The annual ProGreen Expo wrapped up a week of activities that included dozens of informative seminars and a trade show targeted to members of the green industry.

It would be difficult to choose a favorite educational session, because all were filled with good information.

I especially enjoyed Mike Bone’s presentation called “A Steppe in the Right Direction.” Mike works at the Denver Botanic Gardens and he showed beautiful slides from his most recent plant hunting expedition to central Asia. It’s amazing how similar the landscape and plants are to Colorado.

I also enjoyed the talk by CSU’s Tony Koski and Alison O’Connor as they busted 7 different myths about turf.

The always entertaining Whitney Cranshaw gave me a few new ideas for planting and gardening in his “Insects or Not” talk.

Colorado’s Parade of Ponds provides inspiration for creating your own water garden and raises funds for nonprofit organizations in the process.

If you plan to spend time on the Parade of Ponds this weekend, just be prepared for what might happen. I know a couple who  spent $25 to take the bus tour and ended up spending another $10,000 to build  a pond in their backyard.

This is the 11th year for the annual pond tour, sponsored by BR&D Landscape in conjunction with the North American Water Garden Society.  Every August, hundreds of ticket holders leisurely tour private backyards to get ideas for creating their own ponds and water features.

The Colorado Parade of Ponds website provides details about the self-guided tour, as well as ticket information for the bus tour offered by True Pump & Equipment.

Many of the ponds and water gardens will simply take your breath away, but if a full-scale water garden won’t fit in your backyard–or your budget–look for alternatives like pondless water features.

Help celebrate my 100th blog post with a Weird Veggie and Funny Fruit Contest. Here’s my best effort–a cherry tomato that looks like the late comedian Buddy Hackett.

Have you ever grown a potato that looks like Mickey Mouse or a carrot that resembles a hippo? Ever seen an apple shaped like a duck or picked a heart-shaped raspberry?

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of vegetable and fruit anomalies. Mother Nature’s sense of humor shows through when she tinkers with the growing environment just enough to create odd-shaped fruits and veggies.

So, let’s have a contest! I want to find the strangest looking vegetable or fruit that you’ve either grown in your garden or found at a local farmer’s market.

The winner will receive a signed, hardcover copy of the New York Time’s best seller, “Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities,” by Amy Stewart.

These are prime examples of Paul Robeson tomatoes, a Russian heirloom named for the famous singer, actor and activist.

The deep flavor of a black tomato is not easy to describe. It’s earthy but intense, sweet and tangy, smoky and bright.

My first black tomato was a Black Krim that I bought at a garden club sale a few years ago. Now my garden wouldn’t be complete without several varieties of black tomatoes growing there.

This year in addition to Black Krim, I added black cherry tomatoes and Paul Robeson tomatoes to my garden. I ordered seeds from Tomato Growers Supply in February and started them in the basement in March.

The plants were ready to place in the garden in May, but I waited for the weather to settle down which it never really did, but I planted them the second weekend in June anyway.

This was my first year growing lime basil and I haven’t been disappointed.

Lime basil (Ocimum basilicum americanum) is a refreshingly delicious culinary herb that I grew from seed as another one of my backyard experiments.

I picked up a packet of seeds at the Colorado Garden and Home Show for two reasons: I love basil and I really love basil. The lime was just an added bonus.

I sowed the seeds in early June in a long, narrow and shallow plastic patio planter by sprinkling them on top of the soil, lightly covering them and keeping them moist.

The planter receives direct sun all morning into early afternoon.

I’m delighted with the results. The plants are vigorous and they filled in the entire container. The leaves are small and narrow and have a wonderful lime aroma and citrusy taste.

I’m especially pleased with the plants because they don’t seem to flower as quickly as other varieties of basil, so it’s easier to keep up with them.

New Zealand spinach, planted in a shallow container, was another of my successful garden-grown experiments.

Yesterday I wrote about the good luck I had growing green beans in a large container. The New Zealand spinach (Tetragonia) seeds I planted also did well even though they were planted in a narrow, shallow plastic container.

New Zealand spinach is an old heirloom plant introduced to England in the late 1700s.  Even though it’s called “spinach” it’s not a true spinach.  The seeds are large and look a little like dull burrs found on a puncturevine.

The leaves are a bit thicker than the spinach we usually grow or buy at the grocery store. However, the taste is similar and can be cooked like other spinach. I’ve tried it raw, but others might not like its wild taste.

Planting and growing pole beans in a large planter was a successful garden experiment this year.

I like to think of my garden as one big experiment. In my outdoor laboratory I’ve planted unusual combinations of perennials together, put tall plants in front of short plants, planted some where they might not grow and let others go wild. Every year I also plant veggies in large planters just to see how they’ll grow.

My experiment this year was growing Kentucky Wonder green beans (pole bean type) in a large container with a trellis for support. I found a packet of seeds for only 20 cents early in the season.

The planter I used has a 22″ top diameter x 20″ high and is made of a lightweight Styrofoam. It probably holds about 64 quarts of potting soil.

Thanks to the continuing cool and wet weather, I’ve been finding unwelcome visitors to my garden.

Slugs love to feast on lush vegetation and our current wet weather is attracting them to my garden like never before. I’ve always heard about slugs, but I’ve never seen them in my typically dry garden until now.

Each morning I have to check for slugs on the container plants on my patio. I carefully look over each of my pepper plants to find the slimy things clinging to peppers, hiding under a leaf or casually lying on the soil. So gross!

These pests are 1-2 inches long and look like snails that have lost their shells. Slugs like damp garden soil and you know you have them if you see plant leaves with large holes chewed in them or holes in the fruits. It seems they’re especially fond of my jalapenos.

A promising crop of heirloom tomatoes was still on the vine when the big hail storm hit Pueblo July 29.

This may turn out to be one of the most disappointing gardening seasons on record for gardeners along the Front Range, especially because there were so many new vegetable gardeners this season.

New gardeners who planted Victory Gardens this year in an effort to save money on groceries, learned one of the hard lessons experienced gardeners know all too well: staying optimistic despite a season of bad weather and devastating hail storms.

A chilly May delayed planting warm-weather crops and then there were the drenching rains in June. In fact, Denver recorded it’s second wettest June on record.

While this weather was great for flowers and cool-season vegetables, like the peas and lettuces I had growing, it didn’t do much for their warm-weather veggie friends. The tomato and peppers didn’t budge for a month.

Every summer for the last four years, a cluster of male bees (genus Melissodes) finds this  Miscanthus sinensis the perfect place to spend each night.

Ever since I interviewed bee expert Stephen Buchmann a few years ago, I’ve had a soft spot for bees. He told me that one-third of our food supply is derived from insect-pollinated plants and that hundreds of fruits and vegetables would disappear if anything were to happen to the honey bee.

“It’s been stated that if there were no bees and other pollinators, it’s doubtful that the human population could survive for more than a few months,” he said.

Over the last few years, the decline in bee populations across the country has been well-documented. That’s why I was especially pleased to read about Gretchen LeBuhn in the August issue of Sunset Magazine.

Gretchen is an associate professor of biology at San Francisco State University and the founder of the Great Sunflower Project. Thank you, Gretchen!