Enjoy the changes in the garden.

Q: With all this recent hail and weeding, I need a break from my taking care of my garden! Any summer reading suggestions?

A: This is the time of year gardeners get a break in the necessary and time-consuming tasks a garden demands. We can even sit back and relax. It gives us an opportunity to enjoy the wide range of the garden books available to spur our passion. Here’s a few books that might interest you.

With all our rain, this has been a decent garden season, but if your plants are not living up to your expectations you might check out Durable Plants for the Garden a Plant Select™ Guide edited by James E. Henrich published in 2009 by Fulcrum press in Golden, Colorado. This book is the definitive guide for Colorado gardeners. Most of the plants in this book can successfully be grown in our area.

Plant Select™ is a program supported by Colorado State University, Denver Botanic Gardens, and Green Industries of Colorado. The program recommends outstanding perennials and woody plants for our area. The book is divided into well organized sections that make it easy to find what you’re looking for. Or if you’re not looking for anything specific, it will give you a tantalizing vision of the variety of plants that grow well in Colorado.

Each section has a clear explanation of the plant, beginning with its botanical and common names. What’s most helpful is the complete presentation of plant characteristics, culture, form, best features, and landscape use. This is a good read anytime and will be an important addition to your permanent reference collection. And you’re sure to find at least one plant you’ll want to add to your garden.

If you’re looking for gardening eye candy, the lush photographs in High Altitude Western Gardening by Marilyn Quinn with photographs by Mary Gerty is sure to please and entertain. Published in 2007 by Gibbs Smith, the book covers Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, and New Mexico. We often think our climate, with its thin soil and erratic weather, presents us with limitations in gardening. But these photographs prove there’s a vast range of gardening possibilities available to us.

The text is well written and filled with information about private and botanical gardens fairly close to us. Most of the gardens are over 6,000 feet, so Denver Botanic Gardens at 5280 is almost considered low lying in comparison to the botanic garden in Cheyenne, Wyoming at 6800 feet.

We are all aware of the trend towards doing things organically. What could be more organic than composting? The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin is considered the leading composting manual by none other than the editors of ‘Mother Earth News.’ Published by Storey Publishing in 2007, this comprehensive book will be helpful to even seasoned composers.

It’s written in lively easy to read language with many excellent photographs. These writers are out to prove that composting is serious business with many benefits. Though the business may be serious, the writers are anything but. I found myself laughing out loud at their anecdote about driving with a load of goat manure in a closed vehicle. The illustrations are excellent and thorough. Instructions on making compost tea are one example. And, the unique Winged Compost Aerating Tool would be confusing if not for the clear demonstration on how it works. I was surprised at all the information in the section — the ‘12 Rules of Raking.’

Even if you have never thought of composting you may enjoy this witty how-to, why-to manual. And, who knows, it could lead to something.

Lastly, every gardener should spend some time with other gardeners who know how to write about ‘gardening for the soul.’ Our Life in Gardens is just such a book. Written by Joe Eck and Wayne Witerrowd and published in 2009 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, these well known authorities on gardening have written a beautiful memoir.

This is a book filled with stories of plants and design from two people who share their immense knowledge of gardening. It gives a deeply satisfying perspective on gardening and life.

Contributed by Eileen Tully, Colorado Master Gardener. Photo courtesy of Colorado State University Extension. For answers to your horticultural questions, contact the Master Gardener Help Desk at 636.8921 or CSUmg2@elpasoco.com. Access fact sheets and seasonal information on the El Paso County Horticulture website http://elpasoco.colostate.edu/horticulture/.

I invite you to follow along as work in my garden. I will be sharing some of the things I have learned and share tips with you that have made my garden grow. This garden is at 9000 ft in Guffey, CO. This is considered high altitude gardening! I am zone 4 which means our last frost date is June 15th. My season is short and with the cool summer nights I can’t grow tomatoes, eggplant or peppers. Cold happy plants in the Brassica family love it here. There is always plenty of broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, and lettuce. There will be lots of other fruits and vegetables, so follow my garden as it shares it’s bountiful harvest.

CLEAN UP

There’s only one thing to say about clean up… It’s got to be done. One bed at a time.

Under all that dead wood are green sprouting signs of life. I start by uncovering the perennials including iris and poppies that come back yearly despite the freezing winter. My rubbarb bed had a underground trailing weed growing in it last year so I am doing a cardboard weed barrier to see if I can choke it out. I also use the cardboard barrier on some of my paths.

CARDBOARD WEED BARRIER

I season my cardboard by piling it and letting it sit overwinter. This starts the breaking down process and makes the cardboard more pliable. Place cardboard where you want a weed barrier, wet down the cardboard and  cover with straw, water thoroughly. This help seat the straw especially here where strong winds prevail.

The cardboard and straw were put down on
April 22nd, the second photo was taken May 6th. As you can see the rubbarb is quite happy and growing.

I also used the cardboard weed barrier on my upper path which grew quite a few weeds last year. It also makes that path look better. You can use newspapers as a barrier as well just make sure you put plenty down.  I prefer cardboard because it takes longer to break down giving the soil a chance to nourish and the weeds to choke out. You can find out more about this method of weed control by checking out permacultual gardening practices.

Here’s a quick run-down of what’s growing in my garden right now. I’m doing this largely to keep a record, for next year, of what comes around when; perhaps it will also be of some use to others gardening in high and dry places around 5000+ feet, wherever you are. If you live at high altitude, drop a comment and tell me what you’re getting out of your garden in mid-July!

Ready for the eating:

Rainbow chard

Collard greens

a few last heads of Romaine

Zucchini – still enjoying them grilled with olive oil and Penzey’s special seasoned salt; eventually I expect we’ll tire of that and start looking for other ideas, but for now I can’t keep them on the plate.

A mystery hybrid squash that volunteered in last year’s old squash bed; it’s producing small yellow rounded fruit, kind of like a patty-pan crossed with a yellow crookneck (could be exactly that, but who knows? I’ll try to eat one and see what it does…)

Red onions – I just yanked the whole batch and used them in the chard and onion quiche I made last weekend; had I not done so I’d still have several good ones.

Sorrel

Parsley, basil, tarragon, thyme, oregano, lots of mint, sage, chives

ripening: currants, gooseberries, apples!

On the vine, looking pretty green: lots of heirloom tomatoes and cherry tomatoes of all shapes and sizes. I’m expecting cherry tomatoes to overwhelm us soon: we have black cherry, Sungold, Galina’s (a yellow cherry tomato) and one called Matt’s Wild Cherry that I think will be red. It will make for pretty salads no doubt! The other tomatoes that are looking very promising are an Old Ivory Egg and Grandma Mary’s Paste. A few, like the Carbon, Brandywine and German Heirloom Striped, are setting fruit but look a long way from edible – these are supposed to be BIG tomatoes and so far aren’t, so those will be a longer wait.

That’s it for now; I’d almost call it a lull in the garden, if it weren’t for the zucchini that has gone from nothing to rampant in just a few days. I’m glad for the chard to give us at least a little variety in our diets!