and just flew by on their way to greener pastures! I wanted to be sure we changed that so that it was a welcome spot for all three.
We attempted to try to do the cleanup and fix up on our own and quickly found that it was a job for professionals. We contracted a professional landscape company to re-do all of the turf, plant trees and perennials, and do the other large duties like hauling away tons and tons of rock. They began their work in mid-Jan of 2003 and finished their work in Feb. About a week after they completed their work, we got the famous “100 year snowstorm” of 2003! We actually felt this was a real blessing because it gave our new turf, trees and plants a very large drink of water to help them get established.
Today, our yard and lawn is a much more hospitable place and we welcome birds, honey bees and butterflies all season long. While I was able to get some lilacs from our bushes over the past couple of years, this year the bushes seem to have come into their own and rewarded us with their beauty. I stepped into the backyard this afternoon when the air was warm to take these pictures and the scent of lilacs filled the air – certainly one of the most enjoyable and memorable fragrances of spring!

Working in the Demo Garden by Heirloom Fan

Today I reported for duty with three other Master Gardener volunteers to do cleanup work at the demo gardens. We chose to work on the garden at the old entrance to the Extension Service building at the Jeffco Fairgrounds.
This garden has special significance because many of the plants were donated as memorials to friends and family members who were Master Gardeners, and as tributes to those who gave special service and dedication to the Jefferson County Extension Service and the Master Gardener program.



We found spring flowers emerging and many in bloom such as Daffodils and Tulips and the Allium plants were in full bud and will be blooming soon. We also found a lot of weeds happily growing among the spring flowers and perennials so we each kept busy pulling, trimming and raking the weeds and removing tons of leaves and dead plant material to make way for the new growth. We felt good that after two hours of hard work, the cleaned up gardens will allow the flowers and bushes have room to grow, as well as getting more air circulation and sunshine.
We are due to return in July and look forward to seeing how different the gardens will look by then.

Pincushion Flowers by Heirloom Fan

One of the hardiest perennial flowers in my garden is the Scabiosa columbaria, commonly known as the Pincushion Flower. As you can see in the picture, when the buds are green, they do resemble a little pincushion.
They begin emerging in my garden about the same time as the Columbines so are off to an early start. When the buds open, this variety has lavender-blue flowers and it continues to bloom all season. In fact, they even endure frosts and are one of the last flowers in my garden and the foliage remains green during the winter. Another bonus is that they when they bloom, they attract butterflies and also come in a variety of colors.
Many of us know that perennials are a good choice for Colorado gardens and the Pincushion flower does not disappoint. An interesting fact that I read about this flower is that in ancient times, it was used as a remedy for skin disorders, thus the name Scabiosa.
I would like to recommend garden fact bulletin no. 7.406 “Flowers for Mountain Communities” which can be found at www:ext.colostate.edu/PUBS/Garden/07406.html This bulletin has a wealth of information for selection and establishment for these flowers including more information about the Pincushion Flower. It also includes a handy chart which gives the scientific and common name, bloom time, colors, sizes and comments. This chart would be great to take with you when you go to the garden center to help you make your selections.

Finding Fennel by Heirloom Fan

As the weather began to warm, I noticed some green growth in one of my raised beds and this always gets my attention. Last year I grew several types of greens, including some from a packet of mixed herb greens and among those that came up was a crop of fennel.
When fall arrived, the fennel was still green and doing well, so I didn’t pull it as I did my fall cleanup. Over the winter, I noticed that it remained green. As the weather warmed up I was happy to see that it survived the winter and was now sending out more fresh, green growth.
Fennel is easy to identify in the garden. If you pinch off a leaf and crush it, you will get a sweet anise/licorice scent that is unique to this herb.
Growing herbs is fun and easy. Many garden herbs like Fennel are readily available through seed catalogues and garden centers. If you designate a spot to grow your perennial herbs, you will be able to enjoy and use them year after year.
A great fact sheet to help gardeners learn more about herbs is called Growing, Preserving and Using Herbs and can be found at www.ext.colostate.edu/Pubs/foodnut/09335.html. This fact sheet includes a handy chart that shows which herbs are annual and which are perennial, how to grow them, how to preserve them and ways that they are commonly used in cooking. Use this chart to help you select herbs that suit your taste and try a new one each year.

Habitat for Humanity Volunteer Planting by Heirloom Fan

You’ve heard the expression, “cold hands, warm hearts”. This certainly applied to a dedicated group of CSU Jefferson County Extension Master Gardeners (CMG) and other volunteers who gathered in Arvada to plant the landscape for a new Habitat for Humanity for Metro Denver homeowner.

On April 25, 2009 guided by Jefferson County Horticulture Extension Agent Heather Hodgin, the volunteers braved chilly 50 degree temperatures and light rain to make homeowner Barb Daila’s yard come to life. Habitat representative Kathy Fiebig was also on hand to supervise the event.

Ms. Fiebig spoke to the group of volunteers before work began and explained the mission of Habitat for Humanity. She stated that the homeowners become a vital part of the construction process and that they purchase the homes for low interest rates, enabling many families to move out of poverty housing and to residential neighborhoods and own their first home. Homeowners must be willing to dedicate at least 250 hours of “sweat equity” work in building and completing their homes, including duties such as the landscape planting.
In return, Habitat is able to sell them a home at 0% interest. Over 1 ½ million people have been able to own their first home and move out of poverty thanks to Habitat for Humanity. Volunteers such as the CMGs are also a vital part of the process. Jefferson County Extension CMGs have provided habitat homeowners with low-maintenance, low-water landscape advice since 1999.

Homeowner Barb Daila worked with CMG Kathryn Gault to choose the right plants for her landscape. Her goal was to find ones with year round beauty and color, as well as plants that were water wise and they achieved their goal. Many of the plants selected for the landscape were Plant Select plants, www.plantselect.org, that have been tested by Colorado State University and the Denver Botanic Gardens for durability and water conservation in the Colorado climate.

When the truck arrived, Kathryn Gault and Heather Hodgin began checking the delivery and designating the plants to the spots marked on the yard. Each volunteer than grabbed a shovel and began the planting process. The homeowner and her family will now have a wonderful landscape to enjoy for many years to come!

Garden Serenity by Heirloom Fan

I was listening to a radio program a few days ago. The guest was a psychologist and the topic was fears and phobias and how they affected people. Listeners would call in about their problem and the psychologist would discuss it with them. The problems they mentioned included normal fears such as fear of heights, flying, roller coasters and so forth.
The psychologist then made a comment that caught my attention as a gardener. He said “there are some things that people just are not afraid of. For example, a flower”. He went on to say that it would take him a very long time, if ever, to make someone afraid of a flower. It did make me stop and realize that he was right. Flowers, and gardens in general, are places of comfort and enjoyment for people. You never hear someone say that they dislike gardens or landscapes but you do hear people talk about their gardens and say positive things such as that they are stress reducers, places just to sit and enjoy the surroundings or great places to gather and entertain friends. Even though gardeners have to weed and do other chores, most can’t wait to go to their gardens each day just for the simple enjoyment of being in the surroundings.
Given the economic challenges lately, we may be seeing more people start to garden as a way to help with their food budget. But I am sure that those who do it just for practical reasons will also soon find how enjoyable gardening can be. It’s not often we can pursue a hobby that beautifies the surrounds, creates a comforting environment for us to enjoy, and can also produce great tasting, vine-ripened produce.
Wishing all of you a happy growing season and a bountiful garden and landscape for you to enjoy all season!