“Ways to Make and Keep a Garden for the Birds and Bees Plus Advice on Trees”
This year we look at how different people approached making a Habitat Hero-style garden and how they maintain it. We will introduce the makers of six local gardens who will be panelists for discussion on what works and doesn’t work: Gary Kayser has created a meadow at the corner of 3rd and Carey avenues that drew the attention of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle photographer. Eric Dalton has made Habitat Hero gardens at his home and his business, Bella Fuoco Wood Fired Pizza on Warren Avenue. Nancy Loomis keeps the weeds at bay in the garden at the Laramie County Library. Isaiah Smith, horticulture and operations supervisor at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens installed gravel garden beds in the parking lot last year. Isaiah Smith and Jacob Mares prepared the Habitat Hero garden site at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens and Barb Gorges keeps it weeded. Rex Lockman, wildlife and range specialist for the Laramie County Conservation District, will report on the Native Prairie Island project, sowing seeds over new septic fields.
Lunch – Included in registration Jacob Mares, Community Forestry coordinator for the Wyoming State Forestry Division, will introduce trees appropriate for water-wise Habitat Hero gardens. Scott Aker, director of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, formerly in charge of horticulture and education at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., will show how to prune young trees to help protect them from wind, snow and ice damage. To bring us an update on the size and scope of the Habitat Hero program, we will hear from Audubon Rockies staff. Finally, everyone’s favorite part–Michelle Bohanan has selected native seed for everyone to take home for winter sowing.
Registration for in-person attendance will be $25 and will include lunch. Registration for Zoom only will be $5. Registration information at: www.CheyenneAudubon.org/habitat-hero/
Rockwork can add interest to a garden or actually be the garden. This is the Crevice Garden outside the door to the Cheyenne Botanic Garden’s Grand Conservatory. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle May 19, 2023, Page A9, “Blank slate gives gardener myriad of opportunities”
Blank slate gives gardener myriad opportunities
By Barb Gorges
Imagine this: a blank slate, a flat 12 by 40 feet of nearly bare dirt.
The dirt looks good, nearly weed-free. One long side is backed by concrete block wall painted black, so almost any plant by it will look good. A sidewalk edges the other long side and is backed by a red brick garage wall.
I’m a little jealous that Kim Parfitt has all that empty space without having to dig up lawn. I could fill that up in no time with one trip to a good nursery.
In fact, the Cheyenne Habitat Hero Committee is about to do that very thing as an extension to the Habitat Hero garden by the flagpole at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. The extension’s outer perimeter is a 30-foot-long curve and figuring the square footage is beyond my geometry skills. But I think 72 new plants should do it.
Kim has something more interesting in mind. She wants some topography. She likes the crevice garden at the entrance to the CBG’s Grand Conservatory. Good news is that she has a wide gate between the garden and alley for delivery of large rocks, and probably a cubic yard or two of extra dirt she can haul from Cheyenne’s compost facility with her husband’s pickup. Shrubs can also offer some diversity in height.
Kim’s thinking about a groundcover, maybe clover, for a path for the dogs to wind through the topography. Unless it’s mowed to keep it from flowering, the bees attracted to clover might make it hazardous to walk barefoot, paws included. The compost facility has lots of wood chips for path making.
The very first step (which I have never taken, so my home garden looks like a patched crazy quilt) is to get out the graph paper and measure and draw the garden boundaries.
The next step is to figure out where the water faucet is and how to get water to potential plantings. The former owners of Kim’s house had set up plastic pipe along the black wall with four or five sprinkler heads to water the grass that used to be there, plus some drip irrigation tubing for a raised vegetable bed in the far corner.
My suggestion is to scrap all the old irrigation. It’s better to have soaker hoses running along the surface of the garden than to have the plants sprayed with water. Drip irrigation and soaker hoses mean less wasted water. Designing a system needs to go hand in hand with deciding where the plants and paths are going to be. There are people who design watering systems as a profession.
At the same time, Kim needs to think about what plants she is planting. With her experience teaching high school AP classes in environmental science, I’m guessing she’s thinking about native plants. But she might mix in some of her favorites and discover some water-wise exotic beauties among the natives from Plant Select offered at area nurseries and mail order from High Country Gardens.
The trick is to sort the plants by their needs. The ones that need the least water (after they’ve had plenty to get started) can be at the far end of the yard since Kim said the water pressure is poor that far from the faucet.
Identifying sunny and shady areas is important too. I’ve grown Rocky Mountain penstemon in the shade for 30 years and it blooms but then flops over. I moved some to a sunny location and it’s become a vigorous, bushy plant.
When Kim first described her new garden area, she said she needed to get it rototilled. But that’s no longer a given these days, even for vegetable gardening. If your vegetables need soil amendments, add them to the top couple of inches. There’s a whole community of helpful little soil microbes that die when you dig too much. Also, disturbing soil exposes weed seeds that use sunlight to germinate and then you’ll have more weeding to do.
I suggested to Kim when she’s buying perennial plants, pick smaller ones, in 2.5-inch pots instead of 1-gallon pots. After you gently shake the potting soil off the roots, you only need to slice open the soil with your shovel and insert them. The roots quickly reach out, whereas if you plunk in the whole root ball, potting soil included, the roots just circle around and around in that “cotton candy.”
This year, planting a few easy-peasy annuals can be instant gratification while the perennials get established. The first year, perennials sleep, says the old axiom. The next year they creep and it’s the third year they leap!
Native plants are showcased at the Laramie County Library Pollinator Habitat. Photo by Jeff Geyer.
Published April 21, 2023, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
Turf is so last century, especially if there is no water for it
By Barb Gorges
Walking the puppy every day gives me time to contemplate my neighborhood’s lawns as they recover from winter. And the puppy introduces me to neighbors who sometimes tell me their lawn woes.
Of the 200 homes in our subdivision, it seems like most have dead spots in their bluegrass lawns (only a few are not bluegrass). One neighbor, let’s call her Debbie, said she did everything as usual last year, fertilizing according to instructions in May and September, watering three times a week for 20 minutes per zone, mowing every six or seven days. And still, dead areas adjacent to the sidewalk increased in size.
Last year was dry. People who did not water killed their grass, leaving behind gritty dirt soon infested with drought-resistant weeds. The rest of us, without rainfall to make up for dry spots in our irrigation patterns or hotter spots next to the sidewalk, started to see problems like Debbie’s.
I sent a photo of Debbie’s bare area to Catherine Wissner, Laramie County Extension horticulturist, asking for advice.
“For starters, they are mowing their lawn way too short,” Catherine responded.
Grass needs to shade itself. If it isn’t a putting green, set your mower blade as high as it goes.
Next, Catherine recommended reseeding. But first, do some core aeration and treat the area with Revive. This product improves the soil’s ability to take in water and nutrients. She said to look at our local nursery, Riverbend, or JAX, a chain headquartered on the Front Range, for high quality grass seed meant for our area.
Don’t throw on any fertilizer until the grass starts growing. And because it will need extra water to get started, get the Cheyenne Board of Public Utility’s “New Lawn Permit” at www.cheyennebopu.org. It’s free.
But what about going native instead?
If your bluegrass lawn has died, now is your chance to replace it with native grass and or other native plants. I spent many hours digging up part of my healthy front lawn last fall to expand my native plant garden.
Native plants are the hot topic in every garden publication these days. Native plants support native animals, including insects, that are beneficial to us directly and indirectly. They are also adapted to the climate they are native to, so in our area, that means they need less water. Bluegrass is not native to our high and dry prairies.
Water shortages may be coming
Growing a bluegrass lawn these days in our location is an outdated concept. Here in Cheyenne, we have even more reason to establish less water-thirsty landscapes: the Colorado River problem. Through a series of tunnels and agreements, 70 percent of our city water comes from that river, and it is suffering due to drought. We have junior water rights compared to other states, so it is quite possible we could lose that water.
BOPU estimates that 30% of Cheyenne’s water is used to water our landscapes. So if we retrofit our yards now, maybe we won’t have an entirely dead moonscape when we are cut off from Colorado River water.
Retrofitting our yards
We need only look at the High Plains Arboretum on the west edge of Cheyenne to see that there are trees and shrubs that survived 50 years with rainfall and snowmelt alone.
There are several demonstration gardens in town full of waterwise perennials. The Cheyenne Botanic Gardens features the crevice garden, Habitat Hero garden and the new Plant Select gravel garden beds out front and more in back. The Pollinator Habitat in the corner of the Laramie County Library parking lot is all local native plants.
To find native plants for sale, check the Laramie County Master Gardeners plant sale May 6 out at the Archer Complex. See the High Plains Environmental Center’s nursery offerings online at https://suburbitat.org/, order, then pick up your plants in Loveland, Colorado, only 50 miles away. Order or collect seeds next fall. Once you become familiar with the easiest-to-grow natives, you might recognize a few of them at the big box stores.
Yes, there is a little work to native plants. You still need to match the right plant with the right place and water it the first year. In late April or early May, you’ll want to cut back the dead stems of last year’s growth. It sure beats the costs of lawn maintenance in time and money. And you get flowers. And bees and birds and butterflies and maybe even bats.
Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, attracts bees. Photo by Barb Gorges.
“Prairie plants can be part of low-water town landscapes” was published Feb. 19, 2022, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
By Barb Gorges
The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities is looking for examples of low-water yards. I can point to several in my neighborhood that received no irrigation last summer, but they aren’t pretty. Either they filled with thistles or they developed bare patches where the topsoil was blowing away and leaving grit behind.
Sarah Bargsten, BOPU’s water conservation specialist, is looking for examples of low-water residential and commercial landscapes that are inspiring and informative and that would be identified on a map available on the BOPU website. If you think your landscape would be a good candidate for this project, send her an email at sbargsten@cheyennebopu.org.
Low-water landscaping is one aspect of the series of annual Habitat Hero workshops put on in Cheyenne since 2015. Last month, Jeff Geyer, water specialist for the Laramie County Conservation District, took the audience through his experience converting his lawn from non-native bluegrass to native buffalograss.
It struck him as expensive insanity to spend money on irrigating his large yard, anywhere from $400 to $600 per month during the growing season, plus fertilizer and herbicides, just to grow a “crop” of bluegrass that cost him and his wife even more time and money to mow just so they could pay the city compost facility to pick up the clippings.
He experimented with establishing buffalograss, which is native to our naturally low-water prairie. It takes a lot less water to green up once established. It doesn’t need fertilizer. After a year or two of hand weeding, it will be thick enough to shade out any further weeds. It’s only 4 to 5 inches tall so you can get away without mowing and the seed heads look ornamental.
However, one drawback is that it doesn’t grow well in shady yards. And its season of green is shorter than bluegrass, a small thing when you consider how water will become a costly commodity in the dry West.
A bee investigates the disk flowers of this composite flower, Purple Coneflower. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Everyone’s favorite part of the Habitat Hero workshop is talking about the plants. The other prong of the Habitat Hero program is encouraging people to plant for pollinators—but plants that need less water than traditional flower gardens. Guess what? The plants native to the grassland surrounding Cheyenne are perfect. And popular.
Showy prairie flowers like blanketflower (Gaillardia), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia) and coneflower (Echinacea), have been very popular for years with conventional horticulturists wanting to develop cultivated varieties that are showier, taller, shorter, prettier and maybe even hardier.
There’s a variety of purple coneflower that was introduced in 2012 called “Cheyenne Spirit.” Any given seed packet will give you a combination of white, pink, purple, orange and red flowers. It was developed by a plant breeder in Holland who apparently equates the name of our city and the tribe with this flower native to the Great Plains.
Some coneflower cultivars however, get so showy that the daisy-like center disk flowers become more like the ray flowers, or petals, and they don’t produce pollen and nectar. Steer clear of those if you are trying to attract bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.
Also steer clear of stores where the clerks can’t tell you if the plants and seeds were grown without neonicotinoids. Neonics are a group of powerful systemic (internal) insecticides. Any insect that chomps on leaf, stem or flower will die. Not good if you are encouraging caterpillars that feed baby birds or that you want to have become butterflies. Neonics also get into pollen and nectar and kill the bees and butterflies that way.
So, if the clerk doesn’t know what you are talking about or can’t show you some documentation, go somewhere else. Or grow your own. It’s not too late for winter sowing—search for the topic at my website: https://cheyennegardengossip.wordpress.com.
A terrific resource for learning about native plants for our area and finding sources for them is the new document by Jane and Robert Dorn, “The Cheyenne Plant Selector.” Find it and other resources at https://cheyenneaudubon.org/habitat-hero-resources.
To remove bluegrass lawn to plant buffalograss or native flowers and other grasses, there are choices: smothering with sheets of cardboard, solarization by covering with sheets of clear plastic (cooking the existing vegetation), poisoning with an herbicide (get recommendations from the Conservation District) and what Mark does at our house, remove the turf with a shovel and compost it. Don’t till or the bluegrass will just pop up again.
Planting natives does not mean you have to give up all your favorite ornamentals and vegetables. Think of it as a new aspect of gardening to explore, one that benefits many more creatures and by extension, people.
This bee has collected a lot of pollen. Photo by Barb Gorges.
What we learned at the 6th Annual Cheyenne Habitat Hero Workshop
Published April 12, 2020, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle
By Barb Gorges
What we learned at the recent Cheyenne Habitat Hero workshop is there are three alternatives to standard landscaping (turf and foundation junipers).
Water-wise plantings
Western cities like Cheyenne and Ft. Collins are encouraging businesses and homeowners to install landscaping that takes less water than bluegrass lawns so that there will be enough water for their growing populations.
Many Wyoming native grasses, shrubs, trees and flowers fit this definition, as well as many plants from desert lands in the U.S. and other parts of the world. Plant Select features these kinds of plants for xeric gardens. The plants can be found at independent Colorado nurseries and by mail order from High Country Gardens, https://www.highcountrygardens.com/.
Pollinator-friendly/wildlife-friendly gardens
The drastic decline in native bees and butterflies has been in the news for years now. Choosing to grow flowering plants is a happy way to do something for the environment.
Native plants
However, not all flowering plants appeal to our native bees and butterflies. Douglas Tallamy, http://www.bringingnaturehome.net/, points out that native bees and butterflies are adapted to the plants native to their own area. Native insects need native plants so that they can become food for native birds.
There are different levels of native. If you are raising honeybees (natives of Europe), anything producing pollen will do, if it hasn’t been improved by horticulturists too much–double and triple-petal cultivars are often sterile–no pollen.
Plants native to distant parts of North America will not do much for most Wyoming native bees and butterflies and may require too much water for water-wise gardens.
Plants native to the western Great Plains–if they haven’t been domesticated too much, will provide what our native critters crave. Skip the ones that naturally grow in wet areas unless you have a natural wet area.
Finding the right species—see plant list—is still difficult. Ft. Collins Nursery (offering online ordering and curbside pickup this spring), https://fortcollinsnursery.com/, has the closest, large selection.
Maintaining native prairie
If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Laramie County Master Gardener Wanda Manley wants you to appreciate our native prairie—and treat it right if you are lucky enough to own a piece of it.
Don’t treat the prairie like a lawn. Frequent mowing creates more of a fire danger. Mowing March – July kills ground-nesting birds.
Keep an eye out for invasive plants and consider renovating your prairie. Consult with the Laramie County Conservation District, https://www.lccdnet.org/.
Don’t graze when the grass is actively growing. It’s cheaper to feed hay than to repair the damage.
Locate and design your native garden
Laramie County Extension horticulturist Catherine Wissner can give you a three-hour lecture on how to select a site for a new garden. If you are proposing a new vegetable or ornamental flower garden, you look at sun, slope, wind, soil, proximity to water source and kitchen.
However, if you are replacing water-hogging turf with natives, you have more options. There are native plants that like sun (like vegetables), others that prefer part sun and a few that need shade. There are some that like sandy soil and others that are fine with clay. Some like rocky soil.
And for pollinators, you want to strive to have something in bloom from late March to early October.
Figuring out which plants go where takes a little research. By next year the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities hopes to have a plant finder database to help you match plants with your conditions.
Irrigation
You must water new plants the first year—even xeric species—to get them established. It’s possible to pick plants that need very little supplemental water after that—and maybe none at all.
But any irrigation that uses 50 percent less than what bluegrass turf requires is applauded by BOPU.
You might still have one bed of traditional flowers requiring frequent watering and other areas that are more xeric. If you don’t want to drag hoses around all summer, you can set up sprinkler systems and/or drip irrigation for differentiated zones.
At this point in the season, your best option for removing turf is with a shovel as soon as the most recent snow melts and the soil dries out a bit.
If you have really nice turf, you might be able to get someone to use a machine to strip it off and use it to repair damaged turf elsewhere—what we did for the BOPU Habitat Hero demonstration garden.
Rototilling is not an option—it leaves a lot of grass that will re-sprout. But a shovelful of turf can be broken up, the roots shaken out and composted elsewhere and the soil replaced.
If you have time, you can suffocate turf with 12 layers of newspaper or some cardboard over a few months (usually winter), explained Laramie County Master Gardener Maggie McKenzie. Herbicides are a terrible last resort.
If you are building a vegetable garden, you’ll want to amend the soil with lots of composted organic material but that isn’t necessary for native plants if you match them to your soil type.
It’s too late now for that technique this year, but you can try direct sowing. Some catalogs specialize in prairie flowers, like https://www.prairiemoon.com/.
Picking and planting
Nurseries are not open for strolling this spring so Kathy Shreve’s advice on finding healthy plants changes to only accepting plants curbside fulfilling your order that are healthy and not rootbound or misshapen—especially trees and shrubs.
Kathy reminded us that all plants, no matter how well-adapted, need to be watered for months when first planted. Not so much that they drown and don’t let them wilt.
Enjoy your garden often–it’s also an easy way to see if problems are developing.
Become a Habitat Hero
The goal is to be recognized as a Habitat Hero. Take pictures of your yard transformation during the growing season. See https://rockies.audubon.org/habitat-hero for information on applying as well as more on water-wise planting for birds and other wildlife.
Popular Southeast Wyoming Native Plants
It is nearly impossible to find “straight species” at nurseries—you’ll find horticulturally improved varieties instead. If the petals haven’t been doubled or the leaf color changed from solid green, they will probably work.
Sandra Cox’s vegetable garden did extremely well its first season. Photo by Barb Gorges
Published Jan. 6, 2019, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “Transplanted gardener helps local yard bloom.”
By Barb Gorges
There’s only one thing that beats Sandra Cox’s love of gardening: It’s love for her family.
In July 2017, she gave up gardening in the Hudson Valley of New York state to move to Cheyenne at the invitation of her son and his family. She left behind a newly planted orchard and everything she knew about gardening there to start over at her new home.
When Sandra arrived, no one had watered her new yard for some months, and our clay soil required a pick ax to plant the calla lilies she brought with her. But with care and mulch, by the end of the season, time to dig them back up, she was pleased to see a healthy population of earth worms.
Sandra’s garden in New York was in the same Zone 5 USDA growing zone (coldest temperature rating) as Cheyenne. But there are five major differences:
Cheyenne has alkaline soils rather than acidic so adding lime or wood ash is a no-no.
Cheyenne has a shorter growing season. Sandra’s learned she will have to start her peppers and eggplant indoors earlier and put them outside, with protection, earlier.
Cheyenne has 12-15 inches of precipitation annually, one-third of New York’s. Watering is necessary much more often here. She’s thinking about installing an irrigation system.
Cheyenne has hail. Although the tomato plants this summer made a comeback, the tomatoes themselves were scarred. Sandra’s planning to protect them with wire cages next year.
Cheyenne has different soil—clay instead of sandy.
Although arriving mid-summer 2017, Sandra went to work establishing a vegetable garden. “I disturb the soil as little as possible to avoid disrupting the earthworms because they do all the work for you,” she explained.
Instead, she spread leaves over the abandoned lawn, laid down a layer of cardboard from the packing boxes from her move, then covered them with wood chips from the city compost facility. To keep the chips from blowing away, she laid wire fencing over them and pegged it down. She removed the fencing and planted directly into this mulch the next season.
Sandra researches the best varieties to plant in our climate. Her first fall, she planted grapes and an apple and a plum tree. Last spring, she planted pear, peach and sweet cherry trees. The cherries did very well.
In the north-facing front yard, Sandra’s planted shrubs for privacy and perennials for pollinators and pleasure. The city’s street tree planting program, Rooted in Cheyenne, came out and planted a burr oak and a linden. A huge spruce tree shades the house on hot summer afternoons.
One day last fall, she called and asked if we’d come harvest some kale and Swiss chard since she had too much. What an oasis of lush green! And her giant sunflowers were at least 12 feet high. A sunny yard helps, but much of her success can be attributed to her dedication to compost—she composts everything, and her chickens help break it down.
Sandra’s chickens are an important part of her gardening. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Sandra hasn’t used fertilizer yet—other than fish emulsion and well-aged chicken manure. She’s planning to do a soil test this next year to see if she has any deficiencies, but her plants didn’t seem to show any signs.
Pests are not a problem so far. Sandra thinks it is only a matter of time before the pests catch up with her. Already she’s concerned about the big spruce tree being attacked by the ips beetle. It has killed other spruces in her neighborhood, she thinks. The city forester recommended winter watering—good for all her newly planted trees and shrubs, but also good for older trees for which drought stress makes them more susceptible to pests.
Unlike New York which normally has constant winter snow cover, Cheyenne has snowless weeks plus days when the temperatures are above freezing—good days for watering trees.
Sandra remembers that growing up on the family farm was a constant delight, from taking care of the goats to eating apples while high up in the branches to joining her parents and five siblings in the field after dinner to weed, joke around and enjoy each other’s company. Her siblings still enjoy gardening and farming, as does her son, who has a degree in horticulture. Her granddaughters have caught the family enthusiasm as well.
“Bloom where you’re planted” is an old axiom that doesn’t just mean, “make the best of a situation.” For Sandra, it means with a little studying up, she can joyfully grow a garden anywhere, even here.
Sandra’s sunflowers are more than a story high. Fencing protects new trees and other plantings from the chickens. Photo by Barb Gorges.
This perennial garden keeps expanding. The raised bed with the hail guard on top is where we grow the vegetables, the sunniest spot in front or back yard. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle Mar. 5, 2018.
By Barb Gorges
Is this the year you’ve decided you’ll spend more time on flowers and vegetables and make that boring expanse of lawn more colorful and edible? Here’s how to start.
Find the sun
Find where the sun shines on your yard and where the shadows are. This is the very first and most important step you must take. If you didn’t notice last year, you can estimate.
See where the shadows of currently leafless trees fall during the day. Find the sunny, south-facing side of your house.
For vegetables you want the sunniest location possible, at least 6 hours of full, summer sun. Do you have overgrown or dying trees and shrubs that need pruning or removal? However, a little shade by late afternoon keeps veggie leaves from temporarily wilting.
Keep vegetable gardens close to the house so it is easier to step out and pull the occasional weed and pick the ripe tomatoes.
Flowers aren’t as picky about sun because there are kinds suited to different light levels: sun, part sun, part shade and full shade. If you desire to grow a certain kind, google its light requirements.
Block the wind
In most residential neighborhoods there are enough obstacles, houses and landscaping, to blunt the wind. But if you are out on the prairie, you might want to put delicate plants in the lee of the barn or plant a windbreak first.
Get the dirt
Soil is anything a plant can stick a root into.
Good soil for vegetables (and other annuals) has lots of microorganisms that help feed the roots. Most vegetables are big feeders. They use lots of nutrients, so you’ll want to dig in compost the first year and then add layers of leaf/plant/kitchen compost mulch after that as needed. No need to dig again in future years.
If you use chemical fertilizer instead (unfortunately limiting good soil microbes), remember to follow the directions. Too much nitrogen gives you leaves and no fruit and too much of any fertilizer gives you sick or dead plants. And remember, Cheyenne has alkaline soils so do not add alkaline amendments like lime and wood ash.
Perennial plants rated for our zone 5 or colder (Zones 3 and 4), especially native plants, are really quite happy with whatever soil is available. If you are trying to grow flowers in the equivalent of pottery clay, gravel pit or sandbox, you might look for native species adapted to those kinds of soil. Or consider growing your plants in a raised bed or container you can fill with better soil.
Water carefully
Here in the West, water is a precious commodity so save money by not throwing it everywhere. If you have a sprinkler system, make sure it isn’t watering pavement.
The new era of home landscaping encourages us to replace our lawns with native perennials because they use less water. Native plants also provide food for birds, bees and butterflies, and habitat for beneficial insects. The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities is installing a demonstration garden at its headquarters this spring.
But you will need to water a new perennial garden regularly until it gets established, and at other times, so figure out how far you want to lug the hose or stretch a drip irrigation system.
Once established, a native perennial garden not only takes less water than a lawn, but it doesn’t require the purchase of fertilizers, pesticides or gasoline for the mower. Your time can be spent admiring flowers instead of mowing. Although if you convert a large lawn to a meadow, you may want to mow it once a year.
Vegetables are water hogs. The fruits we harvest, especially tomatoes and cucumbers, are mostly water. Unless you like to contemplate life while watering by hand, check out drip irrigation. You can even put a timer on the system.
Sprinklers, on the other hand, waste a lot of water, especially when it evaporates in the heat and wind before it can get to the plants. If you abstain from watering between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., you’ll lose less to evaporation.
It cost me $3000 to have the turf dug up for this garden…and the broken sewer pipe replaced. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Deleting lawn
While you can rent a rototiller to open up an area for planting, I prefer to use a sharp spade. I dig one clump of grass at a time, only about 8-10 inches deep, break and shake off as much soil as possible and put the remaining chunk in the compost bin—or fill in a hole in the remaining lawn.
It’s slow going, but I disturb fewer tree and shrub roots that underlay my entire yard. When I get tired of digging, that means I’ve reached the amount of new garden I have the energy to plant this year. I don’t want gardening to become a chore!
The plants and details
In the six years I’ve been interviewing local gardeners and writing monthly columns, I’ve accumulated a lot of information, from seed starting to native grass lawn alternatives to growing giant pumpkins and native perennials. Go to my website, https://cheyennegardengossip.wordpress.com, and on the right side of the page use the search function or scroll through the list of topics.
If you are using your phone, select “About” from the menu and find the search function and topics at the very bottom of the page.
I love this kind of garden visitor. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Laramie County Master Gardener Susan Carlson shows off peas growing in her straw bale garden. The spruce trees protect the garden from north wind and the shade cloth protects the delicate lettuce in the rest of the garden from too much sun. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Published Aug. 14, 2016, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “Straw bales conquer many garden problems.”
By Barb Gorges
Did the thought of the work involved in starting a vegetable garden keep you from having one this year? Did time for all that rototilling or digging in of compost never materialize? Or maybe you tried a garden in our clay soils and results were poor?
Straw Bale Gardens, by Joel Karsten, Cool Springs Press.
Susan Carlson, a Laramie County Master Gardener, can recommend a solution: straw bale gardening. Her stepson, who lives in Minnesota, brought her the book by Minnesota native Joel Karsten describing his miraculous method.
This is the second season Carlson has used rectangular straw bales for vegetables and her results look good. She also included flowers.
The idea is that a straw bale is compost waiting to happen. Before the growing season begins, over a couple weeks, you add water and a little fertilizer—organic or inorganic—and it will activate an army of bacteria. The bacteria break down the straw, turning it into just what plants need. Plants can be inserted into the bale or seeds can be started in a little potting soil placed on top.
The bale is like a container or raised bed held together with baling twine. You can set it anywhere, even on a driveway. You don’t prepare the ground underneath.
And, depending on how clean the straw is, you will have few weeds, or wheat or oat sprouts, that can’t be easily removed by hand. You’ll have more sprouts if you accidently bought hay—which includes the heads of grain—instead of straw, which is just the stems.
Straw bales might also be the solution to vegetable plant diseases that persist in soil. Gardeners are always advised not to grow the same family of vegetables (especially the tomato-eggplant-pepper family) in the same spot more than once every three years. You can start a fresh bale each year, although Carlson managed to keep her bales intact for a second year.
Carlson studied Karsten’s book, “Straw Bale Gardens.” Here’s what she did:
First, obviously, she found straw bales.
I checked a local farm and ranch supply store and their regular bale, about 3 feet long and 60 pounds, runs about $7. Avoid the super-compressed bales.
A bale bought in the fall from a farmer should be cheaper than in the spring, after they’ve had to store them all winter. In fall, you can put your bale outside to weather.
If you’ve had problems with mice or voles, as Carlson has, lay chicken wire or hardware cloth down first. Cut a piece big enough to fold up and protect several inches of the sides of the bale.
Carlson’s straw bale garden consists of five bales forming a u-shape. They are planted with (from left) haricot vert green beans, cabbage, a tomato, lettuces, petunias and edible pod peas. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Lay out your bale prickliest side up, and so the sides wrapped with twine not against the ground. Carlson bought five bales and formed them into a u-shape to fit within an area fenced to keep out her dogs.
Because she planned to grow beans, Carlson made a trellis as well. She wedged two bales, lying end to end, between two 5-foot steel “T-post” fence posts (about $5 each) and then strung wire at about 10 and 20 inches above the bales. She can add more wire if the plants get taller. Karsten recommends 14-gauge electric fence wire (but you won’t be plugging it in).
On the ground inside the u-shape of bales (or between your rows), Carlson laid landscape fabric. You could use some other material to keep light from germinating weed seeds, like a layer of thick straw, cardboard, wood, wood mulch, etc.
Next, Carlson “conditioned” the bales, starting about two weeks before our last frost date, which is around May 22, though you can start a week earlier because the bales form a warm environment.
The first step here is to find cheap lawn fertilizer with at least 20 percent nitrogen content as Carlson did the first year. Do not use one that is slow-release or that contains herbicides.
You can also use organic fertilizers, like bone or feather meal, or very well-composted manure, but you need to use six times more than the amounts given for inorganic fertilizer. The second season, Carlson said, she is having good results using Happy Frog packaged organic fertilizer, but using much less since the bales were conditioned once already last year.
The conditioning regimen begins the first day with a half cup of inorganic fertilizer (or six times more organic) per bale sprinkled evenly all over the top and then watered in with your hose sprayer until all of it has moved into the bale and the bale is waterlogged, writes Karsten.
The next day you skip the fertilizer and water the bale again. Karsten suggests using water that’s been sitting out for a while so it isn’t as cold as it is straight out of the tap.
Days three through six you alternate between fertilizer-and-water days and water-only days.
Days seven through nine you water in a quarter cup of fertilizer per bale each day. The bales should be cooking by now and feel a little warmer on the outside.
On day 10, add a cup of 10-10-10 garden fertilizer. The numbers mean 10 percent nitrogen, 10 percent phosphorus and 10 percent potassium.
Next, lay out your soaker hoses on top of the bales if you are going to use drip irrigation as Carlson has.
On day 12, Carlson transplanted one cherry tomato plant directly into the bale, wedging it in. Smaller plants are easier to plant than large ones and will soon catch up.
“Bacteria are breaking down the inside of the bale and making this nice environment,” said Carlson.
Carlson’s Haricot vert beans. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Mostly, Carlson wanted a salad garden and so she started everything else from seed: edible pod peas, Haricot vert beans (a type of tiny French green bean), lemon cucumbers, broccoli, spinach and various lettuces.
She packed a couple of inches of sterile potting soil (not garden soil) into the tops of the bales in which to plant the seeds. The warmth of the composting straw got them off to a good start.
She added shade cloth overhead to protect the lettuces from too much sun and started cutting romaine and butterhead lettuce by mid-June.
Carlson also used shade cloth on the west side fence to keep the wind from drying out the bales too quickly.
And there you have it, a vegetable garden—or a flower garden if you prefer—ready to grow. All you need to do then is to garden as you normally would: enough water, fertilizer once a month, and pull the occasional weed that may sprout, or pick off any little slugs or insects.
Maybe because of our dry western climate, Carlson was able to use her bales this second year. The bales shrank a little so she patched the gaps between bales with bits of chicken wire on the sides and filled them with potting soil.
One question is what to do with the old bales. They are great compost for conventional garden beds. Carlson reached into the side of one bale and showed me lovely black soil. If you don’t have any conventional garden beds to add it to, someone else would be happy to take the compost off your hands.
“This isn’t the prettiest thing,” Carlson says of her straw bale garden, “but when it starts growing, you don’t even look at the bales.”
While most straw bale gardeners start with fresh bales each spring, Carlson was able to use hers for a second season. She pulled away a little straw on the side of this bale and discovered it is full of rich compost. A soaker hose keeps the vegetables watered. The green steel fence post is part of the trellis system. Photo courtesy Barb Gorges.
Published April 22, 2012 in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “Getting the dirt on garden prep: A green and growing garden in summer begins with preparation–now.”
The unusually warm and dry weather in March created perfect conditions for early digging in the garden, dry, thawed soil. Usually, early spring means wet or frozen soil and digging in wet soil will destroy the structure.
My husband, Mark, was anxious to dig out the stump of the spruce we had removed because it outgrew our yard. We never limbed it so the spruce’s skirts nicely shaded out the grass underneath. So after removing the stump and shallow roots, we have the perfect space for a new garden. It’s also good timing since I have a lot of seedlings started, as you know from reading last month’s column.
How do you select a site for your new garden? Consider these factors: light, water, size and, especially if you are planting vegetables, distance to the kitchen.
Light
A vegetable garden needs five or six hours of sun daily, preferably morning sun–not the scorching rays of summer afternoons. If you are growing flowers, you can choose varieties suited for just about any proportions of sun and shade.
Because our growing season is so short, you may not want to choose a site where the snow lingers, as it will take longer for the soil to warm.
Size
The size of my new garden was dictated by the footprint of the spruce. It’s 11 by 14 feet, manageable for a first effort at growing vegetables and annual flowers.
Distance to kitchen
If the vegetable garden (or any garden) isn’t close to the kitchen, it won’t get the daily inspection that leads to success, said Catherine Wissner, University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension horticulturist.
I may “neglect” standard garden practices such as rototilling and spraying weed killer, but I don’t neglect to enjoy visiting my perennial garden often, pinching the occasional bad bug or pulling a tender young weed.
Water
Distance to water is important—how far are you willing to drag the hose? Can you set up a drip irrigation system?
Revealing the dirt
You could kill grass using chemicals such as Roundup if you are extremely good at following directions. Another option is to stake clear plastic over the turf for a few weeks, allowing the intense heat of the sun to kill off the grass and weeds.
Digging up turf with a sharp spade takes less time, though it’s hard work. One advantage is it will keep you from making your garden too large in the first year. If you are careful, you can use the spade-sized chunks to fill in bare spots elsewhere, or knock the dirt off and compost the remains.
Fixing the dirt
Every gardener believes that his or her soil could stand improvement. I believe enough compost added over time can redeem almost every soil type.
Cheyenne’s default soil is clay-like, making it difficult for plant roots to grow and draw water. Local gardeners overcome this by digging in compost–partially decayed plant material–to a depth of about two feet. Mark did just that for our new garden, using the leaves from our trees that served as protective mulch for my perennials over the winter. Adding more to the top few inches every year eventually makes for loose and fluffy soil.
A word of advice: Check for underground utilities before digging in your yard. All it takes is a simple call to 811 (www.call811.com).
Compost is available commercially in bales. It’s also available from the City of Cheyenne’s compost facility at 3714 Windmill Road; hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Sundays, noon to 4 p.m.).
A word of caution: Be sure the compost doesn’t contain residual herbicides. Using livestock manure in a vegetable garden is tricky. Unless it is composted at high, even heat, it could transmit pathogens, such as salmonella, to people consuming the crops. And it is possible to apply too much and burn plants.
My experience is that composted leaves and grass will improve soil structure—and encourage the soil microorganism community to flourish, acting as a low dose of fertilizer.
If your plants have failed to thrive in the past or you are curious about the fertility of your soil, you may have it analyzed by experts who can tell you what kinds of amendments might be needed, and how much.
Colorado State University has a soil testing lab. Call them at 970-491-5061 or visit www.soiltestinglab.colostate.edu. The routine test is around $30.
Remember, our soil here, with few exceptions, is alkaline, not acidic as it is back East, so don’t add wood ash and limestone.
Digging the dirt
If you do a good job of digging a new garden, you shouldn’t have to do it again. Obviously, perennial gardens don’t get rototilled every year. Mine receives a top dressing of leaf litter annually because I don’t sweep the soil surface clean (another instance of my gardening by “neglect”). Many perennials are native to less than perfect dirt anyway.
But what about my plan to grow annual flowers and vegetables from seed this year–and perhaps years to come? Will I have to convince Mark to dig as deeply again next spring, or get a rototiller?
I won’t, if I take the advice of Eliot Coleman, an organic market gardener in Maine and author of the book “Four-Season Harvest.” After the initial dig he amends only the top few inches each year. That way soil structure isn’t destroyed. Also, the less you disturb the soil, the fewer weed seeds sprout.
Wide bed method
Shane Smith, director of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, is also a soil protectionist. He is a proponent of wide beds rather than planting vegetables in traditional rows. Plants are set in short cross rows or staggered, depending on the space they need.
Somewhat like establishing raised beds, minus the boards to contain the soil, each bed is as wide as you can comfortably reach, maybe 3 feet. A 2-foot-wide footpath between beds means you never walk on the beds themselves, preserving the fluffiness of their soil (roots need the air), and you never have to waste time and money improving the soil of the pathways. For more information, pick up a pamphlet at the Gardens or visit online at www.botanic.org.
Coming up
Next month, I’ll look into best practices for transplanting, direct sowing, and picking out plants at the nursery. If you need to transplant your starts into bigger pots, remember to hold them by their leaves only, to avoid crushing their stems—they can always grow a new leaf, but not a new stem.
Cheyenne Garden Gossip 