November 2024 E-Magazine / Newsletter
NOVEMBER 2024 E-MAGAZINE
This must be a record setting dry late summer and fall. We’ve only had about a quarter inch of rain in the last two and a half months. So I think preparing the garden with healthy soil building for next spring is even more important than usual. It’s time to gather leaves!
I’ve included some edited excerpts from my book, Organic Gardeners Companion: Growing Vegetables in the West, to explain how I prepare the veggie beds for spring. Shredded leaves are also great for perennial beds, though not for dryland plants that like to keep their crowns dry during the winter. As a beginner I killed quite a few choice plants that way before using gravel mulch in those beds.
I live in a place where it’s easy to find hay which is my preferred veggie garden mulch on top of lots of shredded leaves that I fork in. But even if you don’t have hay or straw the leaves will work wonders.
Mikl Brawner’s xeriscape garden at his nursery, Harlequin's Gardens in North Boulder, is 32 years old. Here he looks back at how it has evolved over the years and how it has naturalized, “filled in and settled in” and become “dynamically stable.”
Keith Funk answers several questions about winter watering and houseplants.
Hardy cacti, salvias, agastaches, and succulents in south-facing garden
at Denver Botanic Gardens in late October.
Along with monthly meetings & presentations, plus a members garden tour & plant sale, our local chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society holds a day-long symposium each October at Denver Botanic Gardens. This year’s stellar presentations included: plants and scenes from a South African plant trip, the Missouri Botanical Garden, Conservation Biology at DBG, and Rob Smith and Nicholas Boynton-Steel on Creating Beautiful Winter (and summer) Gardens in Boise, Idaho. Denver Botanic Gardens was looking amazing that day.
I’m glad to be focusing on the garden as this nail-biting election proceeds.
– Jane Shellenberger
A Xeriscape Garden After 32 Years
by Mikl Brawner
You might think a nurseryman would have a collector’s garden with rare and choice specimens of every kind, but just one or two of everything. My garden didn’t turn out that way. I chose minimal watering, only 5-7 times a year, with plants anybody could grow organically, and with strict limits to time and money spent on maintenance. After 3 decades, the original xeriscape at Harlequin’s Gardens Nursery turned out to be a naturalized garden. There are natives and unusual plants, but it is dominated by good or useful “weeds” that make big splashes of color or create a living mulch and thrive with little care. And it changes without my permission, though, of course, I am the gardener, so I get to have some influence.
NATURALIZED
When I say my xeriscape garden has naturalized, I mean it has filled in and settled in, becoming dynamically stable. The most dominant and best-adapted plants in their particular locations have thrived and the weaker plants, not well adapted, have died out or been marginalized. Some plants have “moved”, spreading to a more favorable spot (like against a rock) and dying out where originally planted, and some have moved through seed falling, or being vectored by wind or bird.
Many of our customers say they garden following the “Darwinian” method of letting nature sort out the plants best suited to their gardens. Although this function of Nature is often called “survival of the fittest”, I have read that Darwin’s actual meaning was survival of those that best fit the conditions. This also sounds like “sustainability”. But as we gardeners know, conditions change, so when they do, previously dominant species may be replaced or overshadowed by plants currently better adapted.
Keep Veggie Garden Soil Covered
by Jane Shellenberger
Dry winters are the norm on the eastern plains of the Front Range. Our higher elevation and thinner atmosphere allows greater solar penetration so winters are more pleasant, even when snow is on the ground. Strong chinook winds blow down from the mountains to the high plains, sometimes reaching 100 miles per hour in the foothills, where the transition is especially abrupt. These roof-ripping warm dry winds can occur in any season, but they’re most common during the winter. Dry, windy western winters desiccate and erode uncovered soil.
Added protection in the form of mulch is essential to building and maintaining a healthy environment year-round for the worms and other helpful soil creatures in a food garden. Mulch reduces evaporation and modulates the soil temperature. Whether you live in the mountains or on the plains, the simple step of covering bare garden soil with a thick layer of mulch, especially in the winter, will save you a lot of work and do more for the health of the soil life than anything else.
Healthy soil is bustling with life, movement, energy, even electricity. Often described as a living, breathing organism, soil is in a constant state of transformation as the dead are continually reprocessed for the benefit of the living.
Gardening Q&A
By Keith Funk
Q: I planted quite a few perennials, some shrubs and a tree this year. Should I water them during the winter and how often?
A: Our Colorado winters are notoriously dry so any landscape plants that have been in the ground for less than 3 years will certainly benefit from winter watering November through March. If your plants were put in this year and especially this fall, a thorough watering every 2-3 weeks would be very helpful. Be sure to mulch around the plant(s) to conserve water.
For plants planted over a year ago, once a month November through March is sufficient. Be sure the ground is not frozen before you water. Use a screw driver pushed into the soil to check. If it’s frozen, don’t water. And remember, snow almost never counts.
Q: I’ve been trying to grow Streptocarpus, aka Cape Primrose. They keep dying on me but I’m told they are easy. What am I doing wrong?
A: Streps are surprising easy to grow and so generous with their flowers. You are probably babying them too much. It is important that they are in a good quality, fast draining potting soil. I use Fertilome Ultimate potting mix and add in some extra perlite. About half potting mix and half perlite. Streps have a tiny root system so keep them in a small pot. My largest plants are never planted in anything larger than a 4” pot. They will grow and flower under surprising low light and do great under LED light strips in my cool basement where they flower continually. Finally, let them get dry. Even wilty dry between waterings. They will bounce right back. Keeping them constantly moist is a death sentence. If you’re not sure you should water, then wait a day.
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