Ask a Garden Question is a FREE new resource for tapping into a pool of garden professionals.

I’m always on the lookout for new resources for gardeners and I recently found a good one in Ask a Garden Question. This online Q&A site is just getting started, but gardeners from all over the country are already writing in for help with their gardening problems.

The site was created by Ellen Wells, editor-at-large of Green Profit, a Ball Publishing magazine for retail garden centers. Ask a Garden Question used information from a recent garden survey to help develop the site. The survey showed almost 50 percent of respondents said garden retailers were the greatest source of gardening information.

The site features an online form for gardeners to submit questions to a panel of garden professionals including garden center managers, professional plant growers, landscape designers and other pros who can help solve tricky gardening problems.

Gardeners looking for hardy plants to add to their gardens should check this out.

I was at the Plant Select annual meeting a few years ago when the seed was planted for a new garden book. That seed germinated and now it has bloomed.

“Durable Plants for the Garden: A Plant Select Guide” is a beautiful new resource for gardeners looking to add the hardiest plants to their gardens. It’s an essential addition to every gardener’s library.

The book, edited by James E. Henrich, is a cooperative effort of Plant Select, Colorado State University, Denver Botanic Gardens and the Green Industries of Colorado.

The book includes the first 74 plants introduced to the public by the Plant Select Program. The program’s goal is to introduce and then recommend more adaptable plants to the Rocky Mountain region and beyond and every year 6 or 7 plants are chosen. Some of the plants are overlooked treasures and other are completely new to the trade.

The CobraHead Weeder and Cultivator is advertised as “the best tool in earth.”

The Easter Bunny didn’t leave any chocolate eggs for me this year, but I didn’t care. Instead, I found a CobraHead in my Easter basket. After using it for the first time yesterday, I decided it’s my favorite new gardening tool.

I was dreading the chore of clearing one flower bed of the grass that had crept in among the Siberian Iris, Basket-of-Gold and other perennials. At one point I considered digging up the entire bed and replanting it.

But that seemed too drastic a measure and I didn’t want to expend that much time or energy. So, I picked up the CobraHead and went to work.  I dug through the soil, pulling the blade toward me and the grass came right up.

Perennial Favorites, in Rye, Colo., is a specialty plant nursery that caters to gardeners and their growing challenges.

Mother’s Day weekend wouldn’t be the same without our annual trek to Rye for the Perennial Favorites Open House. Every year I return home with new plants specially grown here.

Located on a historic dairy farm, this nursery has blossomed into one of the top providers of perennials in the state. But when it first opened in 1987, perennials weren’t as popular as annuals for spring planting. “We started growing perennials because it was low tech and we didn’t need much in the way of greenhouse space,” explains Diana Capen, co-owner. “We wanted to grow interesting plants not available in our area.”

In addition to a loyal following of Colorado customers, gardeners from New Mexico, Kansas, and Oklahoma make it a point to stop at the nursery to select from 1000 varieties of ground covers, herbs, shrubs, and native plants.

Two-liter bottles can be repurposed into handy hydroponics planters.

BUILD IT YOURSELF: HYDROPONICS PLANTER
Excerpt from Planet Earth: 25 Environmental Projects You Can Build Yourself, by Kathleen M. Reilly, Polka Dot Suitcase.

You can grow plants without soil when you create a hydroponics planter. You’ll still need to find some kind of planting medium for this planter, but some scientists grow plants by spraying the nutrients the plants need directly onto the plants’ roots.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Two-liter bottle
Strips of cotton rags or T-shirts
Litmus paper (to measure pH; you can get these at garden, pool, hardware, or pet stores)
Plants: try runners (like from a spider plant) or stem cutting (try something like an ivy plant), or if you want to start from seed, try lettuce or an herb like basil
Water
Planting medium like hay, pebbles, lava rocks, etc. (You can experiment with this—just don’t use soil!)
Hydroponics plant nutrients (available at garden stores)
Aquarium tubing and small air pump or hollow rubber ball (optional)

Musa basjoo is also called Hardy Banana and can be grown in Zone 4.


Wouldn’t you love to look out your window and see a tropical plant growing there? That may seem like a dream to Colorado gardeners, but there are some cold-hardy tropicals that can survive Zone 5 winters.

The Musa basjoo is a Hardy Banana available from Logee’s Tropical Plants.  With proper siting and mulching in winter, this plant can withstand temperatures below zero. Logee’s representatives say this is an extremely vigorous banana that can grow several feet in one season or can be grown as a container specimen.

There are other cold-hardy tropicals that can tolerant colder climates like ours. If you can re-create the conditions of Zone 6 with microclimates, you might also be able to grow Jasminum officinale (Hardy Jasmine), Ficus carica ‘Chicago Hardy’ edible fig, Passiflora incarnata ‘Maypop’ Passion Flower and Gardenia jasminoides ‘Frostproof’ gardenia.

Cucumbers are warm-season vegetables that need warmer weather before planting.

It sure felt a lot like winter around here on Saturday with chilly temperatures and a spring snowstorm that was more rain than snow. I forced myself out into storm three times to shake the snow off the evergreens and a few shrubs to keep the branches from breaking.

Sunday’s temperatures in the 60s made the snow disappear and the storm was soon a distant memory. With the sun shining again, gardeners flocked to the garden center down the road to take advantage of the pre-Earth Day specials.

Home Depot was offering buy-one-get-one-free vegetable and perennial plants and these were flying off the shelves. I found a small lavender plant to replace the one that doesn’t look like it survived the dry winter. It shouldn’t be hard to find a spot for the free one either.

La Boqueria Market in Barcelona is the ultimate farmers market.

John and I were in Barcelona in late March and our hotel was just a short walk from La Boqueria Market located along the Ramblas. While farmers markets in Colorado don’t really get going until summer, this covered marketplace was filled with stalls selling every kind of fruit, vegetable, meat, seafood, cheese, nuts and sweets you could imagine.

Some of the fruit was prepared in ready-to-go containers with little forks or whipped into smoothies in plastic cups with straws. We bought some papaya that was delicious–perfectly ripe and juicy.

There were some other exotic fruits, including the pitahaya fruit or dragon fruit. With its spiny skin, it’s easy to see how it got it’s nickname. This fruit grows on a cactus vine and can be eaten with a spoon, seeds and all.

Lawns in Denver do just fine with three days of watering each week.

Homeowners in Denver learned today that rules for watering will be extended to Oct. 1 instead of ending on August 31. And that’s just fine with me.

My small peanut-shaped front lawn requires less water because of its size, but also because I’m a bit lazy when it comes to dragging the hose around the yard. Denver Water’s rules of limiting watering to three days a week also don’t bother me and I never water between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. anyway.

But that’s not the case in my Green Valley Ranch neighborhood. I have one neighbor who breaks nearly every watering rule all summer long. First, he waters every day–whether the lawn needs it or not. This means he sets his irrigation system once in the spring and then turns it off in the fall instead of adjusting it to meet watering rules or weather conditions.

Instead of planting small pots of seeds and starting them on a sunny windowsill, this year I’m starting them the AeroGarden way.

Every year I start my garden by planting tomato and pepper seeds in small pots, germinating them in my office near a heater vent and then putting them on the window seat in my sunny south-facing window. I’ve done this for years ending up with beautiful plants to place in my garden and to share with others.

This year I decided to try something different and use my AeroGarden to start my seeds hydroponically. Using the special seed starting insert and medium, I planted 13 different varieties of tomatoes and 3 kinds of peppers on March 20.

(Yes. I love tomatoes. All kinds, sizes and colors of tomatoes. There are Black Krim, Giant Belgium, Paul Robeson, Yellow Pear, Green Zebra, Black Cherry, and Marianna Peace to name just a few. Many of these are from seeds I’ve saved from previous years, but I did order some new varieties from the Tomato Growers Supply catalog.)