Easter Lily Lore and Care by Carol King

Photo Tufts University

It’s Easter time and the ubiquitous Easter Lily is every where.  Did you ever wonder why we purchase these flowers at Easter time?  Historically speaking Easter lilies don’t have much to do with the Easter holiday.  They are not native to the Holy Land.  In Biblical lore, however, the lily is mentioned numerous times. One of the most famous Biblical references is in the Sermon on the Mount: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matt. 6:28-29). Often called the "white-robed apostles of hope," lilies were found growing in the Garden of Gethsemane after Christ's agony. Tradition has it that the beautiful white lilies sprung up where drops of Christ's sweat fell to the ground in his final hours of sorrow and deep distress.

Spring Equinox in Colorado 2019 by Carol King

Photo by Carol King

The first day of spring brings joy to every gardener’s heart marking the beginning of the gardening season in the Northern Hemisphere. It is the unofficial time to start our gardens and regardless of the weather, we’re ready! Spring arrives here along the Front Range of Colorado on Wednesday, March 20, 2018 at 3:58pm MDT. This is also called the vernal equinox.

There are two equinoxes every year –  March and September – when the sun shines directly on the equator and the length of the night and day are nearly equal. (In reality equinoxes don't have exactly 12 hours of daylight, but close enough.) The March equinox marks the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator – the imaginary line in the sky above the Earth’s equator – from south to north. This happens on March 19, 20 or 21 every year.

Time to Start Tomato Seeds Indoors Along the Front Range Colorado

Quick to germinate and grow, tomato seeds are best sown indoors about six weeks before the average last frost date. People in the Denver metropolitan area normally use Mothers' Day as a guide for when to plant. However, Denver had its last spring freeze on April 5 in 1977 and on June 8 in 2007. The average over the last ten years is May 5. Using May 13, 2018 Mothers' Day as a planting date, tomato seeds can be started indoors the first week of April.

Here's a great guide on starting tomato seeds indoors from Modern Farmer: 

How to Grow Your Own Tomatoes, Part 1: Starting Seeds Indoors https://t.co/uApuVaugUX pic.twitter.com/DRJDAJ8fKR

— Modern Farmer (@ModFarm) March 10, 2018

Colorado State University Vegetable Planting Guide. 

Best Practices for Starting Seeds

Photo Ft. Collins Nursery

IIt’s the time of year when many gardeners begin to start seeds indoors for their vegetable gardens. John Porter with Nebraska Extension and Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture has this advise about starting seeds indoors:

Be economical. Use low-cost or recycled items such as takeout containers or shallow disposable aluminum baking pans to start your plants.  Sterilization is key in reducing disease.  Thoroughly wash containers, then dip in a solution of 10% household bleach (1 part bleach : 9 parts water) to disinfect.

Start seeds in clean, sterile seed-starting mix. Don’t skimp. Use a sterile mix that is primarily made of peat or coconut coir.

Transfer the seedling to an individual container/cell/pot with regular potting soil (when its first set of true leaves (the second leaves appear).

Place newly sown seeds in a warm (around 70 degrees F) place to help

them germinate faster. Heat is the most important factor in seeds

germinating: Move the seedlings to a cooler place (around 65 degrees) as

they will grow sturdier and not get thin and leggy.

Light is necessary for good plant growth. A good, sunny (usually south 

facing) window with plenty of light is one option. Otherwise invest in some lighting.

Don’t get started too early.  Read the packet for the number of days/weeks before last frost to start your seeds.

What about fertilizer? Seedlings don’t need much in the way of 

fertilizing when they’re put in a good potting mix.

For the complete article, check here: Starting Seeds with Success: Best Practices.

Plant Talk Colorado Starting Seeds Indoors.

Colorado State University Vegetable Planting Guide.

Early September in Your Garden by Donna Duffy

Photo courtesy brockfarms.com

It’s September, and Colorado gardeners are busy harvesting their vegetables and enjoying the last blooms of summer. Before all the fall gardening chores kick in, here are some simple September tasks to tackle.

Starting Those Hard to Grow Seeds: Stratification and Scarification By Brooke Colburn

Spring is creeping upon us here in the Front Range, and if you plan to start any of your flowering, perennial, native, or woody plants from seed, they may require some special treatment to overcome dormancy and germinate. There are two general types of seed dormancy: mechanical and chemical. Mechanical dormancy refers to a seed coat that is impermeable to water and or air, and it must be broken by a process called scarification. Chemical dormancy involves chemicals in the seed that must be leached away or broken down by a method called stratification.

Dividing Perennials by Donna Duffy

If your garden looks like mine, you probably have lots of overgrown perennials. The abundance of rain during the past couple of months has encouraged lots of plant growth. Take a walk around your garden and make note of plants that are ready to be divided.

Seed Saving and Seed Saving Methods by Ed Powers

Seeds

Tempting though it may be to ignore everything else but the delicious flavor of our home produce, it is important to bear in mind that all living things – which means, to a greater or lesser extent, pretty much all of our food – follow a cycle in their growth patterns. With crops which are annuals, such as most commercial crops and many salads and vegetables, if we harvest the food but not the seed we are breaking this cycle. 

In order to create an even more efficient system, we can harvest the seeds from our vegetable plots and re-seed them next year, ensuring prolonged biodiversity and more economically liable growing for us, as we don’t have to keep buying seeds. 

When you save seeds for planting and legacy from year to year you should plant only heirloom seeds. There are some useful resources out there to help decide which vegetables will be most successful.  I have researched many sources including universities.   Here are some tips on seed saving from experienced gardeners and knowledgeable  individuals and organizations.

However tempting it might be to fill your garden with a blossoming diversity of different types of vegetables, in terms of actually being able to save that diversity for coming generations it may be more helpful to grow just one variety of each different crop at a time. 

Starting Seeds Indoors by Donna Duffy

Photo courtesy gardeningknowhow.com

Starting seeds indoors gives you earlier vegetables and flowers, and your cultivar choices will be endless. Relax, the  task of seed planting is reassuringly simple. Just take it step-by-step, and you’ll soon be marveling over a healthy crop of seedlings. Planttalk Colorado offers the following tips for successful seed starting.

What are Seed Libraries and why do we need them? by Ed Powers

mountainwise.org

A seed library is a depository of seeds where seeds are leant or shared with its members. It is distinguished from a seed bank in that the main purpose is not to store or hold germplasm or seeds against possible destruction, but to disseminate them to the public which preserves the shared plant varieties through propagation and further sharing of seed. 

Members come to the library and borrow seed for their garden.  They grow the plants in their garden and at the end of the season; they let a few plants ‘go to seed.’  From those plants, they collect seeds and return the same amount of seed (or more) as they borrowed at the beginning of the growing season.  Seeds are free to members.

The library is both a collection of seeds and a community of gardeners.  Since seed is a living thing, it must be renewed each year somewhere by someone or unique varietals can become extinct.  Even growing one seed and returning it to the library is a valuable contribution.  Seed Libraries may also operate as pure charity operations intent on serving gardeners and farmers.

A common attribute of many seed libraries is to preserve agricultural biodiversity. by focusing on rare, local, and heirloom seed varieties.

Seed libraries use varied methods for sharing seeds, primarily by:

1. Seed swaps otherwise known as seed exchanges, in which library members or the public meet and exchange seeds.
2. Seed "lending," in which people check out seed from the library's collection, grow them, save the seed, and return seed from the propagated plants to the library.
   
   

A History of Saving Seeds By Ellen Goodnight

Saving vegetable and flower seeds is what our mothers and grandmothers did, year after year. Most often it was for economical reasons. If you grew a crop in your garden and it did well, you certainly wanted to grow it again without buying new seed. Saving seeds may have also been

a way of sharing with family, friends and neighbors, especially if they had enjoyed something grown in your garden. Often, our mothers and grandmothers shared seeds from several generations.

Today, we look at saving seeds in a new light. New gardeners may wonder why they should save seeds when there are so many seed catalogs and garden centers stocked with everything from common to exotic seeds. Novice gardeners may not know the difference between an

heirloom seed and a hybrid seed. They might not even know if their seed has been genetically modified. Some may not know for example, that the squash seeds they saved from last summer's garden might not produce the same squash! Additionally, even experienced gardeners may not realize that the genetic diversity represented by pure heirloom seeds is being lost. These challenges can be overwhelming to any gardener. On the bright side, however, "the movement to save pure heirloom seeds has become a global effort, with gardeners working to

preserve and bring back old seed varieties" (Baker Seed).

Tomato Grafting: My First Experiment by Duane Davidson

One of My Grafted Plants

In June, 2012,  Barb Klett wrote here on the subject of grafting tomato plants in an article "Grafted Tomatoes -- REALLY?" This is a follow-up, reporting my own experiences trying out this technique.

Early this year I was startled to see a familiar seedhouse catalog offering grafted tomato plants. I start a few tomato plants from seed each year, hoping to enjoy home-grown tomatoes mid- to late summer. But I had never heard of grafting tomato plants. I researched the subject and found the procedure intriguing.

We know that tomato plants, particularly the tasty old-fashioned varieties, are susceptible to a number of diseases that limit tomato fruit production and often kill the plant, once it is infected. We are taught to not grow tomatoes in the same spot each year and to remove and destroy any plant showing symptoms of disease before it spreads to other plants. I have not experienced any serious disease outbreak, but often have had a plant or two show leaf wilt in mid-summer or bear undersize fruit or fruit streaked with yellow.

Seed Starting by Sally Berriman

Photo by Carol King

Starting your summer vegetables from seed instead of buying plants at the nursery can save you money and be a very satisfying gardening experience.  It is not difficult to start plants from seed if you follow these tips.

Research your seed choices.  In the Denver area we have an average growing season of about 120 days.  Choose veggies that you can harvest at 75 – 90 days.  The number of days to harvest is on the back of the seed packet.  You can have a longer growing season if you use season extenders at the beginning and /or the end of the season.

Photo courtesy Athens County Ohio

Grafted Tomatoes – REALLY? by Barb Klett

So why graft a plant that has only one season?  Isn’t that a lot of work for a little pay off? And expensive to boot?  Huh?

Grafted Tomatoes

REALLY, there are reasons for grafting tomatoes – the same reasons we graft other plants.  The rootstock is sturdy, disease resistant, stress tolerant, and/or they increase productivity.  The grafted part is said to have better qualities than the original rootstock, such as flavor or size.

Tomato grafting has been used in Asia and Europe for some time (since the 1960s) and is currently used in Mediterranean areas, while it is gaining popularity in the US too.  There are several reasons the grafted tomatoes are becoming so popular.  The rootstock is chosen to help deal with many kinds of abiotic issues including salinity, drought/flood and temperature extremes.  The rootstock selection can be effective against many fungus, bacteria, virus, and even nematodes and may help reduce use of soil fumigants.

Garbage Can Roses by Judy Huckaby

Ronald Regan Tea Rose

One of the truly excellent experiences I had last summer was the benefit of an unintentional act of generosity.  In July, I found two roses someone had put out in their trash. The soil in the containers was completely dried out, pulling away from the sides of the black plastic pots. All of the leaves, while green in color, were dry, crinkled, and crispy. One label read “Iceberg”, a floribunda (four foot or so tall bushy rose with many white blooms).  The other rose was a Ronald Reagan Tea.  Wait, what?

I quickly scooped up this find before it disappeared, returning home, dunked first one and then the other completely under water, weighing down the root ball with stones until air bubbles stopped.  I use this dunk and drain technique whenever I buy something from a nursery and again, directly before planting.

Growing Plants From Seed

Photo courtesy Carl Wilson, CSU Extension

Finally March has arrived and it's time to begin starting plants from seeds!  When to start them is determined by their growing needs.  Here is a great CSU Extension Fact sheet that will set your seeds on the right track!

Read about it here.


And good luck with this growing season.

Why Aren't My Iris Blooming by Stan Ames

While manning the Master Gardener booth at the Golden Farmer’s Market last Saturday a woman asked me why her Iris do not all bloom.

I thought for a while and suggested they might be overcrowded or stressed from last year’s dividing activities. She said she had not divided any of her Iris, ever, and asked when to do that.  I said not until after the blooming was complete and not to cut back leaves until the divisions were made. She seemed satisfied with the answers and went on to get a nice big juicy breakfast burrito from the booth next to ours.  Imagine smelling that wonderful aroma all morning and not having enough time to buy one for yourself, much less eating one.  AND they were all gone when we broke down the booth!

Vinca Minor, Free And Easy by Caroline Reardon

Do you have a shady spot in your yard that needs ground cover to hold back the erosion or to just cover a bare spot? If you or a friend are lucky enough to have a mat of thriving Vinca minor, you can easily propagate enough starts at home to solve your problem and save money to buy those spectacular plants you dreamed about over the winter.

Vinca minor, also known as periwinkle or creeping myrtle, propagates itself by putting out runners that take root in the soil, much as a strawberry plant does. You can use these runners to create healthy starts for those bare places in your yard. They will spread more quickly in areas that receive more water, and grow well in partial sun to full shade. An extra bonus‚this perennial remains evergreen throughout the winter.

Iris, Iris Everywhere! Rejuvenating the Iris Garden

How's your iris looking?  Mine are pretty sad right now.  This article from a sister Master Gardener in Larimer County if filled with good advice on rejuvenating your iris garden.

Colorado State University Extension - Iris, Iris Everywhere!

Starting Plants Indoors From Seed

 Yes, dear gardener, it is FINALLY time to start thinking about starting your plants from seed.  Here's a great article with lots of good advice for the gardener.

ck

Starting Plants Indoors From Seed : Planet Green