Firewise, plus the city vs weeds

An important part of a native plant garden is leaving last season’s dried vegetation in place over the winter. It helps trap snow for moisture and provides seeds for birds. A Habitat Hero sign shows this is not a patch of weeds. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Firewise information, plus city ordinances regulate weeds and native plant gardens

Published March 15, 2024, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

By Barb Gorges

Firewise

            Firewise is a program educating homeowners, especially in areas prone to wildfire (grasslands or forest), on measures to safeguard their homes. The idea is to eliminate flammables within 5 feet of buildings, including under the porch or deck and in the gutters, plus other aspects within 30 feet.

            You can read my interview with folks creating a Firewise community across the highway from Curt Gowdy State Park, https://cheyennegardengossip.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/firewise-preparing-your-home-for-wildfire-season/, and find information at www.firewise.org.

            Native plants are recommended for landscaping Firewise homes.

Weeds and the native plant garden

            I recently heard a story about a man who has been working on turning his front yard into a native plant garden since 2003 and how it was mistaken for non-compliant weeds and mowed at the direction of the city.

            The good news is that most of the plants in a native plant garden are perennials that will come back. But how did this happen and how can we keep it from happening again?

            This incident came up at the 10^th annual Cheyenne Habitat Hero Workshop in February and I followed up later with more questions. It seems that the homeowner had just left for vacation when the notice came and “the time for appeal had expired by the time I returned,” he said.

            I asked if he had a plant list. Not really, but plants include penstemon, asters, yarrow, salvia, columbine, coneflowers and early blooming non-natives such as tulips, daffodils and crocus.

            One way to mark an area as a flower garden is to have flowers blooming across the entire growing season, which his spring bloomers help with. He said he even does some deadheading to get plants to bloom a second time. But the city mowing took place in October, when it can be difficult for some to see the beauty of seedheads attracting birds.

            I asked if he has a weed problem. “So far bindweed hasn’t been a problem in the front yard (it is in the backyard). Thistle is an issue and I work to keep it under control,” he said.

            Another way to indicate a flower garden is to define the edges well. At my house, it’s a sharp shovel making the line between bed and turf. The sidewalk is one boundary, he said, “I place a 4×4 between the sidewalk and yard as an additional buffer. I trim back the plants when they grow into the sidewalk.”

            City councilman Richard Johnson, who attended last year’s Habitat Hero workshop, put me in touch with John Palmer, code enforcement supervisor, who emailed me a reply:

            “If a homeowner who is turning their yard into a garden receives a letter for a potential violation of the weeds/grass ordinance, they should call or email the nuisance officer listed at the bottom of the letter as soon as possible and arrange for a meeting at the address to discuss the matter on site.

            “Our concern usually is that noxious weeds or weeds that spread quickly, such as dandelions, are allowed to grow along with flowering plants and become a problem for neighbors who have a traditional grass yard. Also, some of these locations allow flowering plants/weeds to grow tall enough to become an obstruction of the sidewalk.

            “If troublesome weeds and any obstruction of the sidewalk is addressed, then we generally don’t have a problem with whole yard gardens and the case would be closed.

            “As with any violation letter that we send out, timely communication is important to resolve situations like this,” wrote Palmer.

            As in traditional flower beds, you can plan for short plants along the sidewalk—keeping the sunflowers farther back so they don’t lean over the sidewalk.

            Another traditional flower bed design element is planting drifts of each species rather than a patchwork of “onesies.” Of course, self-reseeding perennials don’t always cooperate.

            Zach Hutchinson, from Audubon Rockies, who lives in Natrona County, said he had a similar experience with someone mistaking his native plant garden for weeds. The county people suggested that to show his intentions better, he should put up a sign.

            Habitat Hero certification through Audubon Rockies, https://rockies.audubon.org/habitat-hero, or the National Wildlife Federation, https://certifiedwildlifehabitat.nwf.org/ both offer signs.   

            And of course, keep your garden weeded. Some Wyoming native plants are considered agricultural weeds, but they shouldn’t be a problem in your garden unless you are on a farm or ranch.             Nancy Loomis’s advice at the workshop (follow her on Facebook, NativeNancy3072): Disturb soil as little as possible to keep weed seeds from germinating. Cut down annual weeds before they drop seeds. Consider targeting difficult perennial weeds that don’t respond to digging, like bindweed and thistle, with the right poison at the right time.              

Bindweed wars, new weed

Bindweed is one of the hardest weeds to kill because it grows so fast. The arrow-shaped leaves can be hard to see at first, but the white morning glory-type flowers are not. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Gardener wars with bindweed, discovers new weed

Published Aug. 11, 2023, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

By Barb Gorges

            The weed I dread the most is bindweed, a native of Europe and Asia. I think the seeds must travel by bird and once sprouted, they are quick to spread underground, popping up new vines that quickly engulf competing plants.

            Even in the thickest vegetation you’ll suddenly notice the white mini-morning glory flowers blooming and then realize half the greenery is bindweed’s arrow-shaped leaves. Trying to unwind the vines leaves their victims somewhat tattered.

            The organic method of bindweed control is to break off the vines at ground level frequently, eventually exhausting the plant. I’ve been nipping a new infestation this year nearly every other day and the leaves are staying tiny. It’s the vines that infiltrated the beebalm for weeks that have leaves two inches long. At the very least, don’t let bindweed flower and set seed.

            If you choose to use a systemic herbicide in which the plant takes up the poison and sends it into the roots (versus topical that only kills the leaves), I wouldn’t blame you. But please consult an expert so that you don’t endanger people, pets, wildlife, water and other plants.

            For other weeds, it might be worth considering cutting them off at ground level rather than disturbing the soil by pulling them. Many weed seeds need light to germinate and so hoeing might disrupt the weeds in your vegetable garden, but it starts up a whole new crop – of weeds. Consider mulching with lawn cuttings or straw (not hay – it has seeds) to block the light.

            The Habitat Hero gardens I tend depend on self-seeding perennials to fill in spaces. There are a few biennials, short-lived perennials and weeds that put out a rosette of leaves the first year that can be difficult to identify. By the second year, it is easier to decide what stays and what goes.

            However, in early July, an unidentifiable plant as tall as me began to flower profusely at the back of the Habitat Hero garden at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens.

The mystery plant in the Habitat Hero Demonstration Garden at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens is thought to be White Mullein, Verbascum lychnitis. Photo by Barb Gorges.

            I took pictures and went home to page through my native plant books as well as my copy of “Weeds of the West” to no avail. So, I sent the photos to Jane and Robert Dorn. She illustrated “Vascular Plants of Wyoming” and he wrote it.

            Jane suggested pulling the plant while figuring out what it was – so many flowers would indicate a lot of seeds on a plant that might be detrimental to agriculture.

            Bob thought it might be a type of mullein. Common mullein is found all over, along roadsides and other disturbed areas. It’s the tall one with a rosette of big fuzzy leaves and a thick stalk covered in tiny yellow flowers that bloom one ring at a time. And there are many ornamental mulleins.

The flowers resemble those of Common Mullein, Verbascum thapsis. Photo by Barb Gorges.

            By the way, they asked, would I press the plant for future inclusion in the University of Wyoming’s herbarium?

            Herbarium specimens are mounted on 11.5 x 16.5-inch sheets. Just how do you press a 5.5-foot-tall plant, plus the 1-foot-long root? You preserve only the flowering part and bend it to fit and cut a bit of stem that has a couple leaves and save the root.

            I don’t have a plant press anymore, so I inserted the plant parts between multiple layers of newspaper. That sandwich I inserted between squares of rubber-backed carpet tiles – carpet side in, in lieu of blotter paper, allowing for some airflow so the moisture could escape. And then I laid a couple of concrete blocks on the whole thing.

            Jane and Bob came a few days later to pick up the damp plant, transferring it to Bob’s plant press, a simple plywood affair.

            At home, Bob dissected flowers and determined it was probably white mullein, Verbascum lychnitis, native to Europe and Asia. It’s a somewhat variable plant. Sometimes the flowers are yellow.

            I uploaded my photos to iNaturalist and it also suggested white mullein. Many of their photos looked somewhat like my specimen.

            Then I looked at the map locating 61 white mullein observations so far. There were a handful on the West Coast, a handful in the Midwest, one in Florida and the most in the area around Philadelphia, where it probably landed in North America.

            There was only one observation in all the Rocky Mountain west, Canada to Mexico, and that was in Fort Collins, Colorado. My observation won’t show until it has been approved.

            There are birds that fly up and down the Front Range during spring and fall migration. A seed may have dropped off of, or out of, a bird coming up from Colorado, if digestion didn’t harm the seed.

            I expect in a few years, white mullein will be joining our common mullein along the side of the road.  

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.

Besting bindweed

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.

A weed by any other name

A battered Western Tiger Swallowtail enjoys nectaring on Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus), a prolific, self-seeding flower. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle July 4, 2020.

A weed by any other name can smell sweet

By Barb Gorges

 “…a rose by any other name would smell as sweet?”

William Shakespeare

      “A weed by any other name can be the exuberant flower you fell in love with and planted three years ago.”

Barb Gorges

            There is no official horticultural definition of what a weed is. In everyday usage though, a weed is a plant out of place that is disrupting management goals.

            This spring I realized my perennial flower beds needed renovation, weeding, editing, improving, whatever you want to call it—kind of a Marie Kondo tidying up. Volunteer sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) is taking over the herb bed. Even though me and the swallowtail butterflies love its multiple shades of pink, it is crowding out other plants and about to become a weed.

            I rarely have traditional, ugly weeds like kochia or knotweed because they won’t find enough bare, sunny spots. (See “Advice for the weed-weary” below.) But because the beds were carved out of the lawn, grass is my biggest weed.

I learned an edging solution from Herb Schaal, the landscape architect for the Paul Smith Children’s Village at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. He has beautiful gardens and lawn in Bellevue, Colorado. Schaal digs a trench between lawn and garden about 6-8 inches wide and deeper than the grass roots grow. Then he fills the trench with mulch to keep people from breaking ankles and so that the lawn mower wheels can run on it and no edge trimming is required. He cleans roots out of the trenches once a year and refills them.

            I’m trying the same technique here, but most my beds are already invaded by grass, like the yarrow patch. It may require digging up and trying to sort out the grass roots. Or I could start over, replacing it with a shovelful of uninfected yarrow from somewhere else in the yard.

            Many of the plants in my perennial beds are gifts from plants or birds dropping seeds. Because individual perennial plants can’t last forever, I’ve learned to remove mulch in the spring and let unidentifiable seedlings grow up enough that I can tell whether they are friend or foe. I know that a columbine that sprouts on its own in a shady spot on pure clay left from construction will grow better than anything I can plant, other than another columbine.

            Our mountain ash trees produce a plethora of seedlings every year. I pull them because otherwise they would become a forest. The trees were originally bird gifts, from fruit plucked from the tree across the street.

            After months of winter dormancy, I realized oregano was taking over a bed. Why should I be surprised? It’s a mint and all mints have spreading reputations.

Oregano (Origanum vulgare) is a kitchen herb attractive to bees, but it is also a mint and can spread easily. Photo by Barb Gorges.

I vaguely remember a few years ago looking around for spare plants after enlarging this bed. The oregano in the herb bed needed thinning and bees like the flowers so I planted some along with another mint, bee balm (monarda or horsemint). But the oregano took over half the bed when I wasn’t looking and the bee balm was barely hanging on. Other plants were in hiding, hungering for water and sunlight which the oregano refused to share.

            Maybe I should have harvested the oregano and dried it. Instead, I added most of it to the compost bin. The remainder standing in that bed will make green filler, and later, cut flowers, for bouquets this summer.

Western Tiger Swallowtail

            Then there are the hollyhocks. Years ago, I tried to grow them in the alley, but a neighbor mistook the first year’s leaf rosettes for weeds and mowed them while trying to be neighborly. I then encouraged hollyhocks to grow elsewhere and this year they are finally forming a herd. But then I realized they had surrounded my hardly-ever-blooming peonies. So, I moved a few hollyhocks and discovered how vigorous their root systems are. We will see next year if the peonies appreciate less competition.  

There’s a saying about transplanted perennial plants, “The first year they sleep, the second year they creep and the third year they leap.” This is the third year for cutleaf coneflowers given to me by a friend thinning her garden. They seem to be living by that maxim’s timeline so I may have some to share with other friends next year.

My new weed philosophy: Sometimes you must take a shovel to plants before they become weeds.

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This dandelion is limited only by the mountain climate at 9500 feet elevation in the backcountry of the Medicine Bow Mountains–no one is going to dig it up. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Advice for the weed-weary

            For those of you with traditional weeds, especially in a vegetable or annual flower garden, my advice is don’t till or hoe the soil because it will cause more weed seeds to germinate.

Mulch well, but not up against the stems of your plants and only with clean mulch that has no weed seeds. Use grass clippings, last year’s tree leaves or straw or wood chips if you have to (not the dyed ones).

Look for weed seedlings once a week or more often and pull them gently and steadily by hand to try to get the whole root and disturb the soil as little as possible. It helps to water the garden beforehand. Never let weeds go to seed.

            There is a time and place for herbicides, such as a serious infestation of thistle or bindweed where deep roots are impossible to remove completely and tilling just multiplies them.

Herbicides (even “organic” or “natural” ones) are rarely needed at the city residential property level. Herbicides should never be applied to try to prevent weeds that may show up in the future, such as a “weed and feed” lawn care mix, because they just poison the watershed as they are washed away—and waste your money.

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.

What I’ve learned as a Master Gardener

Outside Ft. Collins, Colorado, one woman, over 20 years, has created a garden refuge. Photo by Barb Gorges.

 

 

Published Aug. 12, 2018, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle and at Wyoming Network News, https://www.wyomingnetworknews.com/garden-gossip-what-ive-learned-as-a-master-gardener.

By Barb Gorges

This is my seventh season as a Laramie County Master Gardener (and Wyoming Tribune Eagle garden columnist). I know more now than when I finished the training because there’s always someone to talk to who knows more than me about any aspect of gardening.

I’ve interviewed many people, including other Master Gardeners, for previous columns which are archived at https://cheyennegardengossip.wordpress.com/. Here’s what I’ve learned:

Always evaluate gardening information. Where does that gardener garden? Is it a garden with a similar climate or microclimate, soil and growing season to mine? Will the treatment harm my soil?

There’s a difference between sticking stuff in dirt and growing plants with more mindfulness—and record-keeping.

You can grow many things in Cheyenne, but not all things. Just keep experimenting with the short-season veggies and consider building a greenhouse or high tunnel.

Cheyenne’s blooming season is longer than you think. In my garden some spring bulbs bloom in March. Some years the frost doesn’t finish the asters until the end of October.

Garden beauty is subjective but good garden design is practical:  put short plants in the front of beds, veggies by the kitchen door and don’t plant trees under power lines.

Every growing season is different. Not every year has powdery mildew, black spot or blossom end rot.

Know when to give up. Or try the plant in a different location. Or try a different variety.

Gardeners are generous. They share plant thinnings and seeds because they can’t bear to compost them.

Propagation from root divisions, cuttings and seeds is rewarding, especially when you share.

Never add lime, an alkaline substance, to Cheyenne’s already alkaline soils.

Gardeners like a challenge, even as extreme as planting acid-loving blueberries in buckets full of specially mixed acidic soil.

Soil is every gardener’s most valuable asset. Preserve its structure and microbiome by tilling and hoeing as little as possible and let mulch keep the weeds down.

Composting your discarded plant material in your own bin or pile saves you money on fertilizer and the cost of having the sanitation department haul it away.

Getting watering and mulching right is more important to plants than fertilizer.

Good pruning benefits trees and shrubs by making them look good and grow better.

Right plant in the right place—not all trees are growing in the right place.

Hail is a fact of life here. Protect tomatoes with hardware cloth screen overhead and grow skinny-leaved and skinny-petalled flowers.

Replacing your lawn with gravel is not less work in the future. It gets weedy. And gravel doesn’t shade the ground, which makes your yard hotter. You are better off with a low-growing ground cover.

Chemical pesticides are rarely necessary in the residential garden. You can pick off pests and remove diseased plant parts by hand.

Stressed plants (too much or too little water, too much fertilizer, too much or too little sun) attract disease and pests.

The sooner you pull a weed or cut it off at ground level, the less work it is later.

Always take care of weeds before they set seed.

Tending a garden is stress-reducing. Many of the gardeners I’ve interviewed have high stress jobs: lawyer, judge, law enforcement, social worker, doctor.

Gardening is good exercise. Even if you aren’t vigorously digging a new bed, just walking around pulling the occasional weed and deadheading the roses is better for you than sitting.

Gardeners see more bees, butterflies and birds—just more of nature.

Visiting botanic gardens when you travel makes for beautiful memories.

Reading to prepare for and dreaming about next year’s garden will get you through a long winter.

Want to start gardening or garden more intentionally and with more knowledge? Become a Laramie County Master Gardener. It’s not too early to find out about the next class. Call Catherine Wissner, Laramie County Extension horticulturist, 307-633-4383.

Asters bloom and attract a bee in a natural rock garden July 18, 2018, in the Snowy Range in southeastern Wyoming at an elevation of 9,000 to 10,000 feet. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Vegetable growing advice

 

Laramie County Master Gardener Kathy Shreve prepares a trench for seeds in a raised bed set up with soaker hoses. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle June 4, 2017, “Time to get your garden growing.”

 

By Barb Gorges

I spent a recent evening in the garden with Kathy Shreve, Laramie County master gardener, reviewing what to know about local vegetable gardening. The topics mentioned here are covered in greater depth in the “gardening” section of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens website, http://botanic.org, which also has the link to the archive of my previous columns.

Timing

Wait until the end of May or later to transplant tender veggies like tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers or put them under a season-extending cover like a low tunnel. You can also plant them in containers you can scoot in and out of the garage.

However, Shreve started cabbage and onion plants indoors and planted them before the snow May 18-19 and they were fine. Some vegetables, like members of the cabbage family, don’t mind cold as much.

While peas, cabbage types, lettuces and other greens, can be planted earlier than the end of May, most vegetable seeds planted directly in the garden prefer warmer soil temperatures. Measure with a soil thermometer found at garden centers.

Shreve said we can plant as late as June 20. Plant fast growing crops as late as July if you want a fall harvest.

Location

Keep in mind the vegetable garden needs a minimum of six hours of sun per day, preferably morning sun.

Shreve transplants cabbages she started indoors. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Transplants

Because of our short growing season, tomatoes and other tender vegetables are started indoors. Always look for the short season varieties of these plants. Shreve said she looks for 80 or fewer “days to maturity.”

If the plant was not outside when you bought it, it will need hardening off. Start with the plant in the shade for two or three hours and day by day increase the amount of sun and the length of exposure by a couple hours. Keep it well watered.

When transplanting, Shreve advises digging a hole for your plant, filling it with water, then letting it drain before planting.

To remove a plant from a plastic pot, turn it upside down with the stem between your forefinger and middle finger. Squeeze the pot to loosen the soil and shake it very, very gently.

If there are a lot of roots, you can gently tease them apart a bit before putting the plant in the hole.

Hold the plant by the root mass so that it will sit in the hole with the soil at the same level of the stem as it was in the pot. Fill soil in around the roots, then tamp the soil gently.

However, tomatoes can be planted deeper since any part of their stem that is underground will sprout roots, the more the better. In fact, Shreve said to pinch off all but three or four leaves and bury the bare stem.

Lastly, keep plants well-watered, not soggy, while they get established. Wait a couple weeks before adding fertilizer to avoid burning the plants.

Mulch

Shreve mulches with certified weed-free straw available at local feed stores, but grass clippings and last year’s leaves can also be used.

Placing mulch 2 to 3 inches deep keeps the soil from drying so fast, shades out weeds and keeps rain and overhead watering from spattering dirt onto plants, which may spread disease. It can also keep hail from bouncing and inflicting damage twice.

 

Seed

Root crops, like carrots and beets, don’t transplant well, so you are better off starting them from seed.

While fresh is good, Shreve said she’s had luck with seed seven years old. But the germination rate isn’t going to be great. She might spread carrot seed a little more thickly if that was the case, and it’s easy to thin to the proper spacing (and the thinnings can be tasty).

Because Cheyenne is dry, Shreve plants in a little trench. That way, when moisture comes, it will collect down where the plants are.

Seed packets tell you how deep to plant. The rule of thumb is three to four times deeper than the breadth of the seed. Lay the seed in the bottom of the trench and sprinkle that much dirt on them. Then water well, but gently, so you don’t wash out the seeds. Keep the soil surface moist until the seeds germinate.

Lightly mulch when the seedlings are visible, adding more as the plants get bigger.

Mark rows with popsicle sticks or plastic knives left from picnics.

Water

Once plants are established, let the top 1-2 inches of soil dry out between waterings. Test by sticking your finger in the soil. Water deeply.

Shreve waters every other day using soaker hose and drip irrigation systems, except when it rains. She originally tested her system for 30 minutes to see if water made it to the root depth and decided on 40 minutes.

Water in the morning, or at least make sure leaves are dry before dark.

Bugs and weeds

Mulch should eliminate most of the need to weed. Shreve said to keep up with it—it’s easier to pluck weed seedlings than to have them establish deep roots and go to seed.

For bugs, Shreve said it is easy to Google “what insect is eating my cabbage,” or take the critter, or evidence, to the Laramie County Extension horticulturist, Catherine Wissner. Her office is now out at Laramie County Community College, fourth floor of the new Pathfinder Building.

Never use pesticides until you identify your problem, and then try the least toxic method first. Again, more is not better. Never apply more than the directions indicate.

Slugs—my nemesis—indicate a garden is too wet.

Shreve said to roll newspaper to make 1 to 2-inch-diameter tunnels. Place rolls around affected plants in the evening. By sunrise, the slugs will be inside the rolls to get away from the light and you can dispose of them, rolls and all.

Fertilizer

Never add wood ash or lime to our alkaline soils as those work only on eastern, acidic soils.

Shreve likes slow-release products which are less likely to burn the plants, as are the natural fertilizers. Additionally, compost tea is a good soil conditioner.

Again, more is not better. Shreve uses half of what is directed until she sees how the plants respond.

Over-fertilization of fruit-producing vegetables like tomatoes often keeps them from producing the flowers that become the fruit. Shreve said they need to be stressed a little bit because it gets them thinking about preservation of the species and producing seed, rather than just enjoying life and producing leaves.

“Just leaves” is OK if you are growing leafy vegetables like lettuce, kale, spinach and chard.

Trellis and cage

If you are growing vining vegetables, getting them off the ground means fruits stay cleaner and don’t rot, and they are easier to find and pick. Use old chain link gates, bed springs, or anything else—be creative.

Hog panels make sturdy tomato cages 5 feet high and 2.5 feet in diameter for larger, indeterminate varieties, with chicken wire over the top for hail protection. Otherwise, use jute twine to loosely tie the stem to a bamboo stake.

Add flowers

Adding annual flowers like alyssum, marigolds and sunflowers, or herbs including dill and oregano, attracts pollinators and beneficial insects to your garden.