I’ll be at the Local Author Celebration at the Laramie County Library Saturday, Nov. 25, 2023, from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. I’ll have copies of all three of my books for sale (cash, check or Zelle),:
— “Cheyenne Birds by the Month – 104 Species of Southeastern Wyoming’s Resident and Visiting Birds” – $23
–“Cheyenne Garden Gossip – Locals Share Secrets for High Plains Gardening Success” – $25
–“Quilt Care, Construction and Use Advice – How to Help Your Quilt Live to 100” – $10
–“Dear Book – The 1916-1920 Diary of Gertrude Oehler Witte” – orders, $23
Signing special: All prices include sales tax.
If you only have a credit card, pick up books at one of these Cheyenne locations and bring them by for signing: 307 Made, Barnes & Noble, Bonsai Books, Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, Cheyenne Depot Museum, Cheyenne Honey, Curt Gowdy State Park, the Hawthorn Tree, JAX, Riverbend Nursery, Sunshine Plant Company, Wyoming Game and Fish Department Headquarters, Wyoming State Museum.
Here’s a peek inside the Brights’ “New Greenhouse in the Snow.” Photo courtesy Greenhouse in the Snow.
Geothermal “Greenhouse in the Snow” is popular way to grow fruits and vegetables year round
Published Oct. 13, 2023, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
By Barb Gorges
A greenhouse is at the top of many gardeners’ wish lists in a climate like ours.
Hoop houses are affordable, but our wind can quickly shred them. Plus, greenhouses are expensive to heat if you want to grow through the winter, not just get an early start in spring and extend the season in the fall.
Russ Finch, of Alliance, Nebraska, where winter is even colder than here in Cheyenne, gave the problem some thought about 35 years ago.
First, for heating, he decided to go with geothermal. He’d already tried it and liked it for his home. In our climate, the temperature is a constant 50 degrees at 8 feet below ground level. If you put tubes filled with air (some systems use fluids) down there, you can circulate it to help you warm a structure in winter, or cool one in summer.
Second, he put a third of the greenhouse height below ground level. A conventional greenhouse may have tables at counter height filled with pots of plants, or plants are planted in raised beds or directly in the ground. Russ dug out a 4-foot-deep trench that was 4 feet wide for planting citrus trees. The shoulders on either side, held in place with retaining walls, grow shorter plants.
Conventional greenhouses have glass or other light-conducting coverings all the way around. Russ put a solid wall in on the north side of the long, south-facing structure to conserve heat.
Russ’s “Greenhouse in the Snow,” https://greenhouseinthesnow.com/, worked so well, other people wanted to build one. Eventually, Russ, now in his 90s, partnered with Allen Bright, who has a machine shop in Alliance and can make the overhead trusses from steel.
Laramie County Master Gardener Charles Pannebaker suggested we take a tour of this amazing greenhouse last month, and 13 of us went with him. He is the most likely of us, partnering with his son, to build one.
We toured the “New Greenhouse in the Snow,” built at Allen’s house eight years ago. His wife, Lisa, gave the tour. She has orange, lemon, lime, kumquat, grapefruit and fig trees growing along with pineapples, everbearing strawberries, vegetables and herbs, plus flowers for the bees.
While Russ made it a business taking his produce to the farmers market so people could buy locally-grown citrus, Lisa is more interested in experimenting and gives away surpluses.
Much of Lisa’s information concerned general greenhouse management issues such as how to deal with pests like whiteflies and aphids. She has turtles and toads helping, plus safe sprays. She uses a combination of drip irrigation and spray irrigation on timers.
Some crops can be grown regardless of the season, but others, like tomatoes, require additional lighting in winter because winter days are just not long enough. Lisa does not use supplemental lighting and adjusts her crops seasonally.
While a kit and labor for building this geothermally-heated greenhouse is comparable to a conventional glass one, the difference is that heating and cooling cost very little. A conventional garage heater may have to kick in when temperatures get down to minus 20.
Kits can be ordered for a structure as short as 56 feet long and in 6-foot increments up to 102 feet. Some components you buy locally. You can save on labor if you have your own backhoe and have construction experience.
Ballpark cost for the newest full-length kit is equivalent to one new pickup. Labor would equal a second, fancier truck. But you would save on your grocery bills and could skip the trips to Hawaii you used to take to warm up mid-winter.
Next to the “New Greenhouse in the Snow” at the Brights’ is the “Newest Greenhouse in the Snow” that was still under construction when we toured it.
The idea, Lisa said, is to make this one more accessible and more aesthetically pleasing. The trench is still 4 feet deep, but it is 8 feet wide and the beds on either side are only 3 feet high. The retaining walls have planting pockets in them and there are upright supports that could support hanging baskets and vines.
The north wall is heavily insulated. The 230 feet of geothermal tubes are laid directly under the greenhouse instead of buried in a trench circling it. Solar electric runs the system. The floor is covered in concrete pavers instead of woodchips. The pavers can be removed wherever trees are going to be planted.
It will be interesting to see how the newest version works. Meanwhile, the “new” version is selling like hotcakes, 700 so far. Russ and the Brights have licensed businesses in Canada and France to offer the kits so shipping costs don’t get out of hand. A deal in Australia is pending.
Habitat Hero workshop considers prairie restoration as a means for saving water
Published February 17, 2023 in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
By Barb Gorges
Earlier this month, the ninth annual Cheyenne Habitat Hero workshop was held at Laramie County Community College. It attracted about 100 in-person registrants and 400 online. The topic was how to garden in a future with less water available.
Keynote speaker Jim Tolstrup, director of the High Plains Environmental Center in Loveland, Colorado, gave us the background on how the high plains plant and animal communities have fared, first under the indigenous people, then trappers, settlers, ranchers, farmers and suburbanites.
Ninety-seven percent of American grasslands are degraded. It means that what we need today is not conservation – there is barely anything left to conserve – but restoration.
Restoration with native prairie plants is obvious for acreage owners. Prairie flowers replacing our urban lawns benefit pollinator species, if not antelope – unless you live near the base.
Rudbeckia (Black-eyed Susan). Photo by Barb Gorges.
One attribute of prairie plants is that once established, they don’t need irrigation.
The voices of experience included Jim’s, with his slide of lush vegetation that is no longer irrigated. Rex Lockman from the Laramie County Conservation District discussed the Native Prairie Island Project that started a seeding program for old and new septic leach fields last year. Nancy Loomis explained how to harvest free water.
Instead of driving over the snow in your driveway, shovel or blow it onto the lawn on either side. Nancy has put in a garden next to her driveway and the water from the snow she places on it means she doesn’t have to water it in the summer. She planted traditional groundcovers like creeping phlox, partridge feather and candytuft. Her future garden expansion will favor the natives she encourages at the garden next to Laramie County Library’s parking lot.
In Nancy’s and my 1950s-1960s neighborhoods, the sidewalk is adjacent to the curb – no green strip in between. It makes total sense to throw the shoveled snow on your lawn or garden instead of in the street – which makes it difficult for people to park in front of your house when they visit anyway.
A fair amount of your harvested snow from your hardscape, walks, decks, driveways, will evaporate on windy days. Plus, it isn’t going to sink much into the frozen ground. Obviously, more of the water from spring snowstorms will sink in.
But extra snow cover provides longer protection from our drying winds for your lawn and garden.
There is another way for you to harvest snow away from your hardscape areas. Let last year’s garden growth act as snow fence that collects blowing snow in drifts.
However, I recommend removing vegetable garden vegetation because those plants are prone to diseases. Consider replacing them in winter with other obstacles for collecting snow.
The most thought-provoking presentation was by Cheryl Miller, from the U.S. Geological Survey. She has a groundwater demonstration setup that reminded me of an ant farm. Sand and dirt were pressed between two clear vertical panels. Tubes inserted vertically represented wells. Food coloring representing pollution in one well could be seen to migrate into a neighboring well that was being pumped.
The representation of a stream was kept flowing by snowmelt and stormwater runoff as well as groundwater. Pumping nearby wells caused it to dry up.
Cheryl showed why septic systems need to be monitored so that they don’t adversely affect wells for drinking water. The same can be said for nitrates from over-fertilization.
I think the take-home for rural as well as urban residents and gardeners is that groundwater is precious and maybe shouldn’t be wasted on landscaping, especially when there are low water alternatives for lawns and flower gardens.
Zach Hutchinson from Audubon Rockies gave us an update on the development of a pollinator survey we can use in our home gardens.
Zach Hutchinson (center, green shirt) demonstrates how to do a pollinator survey one morning in July 2022 at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens’ Habitat Hero demonstration garden. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Michelle Bohanan gave us a pep talk on winter sowing, and provided the jugs, soil and native seed to try it at home.
We are already talking about a theme for next year’s workshop: getting back to basics. How do you restore, or install, a piece of prairie on your property?
Meanwhile, check the Habitat Hero information available at Audubon Rockies and Cheyenne Audubon websites.
This spring, look for native prairie plants for sale, but not the fancy varieties at the big box stores. Try shopping online at the High Plains Environmental Center’s plant sale featuring 150 straight native species. It starts March 31 and continues into September.
Place your order and then drive down to Loveland in the next day or two to pick it up. Be sure to allow time for a walk around the demonstration gardens there. It’s hard to believe only the new transplants are irrigated.
Jim Tolstrup discusses prairie plant propagation at the High Plains Environmental Center June 2022. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Bailey, 11 weeks old in this photo, loves the garden and backyard – and loves to eat anything in them. Photo by Barb Gorges.
What’s running wild through the backyard? It’s the Garden Godzilla
Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle Oct. 21, 2022
By Barb Gorges
It has been a tough growing season.
By the end of August, Cheyenne was behind in precipitation by 5 inches – of an average 10-15 inches per year. The upside was we got very little hail.
The downside is that without rain to even out our irrigation attempts, a lot of plants are suffering – most noticeably trees. Young trees turned their fall colors early or died. Top branches of old trees died. Please water your trees on warm days in fall and winter too.
People in my neighborhood who don’t water their lawns because their landlord doesn’t offer an incentive or they are unable to, grew fine crops of thistle and other invasive plants. I look at the thistle as a portent of things to come if we don’t get enough snow in the mountains and water rationing becomes severe.
But right now, Godzilla is trashing my yard.
It isn’t the drought. Its real name is Bailey and she is a Golden Retriever puppy Mark and I brought home at 8 weeks old at the beginning of September.
Our Midcentury Modern house came with a backyard enclosed by a 4- to 5-foot-high wall of pink concrete blocks so we don’t have trouble with rabbits. But two dogs ago, we fenced off the shrubs with 3-foot-high wire fencing and the flower and herb beds with fencing that is 2 feet tall. As our last dog became elderly and less interested in rampaging, and finally died this spring at 16, we took down the flower and herb bed fencing.
September 2 or 3, the 2-foot fencing went back up around the herb bed and the flower bed. We’d planted more shrubs with no fencing several years ago, but by September 10, Mark had 3-foot fencing up to keep Bailey from gnawing branches.
Bailey loves the echinacea on the front edge of the flower bed. By throwing herself on the fencing, at first held up between the steel corner posts only by a few green plastic-coated sticks of rebar, she could get the leaves to pop through the mesh of the fence and eat them. Echinacea has medicinal uses – is it the leaves? And then, on September 24, she started climbing over the fence. Mark bought and installed a roll of 3-foot-high fencing.
Good fences make good neighbors and better puppies. But the garden and shrubs aren’t the only parts of the backyard getting trashed. Bailey is eating holes in the lawn. I think she might be a truffle hunter.
Our previous Golden, Sally, nibbled little white mushrooms in our lawn without ill effect though we removed any we found first. There is this swathe of dark green that seems to harbor mushroom-growing abilities the rest of the yard doesn’t have. Bailey is smelling something and rooting out grass clumps. She’s also rooting out the new grass that Mark painstakingly grew this season wherever Sally burned holes.
Puppies chew in the house too. We pulled out our 30-year-old tube of Grannick’s Bitter Apple paste and applied it to various edges of lower kitchen cabinets, and I started looking for more. Petco couldn’t find theirs and Walmart only had 35-ounce spray bottles of bitter cherry, no apple. But our vet tech said cherry worked very well for her dog.
I thought maybe I could spray those holes in the grass that Bailey is intent on enlarging. But before I could try that, I sprayed my toes to protect them while I washed dishes. It kind of worked. Bailey stopped nipping and started licking my toes instead. Guess I’ll try ordering Grannick’s bitter apple.
Mary Sharp gave me a tour of her flower beds recently, and like other country gardens, most are enclosed with deer fencing. Some areas, like the vegetable garden that needs frequent attention, have a gate. Along the new berm, and a few other beds, there’s no fencing because the plants don’t appeal to Bambi and his herd. So far, there is no plant that doesn’t appeal to Bailey.
The good news is that puppyhood doesn’t last forever. But until Bailey grows an eight-hour bladder, I am the one getting up with her between 2 and 4 a.m. I gather the sleepy puppy in my arms and take her out to the backyard, stepping onto the cool grass barefoot. I set her down and she becomes a pale shape in the not-very-dark night. Through the leaves of the green ash tree, I can see the brightest constellations. On the warmest nights I hear the crickets [late September]. If I don’t get too lost in reverie, Bailey doesn’t wake up enough to get into mayhem. She comes when I call and we tiptoe back into the sleeping household.
Martha Mullikin stands with her fruit trees. Photo by Barb Gorges.
It isn’t too soon to think about the spring bareroot tree sale
By Barb Gorges
Back in the spring Martha Mullikin told me I had to come and see her orchard. I didn’t get there until mid-August. It should have been a good time to see fruit, but it just hasn’t been a good year for fruit trees here, with blossoms getting knocked off by late spring frost. Other years have been much better.
Cheyenne is not a hub for commercial orchards. Besides unpredictable weather we don’t have enough water. Fruiting trees and shrubs are not drought tolerant and need to be watered at least every week during the growing season. To up the chances of success, they need to be the right trees—and shrubs.
Martha picked her trees over the course of several years of Laramie County Master Gardeners’ bareroot tree sales offerings. She showed me her receipts from as far back as 2017 where one tree’s caliper, or diameter of the trunk, was slightly less than one inch. Five years later it is nearly triple that.
Small trees are easier to get established than larger ones—they recover from transplanting sooner (and they are easier to plant). And if they are bareroot, they establish faster than any with their roots coddled by potting soil.
Martha’s first tree was a Compass Cherry Plum, a cross between a cherry and a plum. Her next was a Liberty Apple. Apples need another apple to fertilize their blossoms. Luckily the neighbor has a crabapple that blooms at the same time, and that works. That year she also added an Evans Bali Cherry. Then came a Ure Pear and a Summercrisp Pear—pears also need two to fruit. The Zestar Apple finally bloomed last year. This year the blossoms froze. And Martha picked up a few elderberry shrubs.
This year’s LCMG bareroot sale includes 22 diverse plants from Bailey Nursery, a wholesale nursery in Minnesota. The choices are rated for USDA horticultural zones 3 and 4, colder than our Zone 5 area. That won’t protect them from frozen blossoms some years, but it should keep the trees from being killed by cold snaps.
Look for the sale online at LCMG.org in January and place your order for delivery in the spring.
There are a few plants on the list that aren’t fruiting: a couple of hardy peonies, a Bloomerang Lilac that will bloom twice a year, as well as two shade trees, Greenspire Linden and Lewis and Clark Prairie Expedition Elm. The elm is a cultivar from an American elm in North Dakota that survived Dutch Elm Disease years ago.
The list includes fruiting shrubs like Serviceberry, Purpleleaf Bailey Hazelnut, Nanking Cherry, Red Lake and Golden Currants and also Fallgold Raspberry which produces fruit twice a year.
Then there are the fruit trees. My favorite, Yellow Transparent Apple, is an old Russian heirloom. We had one in our yard in southeastern Montana. Its apples don’t store well but they make terrific applesauce.
Other apples chosen by the Bareroot Sale committee were selected for their hardiness and taste: Wealthy Apple, an 1868 heirloom; Liberty Apple, like Martha’s; and Cortland Apple, chosen to reestablish the orchard at the High Plains Arboretum on the west edge of Cheyenne. The Chestnut Crabapple is also good for baking, sauces, jams and jellies, and for pollinating apple trees.
Ure Pear is on the list again this year. This variety was discovered in Manitoba and is rated for chilly Zone 3. But remember, you need two pears, so you could pick up the other pear on the list, Golden Spice Pear, also a Zone 3.
There are two plums. Toka Plum is self-fertilizing and a Zone 3 cross between American and Japanese plums. The other, La Crescent Plum, needs another plum for fertilization and is rated for warmer Zone 4.
There’s an apricot, Pioneer Chinese Apricot. It’s one of the smaller fruit trees, about 10 feet tall when mature. It doesn’t need a second apricot, but cross-pollination does improve the yield.
And finally, there’s Mesabi Cherry, named for a geographic feature located near its Minnesota origins. It’s Zone 4, self-pollinating, 10-14 feet tall. Best part? Harvest is in July, way before many of these other fruits.
Before you place your order at the Laramie County Master Gardener website, be sure you have a planting location in mind that gets plenty of sun and to which you can get plenty of water.
And then success is all about the whims of Mother Nature. At least these are nice looking trees and shrubs, even in years without fruit.
Field bindweed, with either pink or white flowers, can easily out-compete vegetables, flowers and farm crops. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Published Oct. 16, 2021, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “How to best bindweed before it kills gardening joy.”
By Barb Gorges
Bindweed can smother a garden and kill someone’s interest in gardening in no time.
It thrives on the least neglect even in a drought year and it can positively explode with digging, tilling and irrigation.
Field bindweed is a perennial vine from Eurasia with cute white, sometimes pink, flowers and one to two-inch-long, arrowhead-shaped leaves. Linnaeus, the man who gave us the Latin two-word system for naming plants and animals, first described it in 1753 as Convolvulus (twining around) arvensis (of cultivated fields). At first, botanists thought there were many species or varieties but finally concluded that bindweed is very good at morphing to adapt to circumstances.
Bindweed can smother crops and take over vegetable gardens and even lawns that are not robust. It can sprout from a piece of root 14 feet deep, or in two weeks from a two-inch root piece left behind. Its seeds germinate easily, even after 50 years. It especially likes alkaline soils, like ours.
Best advice for controlling bindweed for home and garden follows Integrated Pest Management protocol.
First, prevention. Be sure you aren’t bringing in any sources of bindweed through mulch, topsoil or compost, or nursery stock. (Removing as much dirt from roots of potted plants or balled and burlapped trees and shrubs is also recommended as an improved, modern planting method.)
Deplete bindweed root reserves by removing leaves so it can’t photosynthesize. Break the plants off at the soil surface by hand or scuffle hoe—don’t dig the roots. Seedlings can easily be pulled from moist soil. Every two weeks is sufficient, but once a week means shorter sessions and less stiffness in your joints. Eventually, in a year or two, the plants die. To prevent new seedlings, shade the ground with other plants or mulch.
If you have a large area where hand weeding can’t keep up, you can try smothering bindweed with light-blocking mulch such as plastic fabric, cardboard or a very thick layer of organic mulch—for three to five years.
Biological control, insects, has not been very successful yet.
It takes multiple, precisely timed applications of herbicide to kill bindweed. Be sure to speak to our Laramie County Extension horticulturist or the folks at the Laramie County Conservation District to learn how to safely apply the right one at the right time for your circumstances.
Frustrated Cheyenne gardener Justin Williams has come up with a system to treat for bindweed while harvesting an abundance of vegetables in his hoop house and in his outside patch.
First, he sprayed the carpet of bindweed with herbicide. A Casper native who grew up on a ranch and early in his career was an Extension agent in Oregon, he knows his way around herbicides.
Then, he staked weed barrier cloth—a woven plastic material—over the treated areas. I am not a fan of weed-barrier cloth when it is used around trees and shrubs and topped with woodchip or rock or gravel mulch because it is hard on the trees and shrubs and the weeds soon sprout in the mulch anyway.
In this case, Justin uses only weed-barrier cloth to cut off light to any emerging leaves. He grows his vegetables on top of the weed-barrier cloth in fabric pots, approximately 5 to 10-gallon-sized.
Justin Williams smothers bindweed with weed-barrier fabric and plants his vegetables in fabric pots. Photo by Barb Gorges.
There is an array of fabric pots available on the market. They are made from plastic fabrics, euphemistically referred to as “geotextiles.” They can be cleaned (even laundered—but without bleach or dryer) and folded when not in use. Justin looks for the best prices online but buys only the ones with handles to make it easier to move them around.
Fabric pots, or bags, follow container gardening rules. You’ll want some kind of potting soil, not plain old garden dirt (especially not Justin’s bindweed seed-infested dirt). You’ll want to work out an irrigation system. This year, Justin used an overhead sprinkler system but is ready to convert to a drip irrigation system for next year to save water and to eliminate powdery mildew forming on leaves.
Vegetables are very hungry growers, especially in containers, so you will want to come up with a fertilizer schedule, whether you make compost tea, buy fish emulsion concentrate or go a chemical route.
Before frost, you might even pick up a container and bring it inside for the last few tomatoes, another crop of greens or to overwinter your herbs.
And someday, the bindweed will be knocked down to a manageable level and you can plant in the ground again.
Bindweed leaves come in many variations of the basic arrowhead shape, even in the same garden. Photo by Barb Gorges.
“Late summer in the garden: rogue sunflowers and pumpkins take over,” was published Sept. 11, 2021, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
By Barb Gorges
A Cinderella pumpkin (French heirloom “Rouge Vif D’Etampes”) was discovered growing perched on a hail guard propped against the back wall of the Gorges yard. It will turn red-orange when fully ripe. Sept. 14 photo by Barb Gorges.
This summer, I’ve discovered that gardens need editing. The authors, Thomas Rainer and Claudia West, of the garden book I’m rereading, “Planting in a Post-Wild World,” talk about editing to improve how a garden “reads.”
It means that if the Maximilian sunflower (a perennial) gets comfortable and starts spreading, out-competing its neighbors, do I want one whole garden bed to be full of 6 to 10-foot tall stalks only embellished in September with yellow flowers along their length? No, I don’t. I would like to still be able to “read” or see a few other kinds of plants in that garden bed. So, I started pulling the stalks. They grow off an underground rhizome and they are easy to yank out.
Maximilian seeds from different sources planted in different places in our yard have different spreading habits and bloom times. The hot, dry, side garden produced a few flowers by early August, in time for the fair. Another clump blooms in September but hasn’t spread at all. Perhaps it has tougher neighboring perennial competitors.
Speaking of the fair, my list of potential floriculture entries was edited by half by leaf cutter bees. The scalloped edges of leaves they leave behind won’t win any ribbons or premiums. On the other hand, it shows my planting for pollinators is successful.
The feathery blue flowers of perennial bachelor buttons looked spectacular in June. Over the last 30 years they have become a thick drift, suffocating perennials I’ve put in to provide color the rest of the summer. By August, they look exhausted, so I cut them back—they don’t stand up well as “winter interest.” Time to dig some out and give more space to the fall-blooming asters and a variety of black-eyed Susans that bloom much later than the showy ones that got a blue ribbon.
Every year, gardening in Cheyenne is different. I think due to the 30 inches of snow in March, plants that need winter moisture did well. That maybe explains the peony that finally bloomed years after being planted and the grape vines finally growing more than two feet. But it doesn’t explain why only one of 25 irises bloomed. Charlette at C & T Iris Patch said to give them another year’s chance.
Our red twig (red osier) dogwood grew more than usual. Many of the stems are green now so I pruned the oldest at ground level to encourage new red stems. And then I put the thinnest twigs in a bucket of water to see if they will sprout roots.
But one of the euonymus bushes lining the front walk seems to be dying. The six-shrub hedge was probably planted when the house was built in 1962. Catherine Wissner, Laramie County Extension horticulturist, thinks it’s verticillium wilt, a soil-borne fungal disease, and I should dig up the infected shrub and soil. However, the shrub next to it looks great—I’m sure its roots mingle with the sick shrub. Chokecherry sprouts are wasting no time in moving in. Perhaps we can keep them pruned to blend in.
It’s a very good year for chokecherries. The shrubs the birds planted in the alley are full of fruit—too much for the robins to keep up with so Mark is getting to harvest some.
This is about the sixth year Mark has grown Anna Maria’s Heart heirloom tomatoes and they are bigger and meatier than ever. Part of it might be this warmer summer. Part of it may be backyard genetics because every year Mark saves the seeds from the best tomatoes.
On a lark, Mark planted a couple Cinderella pumpkin seeds I saved a few years ago. He started them inside and then transplanted them to what used to hold garbage cans and is now essentially a 3 x 4-foot, 3.5-foot-deep brick compost bin.
The pumpkins have grown 15-inch diameter leaves on yards of vines climbing right over the spruce trees in one direction and escaping into the alley in the other. At the end of July, we found a softball-sized flattish pumpkin (Cinderella’s carriage was a flattish pumpkin) that quickly grew over the next month. It will eventually turn red—if we have a long, warm fall (but with rain, please) so it can fully ripen.
I hope all of you have had a successful growing season, at least in some aspect. Make notes to help you remember what to try next year.
The Cinderella pumpkin, Aug. 17. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Don’t wait for the chill of the Holiday season to start shopping for your loved ones or yourself! Join us for an expanded indoor/outdoor market at the most bountiful and beautiful time of year at the Gardens! This two-day event will have a variety of regionally made gifts from artists, artisans, and craftsmen selling everything from home decor, antiques, art and jewelry, to homemade jellies, baked goods, vintage and apparel, and so much more!
Make it an outing for the whole family and enjoy some delicious food from our food vendors, and activities for the kids! Admission is free, so come and enjoy the lush surroundings of the Gardens as you get ahead of your Fall decorating and Holiday shopping!
“WTE garden columns collected in new book: ‘Cheyenne Garden Gossip'” was published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle Aug. 7, 2021.
“Cheyenne Garden Gossip: Locals Share Secrets for High Plains Gardening Success,” by Barb Gorges, Yucca Road Press.
By Barb Gorges
Would you be interested in a collection of my Wyoming Tribune Eagle gardening columns? The book, “Cheyenne Garden Gossip: Locals Share Secrets for High Plains Gardening Success,” is available, so far, at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, Cheyenne Depot Museum, Wyoming Game and Fish Department and Wyoming State Museum gift shops.
You can see a preview at https://yuccaroadpress.com/books/. [For those of you outside Cheyenne, the book will eventually be available on Amazon. If you can’t wait, contact me at bgorges2 @ gmail.com.]
The book is a collaboration with more than 100 people–those I interviewed, plus people such as Chris Hoffmeister, the book designer; content reviewers Jessica Friis, Susan Carlson and Jane Dorn; and many Laramie County Master Gardeners. In the seven pages of acknowledgements, you might find gardeners you know and what chapters they contributed to.
The book’s advice aims to minimize expense, time, water and chemicals, and maximize the time you enjoy strolling in your garden. It includes 64 updated columns, a plant list, plant and garden photo galleries, a garden book list, lists of other resources and a key word index.
Becoming a gardener changes your perspective. Mowing the lawn becomes a way to harvest green stuff for your compost. Raking leaves is gathering winter mulch to protect spring-blooming bulbs.
Giving up rototilling the vegetable patch every year means preserving soil microbes you need for a better harvest. Not mowing your patch of prairie out in the county more than every couple years means more bird song.
I can’t review my own book so instead, I’m giving you the foreword written by Shane Smith, the founder and director emeritus of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, who explains why we need our own gardening book around here.
My back garden in early August is full of fruiting shrubs, tomatoes (under the hail guard), coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, blanketflower, beebalm, bees and birds. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Foreword byShane Smith
“This is a book that speaks to you directly, by not only the author, Barb Gorges, but many accomplished gardeners on the High Plains in Southeast Wyoming. To be a successful gardener here is no easy task. In fact, I believe it is the most challenging garden climate in the lower 48 states.
“Why is gardening here such a challenge? Let’s look at Cheyenne, which is indicative of much of the High Plains. It has the highest average number of hailstorms per year in the nation, between 8 and 11. Cheyenne is the fourth windiest city in the nation with a daily average wind speed of 13 miles per hour. This means for every calm day you must have a 26-miles-per-hour day to make that average work.
“Cheyenne also has unpredictable spring and fall frosts. This kills fruit blossoms in spring and can turn a garden brown even in early September.
“Plants grow at night. The warmer it is at night, the faster they grow. Because of Cheyenne’s 6,000-foot elevation, it has cool summer nights, staying mostly in the 40s and 50s. Gardens grow much faster when most of the nights are in the upper 50s to mid-60s. This is why that 65-day tomato still takes 80 days to produce.
“Finally, Cheyenne often has many winter days with little or no snow cover. There are years when Cheyenne has fewer days with snow on the ground than other lower altitude Front Range towns. This lack of snow cover combined with the relentless wind desiccates plants. That is why you often must drag out the hose in winter to water your trees, shrubs and perennials to keep them alive and in maximum health. Whew! Gardeners on the High Plains deserve a medal for their harvests and beautiful flowers.
“Because of the challenging climate, Cheyenne and High Plains gardeners must do things differently. To have a successful garden in this climate you often need different scheduling and different varieties, and you must develop creative hail-protection strategies. On top of all that, it helps to become an accomplished weather watcher.
“In this book, Barb has put together a diverse and experienced group of expert gardeners, who first appeared in her regular writings for the Wyoming Tribune Eagle in her excellent Cheyenne Garden Gossip column and blog. Barb also offers up her own great tips from her extensive gardening experiences.
“This book has a wide breadth of gardening and landscaping subjects. Besides the traditional flowers and vegetables, Barb discusses how to successfully grow habitat gardens, rain gardens, xeriscapes, ground covers, fruit trees, worm farms, hoop house gardens, straw bale gardens and more. Both newbies and experienced gardeners are sure to find enlightening information.
“While the High Plains are an exceptional challenge, this book will help you even the odds in your garden’s favor. Go get your hands dirty!
“Best Regardens!
Shane Smith
Founder and Director Emeritus of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens
Cheyenne Garden Gossip 