Painted Poinsettias by Sheilia Canada

It is time to add those holiday plants to your home like amaryllis, paperwhites, Christmas cactus, and poinsettias. You may have seen the great varieties in color choices poinsettias come in. You can even get them in unusual colors that are painted.

I have the fun job at a local garden center of painting and adding glitter to our poinsettias.  I am an organic gardener and permaculturist in addition to being a Colorado Master Gardener so it is always a concern for me what is being applied to our plants. At our center, we use vegetable based dyes that are specially formulated for poinsettias. We spray these dyes so we can achieve those beautiful purples, mauves, blues, and oranges. 

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.

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.

Squash Pollination Tips by Sheilia Canada

Photo Hudson Farmers Market

I am having a lot of people ask me why their squash is not producing. Here are some tips and suggestions for bumping up your yield.

Firstly I will tell you I am not just a Colorado Master Gardener. I am also a Permaculturist. I practice many Indigenous and ancient gardening techniques that you may or may not have heard of. I do this because I find it makes sense for me as an organic gardener and Permaculturist. It creates balance in my garden and life.

So, lets look at our problem through this lense…

Problem = My squash is not producing. 

Observations = 

I have fertile well draining soil. 

I have it planted in full sun.

I am fertilizing with an organic 5-10-5 fertilizer.

I know squash are not self-pollinating. I need flowers & the pollen in them to cross to get any fruit.

I have lots of flowers. I STOP 

I look closer… Do I have any female flowers?

Cool Garden Apps by Sheilia Canada

Spring is settling in here in the Denver-Metro area. I know that I am encountering a lot of clients that are trying a vegetable garden for the very first time. This can be challenging for us as Master Gardeners because we generally have so much information we can share that the clients eyes will begin to glaze over after about 10 minutes into the conversation. I think some of the first and best advice we can give a newbie-gardener client is reference material!

There is a plethora of gardening books we could suggest. I know my personal library is huge and I am always adding new books that I get a great deal of from Amazon. (As I think about what is currently on my way-too-long “Wish List”) Again, we could list off an intimidating list of gardening for dummies books for the intrepid wanna-be gardener.

Technology to the rescue...

There are several wonderful apps that are great & easy to use reference tools for the new or practiced gardener right on their i-phone, I-pad or android enabled devices. These programs are especially easy to share with the influx of young urban dwellers that are craving that locavore essence to include their own food or gardening resource.