Winter sowing magic

Translucent plastic jugs planted with seeds can be left outside for the winter. Seeds are protected from wind and critters and will sprout in spring. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Winter sowing magically protects and sprouts seeds outdoors

Published February 9, 2024, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

By Barb Gorges

            Winter sowing is a fun technique I originally learned from Laramie County Master Gardener Michelle Bohanan in 2016.

            It’s now so popular that an internet search brings 149,000 results.

            Winter sowing imitates nature by leaving seeds outdoors over the winter. Sowing seeds in a container with a clear or translucent cover protects them from wind and critters but exposes them to snow and cold. Some kinds of seeds need to freeze and thaw to sprout.

            The seeds sprout starting late April in Cheyenne. They can be transplanted directly into the garden (usually late May) without having to gradually harden them off the way indoor grown seedlings need to be.

Seeds

            I use the technique primarily for native perennials, but it can be used for other perennials, annuals, and cold happy vegetables (cabbage, kale, etc.). Tomatoes, eggplants and other heat happy vegetables, not so much—it would give them too late a start to have ripe fruit before our first fall frost.

            My native seed choices for beginners include:

–Narrowleaf Coneflower (purple coneflower’s Wyoming sister)

–Mexican Hat, also called Prairie Coneflower

–Blanket Flower, also called Gaillardia

–Black-eyed Susan, also called Rudbeckia

–Rocky Mountain Penstemon

–Beebalm, also called Monarda

–Showy Milkweed (most common milkweed in southeast Wyoming)

–Columbine

            Look for these at the Laramie County Library’s Seed Library or from companies that specialize in prairie plants like Prairie Moon Nursery, Prairie Nursery, and High Country Gardens.

            For more inspiration, see the Habitat Hero information at https://cheyenneaudubon.org/habitat-hero-resources/.

Timing

            I aim to get seeds sown in January and February, when it’s finally cold enough, yet there is still enough cold weather for seeds that might need eight weeks of cold (stratification) to break dormancy.

Jugs

            Michelle’s and my containers of choice are the 1-gallon pliable, translucent water, juice or milk jugs because they are deep and roomy, and even if you don’t buy those beverages, you probably know people who do.

            My problem is that our family’s preferred brand of milk now comes in white containers. Because I donate jugs of seedlings to the Master Gardener spring plant sale, I’ve learned to hang onto the old translucent lids and reuse them with new white bottoms. If you store jugs in the dark the rest of the year, they will last for years.

Jug prep

            Plastic jugs are so flimsy these days that my pointy kitchen shears are sharp enough to make a hole level with the bottom of the handle and then I can cut all the way around. I also poke four holes in the bottom for drainage.

            Run-of-the-mill, peat-based potting soil works for me, though I should think about trying something more ecologically friendly.

            Peat can be dry and very hydrophobic so I dump a bunch in a large tub, water it well, mix it and let it sit for a bit to get it wet evenly. Then I scoop it into the bottom of each jug 3 inches deep.

            I use a Sharpie permanent ink pen to write the seed names on the sides of the jug bottoms.

Seed planting

            Michelle counts out her seeds, planting them in grids of 4 x 4 or 5 x 5 per jug. Me, I tend to just scatter seeds. Once, I ended up with 200 in one jug. When crowded, seeds sprout but then don’t grow much, except for their roots, so they need transplanting much sooner.

            Some seeds, usually the tiny ones, need light to germinate so just sprinkling them and pressing them against the soil is good enough. Plant 1/8^th inch and larger seeds 1/8^th inch deep. Check seed packets or the internet for more specific information.

            After planting, force the top of the jug into the bottom. It’s Ok if the sides buckle. Remove the jug’s lid—more access for snow to get in.

Jug placement

            Find a safe, semi-shady spot where snow likes to drift. If you have only a sunny spot, you may have to water periodically. After sprouting, move jugs to a sunny location and remove the tops of the jugs on nice days.

Removing seedlings

            Good root growth holds the soil together in a jug like a giant peat brownie.

            Remove the top of the jug, stretch your fingers across and through the seedlings. Then tip over the container gently to let the brownie drop out onto your hand.

            Gently break the brownie apart, teasing out the individual seedlings for planting directly into the garden or into pots with more room. Be sure to gently shake off most of the potting soil before transplanting a seedling into the garden.

Master Gardener Garden Walk

Master Gardener Garden Walk showcases different kinds of Cheyenne gardens

Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle July 14, 2023.

Text and photos by Barb Gorges

“A Garden for Everyone” is the theme for this year’s Laramie County Master Gardener Garden Walk. The five gardens range from the modest to more extravagant, native to ornamental, formal to the free-spirited. And they all prove that flowers and vegetables can be grown in Cheyenne in profusion. But you might want to copy the ideas for hail guards for your vegetables.

The gardeners will be on hand to visit with you about their gardens on July 16, 1 – 5 p.m. There are no admission fees; however, donations are welcome.

Each garden will also feature an artist or musician: Salli Halpern, fused glass; Garden of Ellis Creations, whimsical found art; Nancy McKenzie, mandolin; Susie Heller, metalsmith; and Barbara Wolf, watercolors and pastels.

Here are this year’s locations:

821 Maryland Court, Rex and Deb Ellis

616 Shaun Ave., Melinda and Ernie Brazzale

432 W. 7^th Ave., Luana Lahti

317 W. 7^th Ave., Jennifer Wolfe

2200 Pioneer Ave., parking lot, Laramie County Library Pollinator Habitat

When visiting Rex and Deb Ellis’s garden, look for hidden treasures like this fantasy water source Deb built from old irrigation pipe, plus interesting stonework. A curving path leads from the patio to the vegetable and perennial gardens.

Ernie Brazzale has designed a vertical system for growing beans, cucumbers and squash together with hail protection. His wife Melinda takes care of the flowers and has created a patio garden by the front door.

Luana Lahti’s gardens abound with surprises, such as a nearly hidden pond in the front yard and another in the back. Gateways lead to more adventures and surprises like Luana’s tropical plants outside for the summer.

Jennifer Wolfe has adapted the traditional cottage garden border for our climate. It runs along her driveway and is full of interesting plants. Another exuberant border awaits visitors in the backyard.

Collecting runoff from the parking lot, the Laramie County Library Pollinator Garden can support native wetland plants at the bottom and native dryland plants along its rim. Seeds from this garden are available through the Seed Library located in the library.

Ruthless gardening

Overall, daffodils are hardier than the average tulip. They are more likely to resist hungry wildlife, snow and drought, and return every year. Daffodils come in a variety of shapes, sizes, bloom times and shades of yellow and orange. Photos by Barb Gorges.

May garden notes: tulip failure, ruthless gardening, bare root planting and mulching everything

Published May 7, 2022, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

By Barb Gorges

            You know the ditty, “April showers bring May flowers.”

            There is truth to it—if you didn’t water your tulips during our dry April (or last summer), your tulip buds three or four weeks later may be small or not open at all. Quite a contrast from last year. The daffodils and small bulbs don’t seem to be affected as much, but the earliest ones were zapped by that cold snap. The best defense is a variety of bulbs slated to bloom at a variety of times March through June.

            My perennial flower beds are mulched every fall by falling tree leaves. The flowers’ stems keep them from blowing away. Underneath, it usually stays moist. In April I start removing layers to expose the early flowering crocus. I start clipping stems, chopping them in small pieces to add to the remaining mulch. But there are a couple areas that blow out and I can never keep mulch in place. This spring I noticed the bare areas have mysterious half-inch diameter holes in the ground. I think they might be ground-nesting bees overwintering. So bare ground isn’t such a bad thing.

            Neither is the broken top on the neighbor’s spruce tree, where the Swainson’s hawks have their nest again this year. Neither is the rotten section of another neighbor’s tree where the red-breasted nuthatches are thinking about nesting. Neither are the stringy dead leaves still in my garden that the robins are pulling for nesting material.  

            There is a time for ruthless gardening. I was reminded by Shane Smith, the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens’ founding director. He was featured in a webinar series last month hosted by the American Horticultural Society titled, “Conversations with Great American Gardeners.” I’d heard him say it before. Do you really want to spend hours hunting scale on a houseplant week after week? Instead, disinfect a cutting and toss the rest of it, which I did, or replace it with something new from the nursery. Isolate the new plant until you are sure it isn’t infected.

            I couldn’t resist the exotic tomatoes in the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog but at least I chose short season ones. So, our bathtub nursery has Berkeley Tie Dye Pink and Thorburn’s Terra-Cotta in addition to my husband Mark’s Anna Maria’s Heart. The extras will be available at the Laramie County Master Gardener plant sale, May 14, 9 a.m., at Archer.

            I’ve found homes for amaryllis I’ve started from seed. It takes as many as four or five years until they bloom. Friends are reporting back and some have hybrids of the two I have, a pink and white and a red. However, a lot of the newer varieties of amaryllis have been bred to be sterile, so no hybridizing fun with them. But they can bloom again. No need for dormancy if you don’t mind them blooming naturally sometime between January and April instead of Christmas.

            Bare root planting. It’s good for trees, shrubs, tomatoes, flowers, everything. When trees and shrubs are sold in pots or “balled and burlapped,” remove all the packing material, wire, twine and dirt. Spread the roots out in a shallow hole that is wider than it is deep. Don’t add anything but the dirt you dug out. You want those roots to spread beyond the hole instead of becoming dependent on potting soil and fertilizer, circling around and around and the tree being at risk of blowing over a few years later (search “plant a tree” at https://cheyennegardengossip.wordpress.com/).  

            Bare root also works for flowers and vegetables. But you may amend the soil with plenty of compost for vegetables—they are hungry. For perennial flowers, especially natives, match the kind of plant with the type of soil you have and leave it unamended.

            It is better to mulch than to hoe. Make sure the mulch, whether wood chip, straw or other plant material, is not up against the tree trunk or tomato stem, and not too deep—water needs to get through. But you want to shade out the weeds. Most weed seeds require light to germinate. That’s why disturbing the soil with a hoe gives you an unending chore. Try pulling tiny weeds, which won’t disturb the soil much, and cutting off the big ones at ground level frequently.

            Finally, my new growing season resolution is to garden in smaller increments of time. Maybe an hour a day removing excess leaves and chopping up last year’s stems instead of a marathon day and a week of sore back. Besides, in spring the yard—and the park and the prairie—are changing quickly and worth frequent walk-throughs.

Spring gardening starts indoors

A yogurt container stuffed with species tulip bulbs, Tulipa linifolia, forced to bloom early indoors, provides a welcome splash of winter color. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Spring gardening starts indoors: bulb forcing and vegetable seedlings

Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle Mar. 5, 2022.

By Barb Gorges

            March is the time of year to ignore garden news from balmier parts of the country, especially Facebook posts with greening landscapes with bright flowers and ripening vegetables. But there is plenty going on here—indoors.

Bulb forcing experiment

            The flowers I see on my windowsill late winter are usually phalaenopsis orchids and amaryllis.

            This year, I also have bulbs I’m forcing—the ones I couldn’t find time to plant last fall, threw in the fridge in early November and took out and potted in late January. After they bloom indoors, I will plant them outside, when the soil thaws.

            These weren’t bulbs typically recommended for forcing, like hyacinth. Now I see why. Iris reticulata, the rock garden iris, put up tall spikey, grassy leaves (that our cats chewed a bit before I put them out of reach), with the blooms hiding in the leaves. In the garden, the flower stems would be short and the leaves shorter. I blame the low-e glass in our windows for the missing wavelengths affecting growth.

            The species tulips, delicate little things from which typical tulips are descended, got leggy, too. But at least the flowers were above the leaves. They started blooming at the very end of February, adding a touch of hope to those below-zero days.

            Siberian squill also grew leggy—and then fell over, its little blue flowers never opening quite like they do in the patch I have in the backyard, which blooms in late April.

This is our seed starter from Lee Valley Tools. Pour water in the reservoir and wicking (hidden) delivers it to the open bottoms of the planting cells. That and the plastic dome keeps the soil moist. When seedlings emerge, we remove the dome. When the seedlings have one set of true leaves we transplant them in 2.5-inch plastic pots we’ve saved from nursery purchases. We may up pot one more time before plants are ready for the garden in late May. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Vegetables and other annuals

            March is time for planning your summer garden.

            Thinking about growing vegetables and annual flowers? If you don’t want to dig up lawn and or weeds, consider containers. A tomato plant will need at least a 5-gallon bucket with plentiful drainage holes. Fill it half with potting soil and half with compost. Squeeze in a few flowers in larger containers.

Raised beds can be built on top of existing lawn or weeds. To suppress aggressive weeds before filling it with weed-free garden dirt and compost, you might want to put down a layer of cardboard first.  But if it’s a shallow raised bed, sides less than 18 inches, the cardboard might cramp the vegetable roots.

            One advantage to container gardening is that you can change the location if you discover your tomato plant isn’t getting at least 6 hours of sun, is getting too hot mid-afternoon, is farther than you want to drag a hose, is in too much wind, or is too far from the house.

            Unless you have a hoop house (affordable substitute for a greenhouse), pick short season vegetable varieties suited to our short growing season. Seed packets will show “days to maturity” so look for vegetables that will give you edibles in under 90 days. The count starts when you transplant a seedling after the average last day of frost, May 25. The date of our average first frost is September 20. A 55-day tomato will give you fruit by the end of July or beginning of August.

            When figuring out when to start seeds indoors, count back from May 25 and allow about 6-8 weeks or whatever the seed package says.

            Some of the best tomatoes for our area will be available as transplants at the Laramie County Master Gardeners plant sale May 14 at the Event Center at Archer but wait to safely plant them.

            Whenever you “up pot” or transplant almost any plant—annuals, perennials, shrubs, trees—the latest advice is to gently remove as much old soil from the roots first so that the plant will establish faster in its new location.

            Forget starting plants in peat pots. You are supposed to be able to pop the whole pot and plant into the garden but here in Cheyenne, you will discover by fall few roots ever penetrated the peat barrier.

            Start thinking about how you will protect your veggies from hail. If you are growing intensively in a container or raised bed, you can knock together a hail guard. It looks like a card table that stands taller than the plants, but the playing surface is hardware cloth, a rough wire mesh.

            To be a successful vegetable grower, make a commitment to check your plants every day. Catching pest and disease problems early means you have time to get horticultural advice from the Laramie County Extension office or the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens.

            Every day, pick out the tiny weeds. You’ll hardly disturb the soil and all the hardworking microorganisms in it. Cut large annual weeds off at the soil surface instead of pulling them. A couple inches of mulch keeps most weeds from sprouting and keeps the soil moist longer.

            Gardening can contribute to mental health, but only if you spend time in the garden with your plants.

Iris reticulata, also known as rock garden iris, is another small spring-blooming bulb that can be forced to bloom indoors in winter. Plant the bulbs outside in early summer and they could rebloom next spring, if not the year after that. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Weeds, seeds and water

Many desirable Wyoming native perennials, like this showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa), easily self-seed in gardens. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Published Nov. 20, 2021, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

Weeds, seeds and water: what I learned this growing season

By Barb Gorges

           This last summer I learned how three different gardens had three different personalities despite all featuring perennial flowers for pollinators.

Weeds

            My home flower beds are reclaimed from the lawn and surrounded by it. So my weed, unwanted vegetation, is bluegrass, which spreads by rhizomes—horizontally spreading roots. I just dig around the edges, and maybe enlarge a bed while I’m at it and add some leaf mulch. These beds are stuffed with plants so there is very little bare ground and sunlight to encourage weed seed sprouting.

             There were very few weeds in Garden #2. I checked it once a week, spending 20 or 30 minutes mostly looking for the few weeds and taking pictures of what was blooming. It has bare spots where I’ve tried again and again to get something to grow, but other spots are filling in nicely.

            Garden #3 was a weedy mess this year. Every week there was a plethora of fresh weed seedlings. It was mostly kochia, traceable to weed skeletons blowing in over the winter and dropping their seeds. I realized as the summer progressed that pulling weeds disrupts the soil and exposes a new crop of seeds to sunlight. Many weed seeds need light to sprout.

            If the ground is moist, the smallest weeds can be carefully pulled out without disturbing soil. But the annual weeds that get big quickly, like kochia, maybe should just be cut off at ground level. But probably not perennial weeds like bindweed and thistle that double when cut.

            Whether something is a weed is dependent on the gardener’s definition. For instance, curlycup gumweed is one of the yellow, daisy-type flowers in late summer. It decorates the edges of our roads. It needs little water, attracts pollinators and it is a Wyoming native. But it self-seeds prolifically and may be better suited to a meadow-style perennial garden than a formal garden—even if the formal garden is also a water-smart garden for pollinators.    

Seeds

            Perennial gardens planted with natives and varieties that haven’t lost their reproductive powers can be self-perpetuating. As weedy as Garden #3 was, it also had a bumper crop of flower seedlings this year. I was happy to see them because every square inch of the garden that is covered in flowers is another square inch without weeds.

              It can be tricky telling weed seedlings and flower seedlings apart. Sometimes you can tell by proximity—the seed didn’t fall far from the mother plant. But sometimes the seedling leaves are not very much like the adult leaves, so you have to wait a few weeks. Taking photos of seedlings at different stages helps, as does finding a copy of “Weeds of the West.”

Water

            Up to a point, more water means a bigger plant. More water means plants can be grown closer together. Compare a plot in the thick vegetation along a creek with a plot out in the Red Desert. Each plant in the desert has to have a root system spread out around it to quickly grab rain and snowmelt.

            I had no control of the irrigation at either Garden #2 or #3, except for dragging hoses to water transplants for a couple weeks. I can’t tell you the amount or the watering schedule since I visited each only once a week. Eventually, I realized part of the weed problem at Garden #3 was too much water—no wonder the kochia seemed to grow so fast!

            Over at Garden #2 there are dry spots and wet spots. It has a sprinkler system rather than a drip or soaker hose system. Because many of the plants are taller than the often horizontal spray of a sprinkler head,  they block the spray. Those plants get more water than the ones beyond them.

           A system of soaker hoses under mulch would be better, except I’m not thrilled with the idea of plastic hose snaking all over the garden. However, with water shortages in Cheyenne’s future as more and more houses and businesses are built, we are going to have to think about gardens with flowers spaced further apart. Or rain gardens that collect runoff.

           Mark’s and my yard is not exactly water-smart. We continue to use the old lawn sprinkler system, watering the lawn and the flower beds embedded in it. But it also waters our four large old trees. So far, they are healthy and we can afford to water them. Someday though, I’m sure  I’ll be learning how to garden with more sunshine and less water.

Spring gardening pleasures

May 4: Tiny hail shower engulfs species tulips. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle May 7, 2021, “Finding new growth is a spring gardening pleasure”

By Barb Gorges

We had to buy new grow lights because we had so many tomato seedlings this spring. If you arrive at the Laramie County Master Gardener Plant Sale early enough, you can buy one.

Mark saved seed from our Anna Maria’s Heart heirloom tomatoes and our friends’ ‘Sunrise’ cherry tomatoes. He doesn’t test for seed germination, just seeds thickly. This year, he has 96 tomatoes growing on shelves in the bathtub and in the basement.

April 29: Mark Gorges uses fluorescent and LED (bottom shelf) lights to augment a skylight over the bathtub of this small bathroom to grow tomatoes for the Laramie County Master Gardener plant sale. Photo by Barb Gorges.

We bought two new shop light-type grow lights. These have red and blue LEDs. I was surprised to see that within a year of my last visit to Menard’s lighting department, there is not a fluorescent bulb to be found. You either buy a new fixture with integrated LEDs, or LEDs in a tube that can be made to work with some types of old fluorescent fixtures.

            I thought the 30-inch snowstorm mid-March (technically still winter) made my bulbs late to bloom. Then I realized I needed to remove a layer of leaf litter from over the crocuses. Later, when I glimpsed what I thought was a piece of windblown trash, it was really the big white “Giant Dutch” crocuses finally open.

April 10: “Giant Dutch” crocus. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Last spring my gardening was curtailed when I leaned over to pick a piece of trash out of the garden and wrenched my back. This year I’m trying not to do too much at one time. Then it snows or rains or blows too hard and limits me anyway.

            I was out again the last week in April pulling more leaves, finding many of my perennials sprouting greenery. Our front yard is a wind-swept expanse on which I’ve established mini windbreaks by planting a couple 18-inch-high junipers and by not cutting back my perennials in the fall. It works great for catching leaves and snow and protecting over-wintering pollinator insects.

I leave a lot of leaves as mulch to save moisture and to compost in place, but not so many that self-seeding plants can’t get some light. Later in the summer I add leaves back to suppress weeds.

            I also spent several hours in April cutting back last year’s perennial stems, chopping them into 3 to 6-inch segments and leaving them to become mulch/compost.

Some gardeners would have you leave old stems up longer or let them decompose without help, but in a publicly visible place like my front yard, or the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens Habitat Hero garden, where a crew of volunteers made cutting back go fast, it’s better to do it in April. Plus, it makes it easier to see the small, early bulbs blooming: crocus, squill, grape hyacinth and iris reticulata.

            Mark and I bought a new whiskey half-barrel planter, with the “Jack Daniels” stencil barely visible. Our old barrel lasted more than 30 years and two others the same age persist in more protected locations.

            Five years ago, in one of the few sunny spots in the backyard, I planted daylilies and iris I received free. Unfortunately, it is right where anyone needing access to our electrical connections needs to stand. I think it is time to move those plants and try a hardy groundcover planted between flagstones, maybe the “Stepables,” www.stepables.com. The trickiest part will be to find some to buy.

May 5: Perennial seeds planted in milk jugs in February (milk jug tops scrunched into the bottoms) sprout. Photo by Barb Gorges.

            In February I planted 24 milk jugs with perennial flower seeds and left them out in a cold, snowy corner of the backyard (see “winter sowing” at www.CheyenneGardenGossip.wordpress.com). I moved them all to a sunnier location mid-April and all but five have seedlings already [the last five sprouted by May 8]. The question is, where do I plant them in June?

            I’ve been studying the front yard all winter from my office window. There’s still some lawn I can dig up to expand a bed and yet leave a wide margin of lawn along the sidewalk for shoveled snow, dogs on loose leashes and energetic children. I’ll continue to leave little turf trails for the mail carriers’ shortcuts.

            If you are tree planting this spring, be sure to remove all the burlap, twine and wire. Gently spread those roots out and get the transition from roots to trunk right at ground level. See Steve Scott’s excellent how-to at www.cheyennegardengossip.wordpress.com, “How to plant a tree in Cheyenne, Wyoming.”

            It’s a grand time to be in the garden, discovering all the new flowers and green growth, with the accompaniment of birdsong.

May 1: Honeybee visits Nanking cherry bushes in our backyard. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Gardeners busy in February

Amaryllis flower begins to open. Photo by Barb Gorges.

“Gardeners are busy in February” was published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle Feb. 6, 2021.

By Barb Gorges

            February is a busy time for those of us who enjoy a plant-filled life.

            The first half of the month is overshadowed by Valentine’s Day. Did you know that 80 percent of American-sold cut flowers are grown in Columbia and flown here? Those growing conditions are often toxic to the environment and workers. Read about how that happened at www.BrownPoliticalReview.org, by searching for “Veriflora.”

            Veriflora, a program offered through SCS Global Services, is an attempt to encourage sustainable ornamental horticulture. You are most likely to find certified plants and flowers somewhere like Whole Foods, but try The Home Depot too.

            If your beloved is a gardener, try a gift certificate to a nearby or online nursery instead. Or one of the myriad garden books from Timber Press.

            Winter is when gardeners gather for lectures and conferences—virtually this year. Here in Cheyenne the 7^th Annual Habitat Hero Workshop in mid-January featuring Douglas Tallamy and two other speakers had more than 300 people register. You can watch the recordings by using the links at www.CheyenneAudubon.wordpress.com, on the Habitat Hero tab.

            Feb. 27 is the Landscaping with Colorado Native Plants Conference, with a day’s worth of speakers. See https://landscapingwithcoloradonativeplants.wordpress.com/. There you can find the speakers’ handouts from conferences dating back to 2017.

            Fort Collins Nursery has its usual list of Saturday classes, now through early March: https://fortcollinsnursery.com.

Amaryllis flower at its peak. Photo by Barb Gorges.

February is the peak of my amaryllis collection flowering. I don’t put the plants through dormancy to try to get them to bloom at Christmas. Instead, I keep them watered and green year-round and they naturally bloom anytime between January and April.

I now have two Phalaenopsis orchids and their bloom schedule is similar. The new one started blooming shortly after it arrived by mail last April, and a couple flowers never dropped off. At the end of January, as I write this, they are still hanging on, surrounded by fresh blooms.

I might have hyacinth blooming by mid-month. In the fall I buried a pot of bulbs out in the vegetable garden. I marked the calendar for Feb. 2 to dig them up and bring them in.

The geraniums I brought in last fall are also blooming, so I don’t think Mark will be thinking I need more flowers for Valentine’s Day.

February isn’t too late to buy or order seeds. Last year, seed sellers ran short trying to keep up with demand—one garden news source says the pandemic encouraged 16 million people to garden for the first time last spring. Everyone should be better prepared this year.

Try regional online seed catalogs:

–High Desert Seed of Montrose, Colorado

–Wild Mountain Seeds of Carbondale, Colorado

–High Ground Gardens of Crestone, Colorado

–Snake River Seeds of Idaho

–Grand Prismatic Seed Company of Salt Lake City, Utah (also carries seeds for dye plants)

February is my last chance to get my winter sowing done. This is the technique well suited to cold-weather vegetables and perennial seeds, especially those that require cold treatment.

In a translucent milk jug that has been sliced horizontally just below the handle, I put wet potting soil about 3 inches deep. Seeds are planted at a depth of twice their width and then the top of the milk jug is forced into the bottom—they are flexible so it works. Leave the jugs on the north or east side of a wall so they don’t get too much sun.

Maybe move them into a sunnier location in late April, early May, when seedlings start popping up. No expensive lights or heat mats required. Just make sure the potting soil doesn’t dry out and that you slashed some slits in the bottoms of the jugs so that melting snow doesn’t cause all the contents to float.

Itching to spend time outside? Have any tree or shrub pruning to do?

With our lack of snow this winter, you have plenty of time to get out a measuring tape and measure your yard and plot its current accoutrements on paper. Make copies so you can sketch in different ideas for next season. I want to enlarge my front native/perennial/pollinator beds using the ergonomic shovel, HERShovel, Mark gave me for Christmas.

Finally, visit the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens conservatory. Walk through the tropical display on the first floor, following the arrows. The humidity will feel wonderful. Across the lobby in the Orangerie, continuing through March 13, is the Annual Glass Art Show, full of all the colors we crave in winter.  

How to be a vegetable gardener in Cheyenne

My beginner’s garden included green beans, cherry tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and summer squash.

• Check out Laramie County Master Gardeners’ Virtual Plant Sale at https://www.lcmg.org/ now through May 31, 2020.
• The Seed Library at the Laramie County Library will mail you seeds, https://lclsonline.org/?s=Seed+library (spring 2020).

Also published May 15, 2020, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

How to be a vegetable gardener in Cheyenne

By Barb Gorges

Mail-order seed companies report that they are running out of seed—vegetable seeds primarily. Seems like we’re all wanting to take a step towards self-sufficiency this spring when there are so many other aspects of life beyond our control.

Catherine Wissner, University of Wyoming Extension horticulturist for Laramie County, assured me Cheyenne’s garden centers, including the big box stores, have plenty of seeds. And the Laramie County Master Gardeners plan to have their annual plant sale, one way or another, May 31, including a virtual plant sale already in progress, https://www.lcmg.org/.

The UW Extension folks have a variety of videos and recordings about Wyoming gardening available at https://www.uwyo.edu/barnbackyard/live/recordings.html.

While my book on how to garden in Cheyenne won’t be ready for several months, the contents are currently available online at https://cheyennegardengossip.wordpress.com/ as an archive of all my Wyoming Tribune Eagle garden columns since 2012. You can search for information about growing vegetables and it will be suited to Cheyenne and in more detail.

If you’ve gardened elsewhere in the country, there are three things you need to know about vegetable gardening in Cheyenne: use drip irrigation, prepare hail protection and never add lime to our alkaline soils.

If you’ve never gardened before, well, it’s mostly about choosing the right vegetables for our climate and season length, giving plants the right amount of water, and mulching.

Cheyenne gardener Barb Sahl uses several kinds of raised beds. Raised beds can also be made with wooden boards or cinder blocks.

Step 1 – Find a spot for a vegetable bed or containers.

It should be sunny for at least 6 hours a day, preferably morning, and relatively level and within reach of a hose or a drip irrigation system.

Keep the veggies close to your back door so that it is easy to saunter out every day to admire them and pull a couple little weeds.

If the site currently doesn’t even grow weeds well, it could be subsoil left behind by the builders. The soil can be amended and over time, become productive. But for success this season, think raised bed or containers (see my archives).

Also, if this is your first attempt at vegetable gardening, keep the size of the bed reasonable, maybe 4 feet wide (what you can reach across from either side) by 6 or 8 feet long.

Step 2 – Prepare the bed.

I have never used a rototiller. I prefer the (husband with) shovel method. Digging by hand will keep you from creating a bed bigger than you can manage, especially if this is your first garden.

If you have any compostable material, like last year’s tree leaves, lawn mowings not treated with pesticides, vegetable debris from the kitchen or any old plant materials that don’t include weed seeds or invasive roots, you can dig that in.

Dedicated gardeners will send soil samples out for analysis on exactly what the soil needs for growing vegetables. Think about doing that later this season.

Some gardeners work their soil until it’s as fine and chunk free as cocoa powder, but that isn’t necessary—in fact, it’s hard on the soil microbes that can help you. You might want to smooth a row a few inches wide for planting tiny seeds and make sure there aren’t any canyons that will swallow the cucumbers.

Gold Nugget cherry tomatoes are an early (55 days to maturity), determinate variety. These were grown with seed from Pinetree Garden Seeds, a mail order company in Maine.

Step 3 – Shop for seeds.

If you know any successful gardeners in our area, see if they will gift you some seeds.

Otherwise, you need to read the seed packets carefully. Keep in mind our average last day of frost is around May 25 and our average first day of frost is mid-September. It’s a short season. You need to look for short season vegetables.

Each packet will tell you how many days from seed germination until maturity (harvest). Remember, some seeds take a week or more to germinate. Look for vegetable varieties that are in the range of 45 to 70 days. Next year you can try starting tomatoes indoors or growing them with some kind of season extender like a hoop house or row cover.

Meanwhile, look for tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers and peppers ready to transplant.

Easy to grow from seed are the squashes, beans, kale, chard and leaf lettuces (not head lettuce).

Step 4 – Plant seeds and transplant plants.

Follow the seed packet directions on when and how to plant. Make sure your soil is moist already.

For transplanting, normally you plant the plant so it sits at the same height as it did in the pot. However, if it’s a tomato that looks a little leggy, you can bury a few inches of its stem.

Step 5 – Mulch.

We use old tree leaves and pesticide-free grass clippings at our house. Straw is good, but not hay or anything with seeds. An inch or two of mulch will keep down the weeds and keep the soil from drying out too fast.

Step 6 – Water.

Catherine said consistency is most important. Once the plants are established, you can let the top inch of soil dry out (test it with your finger) in between thorough waterings, but if you are not consistent with providing enough water, you will not get good yields.

If you seem to have impenetrable clay soils, try watering for a couple minutes, then water elsewhere and then come back 15 minutes later and see if the soil will absorb the rest of the water it needs.

Step 7 – Fertilize.

Seedlings don’t need fertilizer for a few weeks, but vegetables are soon hungry. Organic gardeners use compost—like your mulch as it decays, or “teas” made from soaking compost—read up first. Avoid all manure, Catherine recommended. It tends to be salty (bad for our soils), full of weed seeds and may harbor pathogens. Avoid chemical fertilizers with too much nitrogen too—nitrogen grows great leaves but little if any fruit. Do not use weed and feed products—they will kill your veggies.

Step 8 – Weed.

If you mulch and don’t overwater, you shouldn’t have much of a weed problem. Visit your veggies every day and pull them or use a dandelion digger (don’t hoe) on any little green interlopers. It’s much easier than waiting until the weeds grow roots to Earth’s core and shed seeds across the continent.

Step 8 – Protect.

Everything is out to get your veggies before you can harvest them: frost, wind, hail, antelope, rabbits, insects, diseases. There are preventative and non-chemical actions you can take. Check my archives.

Step 9 – Harvest.

I remember the first summer after I became a Master Gardener. I told my husband, our family’s vegetable grower, that I wanted to try to grow vegetables myself from start to finish. I did, and they had the most incredible flavor.

Cheyenne gardener Sandra Cox used large amounts of compost when starting a garden at her new house and had fantastic results.

Seed-starting lights

Mark started tomato seedlings under a fluorescent shop light a week before this photo was taken. We have utility shelves set up in the unused bathtub in the hall bathroom. The rest of the year the shelves are filled with houseplants that do well with only light from the bathroom’s skylight.

Published Mar. 15, 2020, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “Better lighting means stronger seedlings”

By Barb Gorges

When hours of daylight are quickly lengthening and seed packets are showing up at garden centers, you know it’s time for flower and vegetable seed starting. If you’ve never tried, it’s time to learn how.

You can go to my archived columns at https://cheyennegardengossip.wordpress.com/ and search “seed starting.” You’ll learn how starting from seed saves you money and gives you options for tomatoes and other vegetables adapted to Cheyenne. Get tips on selecting seeds, potting soil and pots. Learn how to time planting, how deep to plant seeds, how and how much to water and how to avoid damping off. Then learn how to harden off seedlings before transplanting them.

This year I want to talk about light. The right light will give you nice, stocky green plants instead of spindly, sickly ones.

There’s a misconception that windowsills work great for starting vegetable seeds. After all, millions of houseplants can’t be wrong. But houseplant origins are typically the shady understory of tropical forests. Vegetables prefer full sun. Also, many windows are now treated to improve energy efficiency (lowering heat transference) by blocking parts of the spectrum. Greenhouses work better than windows because they give plants direct light from more directions for more hours per day.

Without a greenhouse—glass or hoop house—we’re talking supplemental lighting. On a recent trip to my nearest big box store I found all kinds of grow light bulbs that will fit in a lamp but are not adequate for more than a couple pots. The store also had ordinary 4-foot-long fluorescent shop lights which fit perfectly over two flats of seedlings and will produce decent growth, whether you find full-spectrum bulbs or special grow light bulbs.

But LED lights are taking over. At the same big box store, I found 4-foot LED shop lights. The bulbs are integrated with the fixture and come in a variety of brightnesses, 3,200 to 10,000 lumens, with a range of prices to match, $15 to $75.

There are also LED bulbs, both regular and grow lights, that will replace the bulbs in your T8 or T12 fluorescent fixtures, but they won’t be quite as energy efficient as the integrated ones.

You’ll notice LED bulbs can be about four times more expensive than normal fluorescents, but they cost less than half as much to run and are supposed to last longer.

Then there are the industrial LED grow lights that emphasize blue and red lighting—the important part of the spectrum for growing plants. They come with industrial prices as well. Choosing one gets quite technical. Check out the Colorado cannabis grow suppliers for advice.

However, the few weeks of light our tomato seedlings need hardly justifies industrial lighting.

Light set-up

Because you want to keep the light about a couple inches above the tops of the seedlings, you need to be able to adjust the distance as they grow. Too close and seedlings dry out. Too far and they get spindly. Hang the shop light using the chains that come with it, shortening as needed. Joe Lamp’l, host of PBS’s Growing a Greener World, suggests using ratchet pulleys instead.

Or, rather than move the light, you can stack boxes under the flats to bring them up to the light and remove the boxes to adjust the distance as the plants grow.

How do you hang the shop light? You can hang it from the ceiling over a table, especially somewhere like an unfinished basement room.

A set of adjustable utility shelves works well if there is a way you can attach your light fixtures to the underside of the shelves and adjust them. Keep in mind the distance between shelves must accommodate seedling height at six or eight weeks plus a couple inches of space and the light fixture thickness.

Mark and I put freestanding utility shelves in our unused bathtub. For the top shelf we put an expandable shower curtain rod over it and hang the shop light from it.

Plugging it in

Some shop lights can be strung together. Otherwise, if you have multiple lights, you are looking at a power strip, giving you a handy way to flip them off at once. Or, plug the power strip into a timer. Lamp’l’s latest home research shows 16 hours of light per day is about right—seedlings need to sleep too.

Additional tip

Mark and I use electric heat mats under the flats and clear plastic domes or plastic wrap over them to keep the moisture in. But at the first sign of seed germination, they should both be removed.

Panayoti Kelaidis to inspire Wyoming gardeners to go native Feb. 29

“Going Native: International plant explorer Panayoti Kelaidis wants to inspire Wyoming gardeners”

Published Feb. 9, 2020, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, https://www.wyomingnews.com/features/outdoors/international-plant-explorer-panayoti-kelaidis-wants-to-inspire-wyoming-gardeners/article_213c7e0a-9bc6-5de5-9130-d5521285bd47.html.

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6^th Annual Cheyenne Habitat Hero Workshop: “Rethinking Wyoming Landscaping – Native Plant Gardening 101”

Feb. 29, 8 a.m. – 4 p.m., Laramie County Community College

$25 fee includes lunch. Register by Feb. 27 at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4463444, where the complete schedule can be read.

Questions: Mark Gorges, 307-287-4953, mgorges@juno.com.

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By Barb Gorges, with Niki Kottmann

Panayoti Kelaidis stepped out to pour us a couple cups of Ceylonese tea. While I waited, I noticed his office at the Denver Botanic Gardens has floor-to-ceiling shelves full of plant books for parts of the world he’s travelled to.

Numerous plaques and certificates on one wall commemorate his contributions to horticulture over a lengthy career. His latest accolade is to being chosen as a judge at this year’s Philadelphia Flower Show.

The windowsill features a parade of small, unique succulents and cactuses, part of Kelaidis’s extensive personal plant collection at his Denver home. I toured the nearly half-acre garden on the Garden Bloggers Fling last summer.

Kelaidis, senior curator and director of outreach for the Denver Botanic Gardens, will be the keynote speaker at the sixth annual Cheyenne Habitat Hero workshop Feb. 29.

            As part of his job at the gardens, Kelaidis leads plant tours to foreign countries, most recently Tibet. A tour of the Sichuan, China, planned for June will depend on world health concerns. It’s helpful he reads Chinese, having once been a student of the language.

Kelaidis is also enthusiastic about Wyoming, where he visited two favorite aunts as a child. In the 1980s, he also travelled our state for his native seed business. He likes to take people on plant tours to the Cody area. As the president-elect of the North American Rock Garden Society, he’s considering a future convention in Cheyenne—we have natural rock gardens nearby to show off.

Kelaidis’s plant knowledge is extensive, especially grassland and alpine species. He co-authored the 2015 book “Steppes, The Plants and Ecology of the World’s Semi-arid Regions,” about the four major steppe regions in the world, including the Great Plains. He also writes a blog called Prairiebreak, http://prairiebreak.blogspot.com/, and he established the Rock Alpine Garden at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

How does he describe himself? “Plant nerd” and a friend calls him a plant geek. I think he’s both. He’ll tell you he isn’t a garden designer, but I’d say he looks at an even bigger picture. And that is why he’s been invited to be the Habitat Hero workshop’s keynote speaker.

Kelaidis’s Feb. 29 talk, “Rethinking Wyoming Landscaping—Native Plant Gardening 101,” will echo Douglas Tallamy’s book “Bringing Nature Home.” Both it and Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring,” mark sea changes in our relationship to nature. Carson’s book, published in 1962, showed the devastation caused by indiscriminate use of pesticides, while Tallamy’s 2007 book showed us our conventional landscaping and gardening practices are detrimental to native insects, birds, other wildlife, and consequently, people. We need to plant native plants to support native insects, including native bees and butterflies. They are the foundation of the healthy ecosystems we enjoy and require.

At first, Kelaidis thought Tallamy was a little too radical, saying all ornamental plants from elsewhere needed to be replaced with natives. For many generations, the goal of landscaping and ornamental gardening has been beauty, Kelaidis said. But now he recognizes the other goal must be “ecological services.”

“We really need to figure out how to create a garden that is part of the natural system, not an obstacle,” said Kelaidis. Can that be beautiful? Can we shift the paradigm completely?

Can we make beautiful gardens with native plants? What we mean by “native” varies. For some American gardeners, it means the species originated on our continent, even if 3000 miles away. Or “native” for Cheyenne could mean any Great Plains species, or even just those from the prairie outside town.

Xeriscaping, gardening with less water, began about 45 years ago in the Denver area, Kelaidis said. With a growing population that could quickly run out of water, smart people realized changing from landscape plants popular in parts of the country with high rainfall to plants that need less water would help. The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities promotes this philosophy as well. Many of the more xeric plants are natives.

Kelaidis worked with the Denver Botanic Gardens and Colorado State University to help form Plant Select, https://plantselect.org/. The brand develops plants native to our high plains and intermountain region for the nursery trade. It makes it easy for gardeners to grow beautiful plants by planting those that love to grow here—and use less water. Although, Kelaidis said, there’s still room to grow the occasional prized non-native, water-hungry ornamental.

The water-wise and pollinator-friendly movements were combined a few years ago by Audubon Rockies’ Habitat Hero program. The five previous workshops in Cheyenne have been well-received. I think it’s because people enjoy doing something positive like gardening to support our environment.

After Kelaidis’s keynote address, “Rethinking Wyoming Landscaping – Learning from the Natives,” the workshop’s other presenters will walk attendees through the steps to take to make a Habitat Hero garden.

Talks will include how to protect and maintain natural prairie if you have some already, deciding on a location for a garden, removing unwanted plants whether turf or weeds, choosing plants, proper planting techniques, maintaining plants and gardens, and how to apply to be a certified Habitat Hero. The two hands-on components will be about how to install drip irrigation and how to use the winter sowing technique to grow native plants from seed (seeds, soil and containers included).

Panayoti Kelaidis checks out plants at Soapstone Prairie Natural Area in northern Colorado.