Happy New Gardening Year to You!

One of my favorite gifts from the holiday season is this happy solar-powered sunflower. When light shines on its adorable solar cell, the flower sways from side to side and the leaves bounce up and down. This little plant doesn’t need any batteries, water or special care.

If only all gardening could be so easy!

You may have noticed I took a December break from the computer. I kept up with my VegetableGardener.com blog for the Fine Gardening magazine network, but I used the rest of that time to recharge my own solar-cell.

Stepping away from the keyboard was refreshing. I spent time brainstorming new ideas for articles, planning new gardening projects and thinking of ways to make WesternGardeners.com a better resource for gardeners.

I hope you’ll stick around to see what’s in store.

Thanks to a packet of free organic tomato seeds from Lake Valley Seed Company, I was able to grow some wonderful orange tomatoes in my vegetable garden this year. The tomatoes were beautiful to behold on the vine and equally lovely in salads, sandwiches and salsas.

You can read all about how the heirloom tomato Amana Orange got its name in a blog I wrote for VegetableGardener.com called “Orange You Glad I Asked?”

Camilla (left) and Cocoa, two ambassador bats from the Organization for Bat Conservation, had fun hanging around during a Live Bats! program at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science last October.

If you’re looking for a special way to celebrate Halloween this year, I have the perfect idea. Adopt a vampire bat.

As most gardeners know, bats play a vital role in our environment and our agricultural economy. They disperse seeds, pollinate crops, and feast on insects. Our world as gardeners—and consumers—wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t have bats.

And bats need our help now more than ever. It’s not just the loss of habitat and over-use of pesticides, but bats are facing a more terrifying prospect called White-nose Syndrome.

This cold-loving fungus is responsible for killing millions of bats over the last four years and millions more could die because of it. Scientists and researchers are working to find a way to stop it, but no solution has been found.

I’m taking my “Edible Spaces in Small Places” presentation to The National Heirloom Exposition in beautiful Sonoma County, Calif.

The National Heirloom Exposition is shaping up to be the World’s Fair of the heirloom and local food movements.

I’m delighted to be one of 70 speakers at the world’s largest heritage food event.

I’ll be sharing my experience growing small-space vegetable gardens and giving tips for how to grow a beautiful and productive container garden like the one in my backyard.

The Heirloom Expo is a celebration of heirloom gardening and farming done the old-fashioned way. There will be heirloom vegetables, traditional foods, rare plants and poultry, music, movies, food tastings, demonstrations, an heirloom seed exchange, and a trade show with more than 200 vendors.

I’m excited to be part of an event that includes a diverse group of keynote speakers, including Jeffrey Smith, an expert on genetically modified foods and their impacts, Alice Waters, well-known chef and author, and Dr. Vandana Shiva, a leading proponent of the pure food movement.

Spending 15 minutes in your garden counting bees is a pleasant way to pass the time while helping with bee conservation efforts.

I’ve been counting the bees that land on the ‘Lemon Queen’ sunflowers in my garden and I’m delighted at the results.

During my latest 15-minute observation, I counted 12 honeybees landing on one large flower–almost one bee every minute.  Many others buzzed around me as I sat quietly counting.

If you haven’t counted your bees yet, there’s still time this summer. Just set aside a little time during the day when the bees are active and pull up a tree stump.

All you need is a watch, paper and pencil. Once you’re done counting, be sure to report your results on www.GreatSunflower.org.

While you’re counting, think about the thousands of other gardeners across the country who are involved in this citizen science project to help bees.

The data that’s gathered every year helps researchers with their bee conservation efforts.

I’d always wanted to drive a tractor and my wish came true on my Green Giant Valley Visit.

I didn’t know what to expect on my all-expense-paid Valley Visit to La Sueur, Minn., to tour the Green Giant research facility and cornfields, but I didn’t expect to discover how much the fields and my garden have in common.

They had me at sustainable agriculture practices.

Here’s a list of seven growing methods that Green Giant and I have in common:

1. Green Giant doesn’t use any GMO seed in its growing.
2. The company uses Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices to control insect pests and plant diseases.
3. Farms that grow for Green Giant are helped to convert to drip irrigation to save water.
4. The company is never satisfied with the growing efforts and works to improve yields every year.
5. Green Giant is as concerned about protecting pollinators as I am. A two-acre pollinator habitat is being planted for the University of Minnesota to research ways to help native bee populations.

Bee part of the first-ever online town hall event dedicated to celebrating the  most underappreciated helpers in our gardens: bees.

The 2011 Bee-a-thon, hosted by Your Garden Show, is the kick-off to today’s Great Bee Count.

Stop by the Bee-a-thon between 9:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Pacific time for the first-ever online webcast discussing how to protect our most valuable pollinators.

Throughout the day experts will discuss bee biology, changes in global bee populations, and what you can do to help. You can listen in throughout the day and ask questions in real time.

All of this buzz is in support of The Great Sunflower Project, a citizen science campaign that encourages gardeners to plant sunflowers, count the number of bees visiting them, and report the data online.

I’ve written about The Great Sunflower  Project many times over the last several years and was one of about 50,000 gardeners actively participating last year. My sunflowers are slow to bloom this year, but as soon as they do I’ll bee starting my observations.

I made a few new friends at the press luncheon for the Denver County Fair, including Denverite Sundari Kraft and her adorable feather-footed Brahma chicken.

The Denver County Fair is less than two weeks away (July 28-31) and the excitement is building. There has never been a county fair like this one!

Picture a traditional county fair, add some urban roots, sprinkle in a little Dana Cain magic and Tracy Weil marketing, and Denver is in for a wild time.

Square dancers will mingle with speed-texters; chickens with jackalopes; bunnies with cats. There will be sewing and knitting competitions, traditional food competition categories, and a cheeseburger cook-off.

There’s a carnival, freak show, and 10 different pavilions with entertainment and vendors. Dana says there are only a few of the 300 vendor and exhibitor booths still available. All of the events are at the National Western complex.

A few years ago I invited our new neighbors over for a get-acquainted dinner. The prickly pear cacti in my front garden were sporting delicious-looking young pads so I decided to make a Nopal Salsa and serve it as an appetizer.

I cut the tender edible cactus pads, called nopales, boiled them in water and removed the spines.

Then I mixed them with other ingredients for a colorful salsa and served them with home-made tortilla chips and frosty margaritas.

The neighbors dug into the salsa and thought it was delicious. But when I mentioned they were enjoying the cactus from my front yard, they both stopped eating in mid-bite.

I assured them the salsa was made with a vegetable that’s an important part of the menu in the southwestern U.S. and Mexico.

Nopales (pronounced noh-PAH-lays) are the tender, edible cactus pads from the familiar prickly pear cactus (Opuntia species). Once the spines are removed, the fleshy pads are cooked and used in many different recipes from salads to salsas. The prepared nopalitos taste a little like a slightly tangy well-cooked green bean.

Hollyhocks, one of Mary Ann Newcomer’s favorite heirloom flowers, still work in  gardens today.

I had the chance to see my garden-writing colleague  and Western gardening friend, Mary Ann Newcomer, last night at the Denver Botanic Gardens. She flew in from Idaho to present a fascinating look at heirloom gardens and why they still work today.

If you missed her presentation, you might want to drop by her Gardens of the Wild Wild West blog to join the conversation and learn a few new tricks for gardening in a challenging climate.

Mary Ann’s talk centered around her research and travels looking at homestead gardens like those Willa Cather wrote about in her novel My Antonia. The beautiful images that illustrated her presentation took us all on a journey to Willa’s childhood home in Red Cloud, Neb.