On Monday I heard from a beginning gardener with a question about how to find non-GMO vegetable seeds for her first gardening efforts.

Her Question

“You’ve been on my mind the past few days with all the talk about Monsanto and GMO seed.

Do you have a resource for buying seeds?

I’m going to start my own little garden this spring and thought I’d see.”

My Answer

When you’re buying vegetable and herb seeds for your garden, look for companies that have signed the Safe Seed Pledge.

Scroll down the list to find your state. In Colorado, you’ll see the same seed companies that donate seed packets for the Plant a Row for the Hungry campaign that I organize every year in Denver:

BBB Seeds
Lake Valley Seeds
Botanical Interests
Renee’s Garden (in California)

About the Safe Seed Pledge

The last Saturday in January is designated as National Seed Swap Day. You can celebrate with these ideas for making seed sowing simpler this season.

Many beginning gardeners fret about starting their garden from seed. I know, because I worried about every seed I planted when I first started gardening, too.

But the basics of planting seed are simple. Gardeners plant seeds in the ground, cover seeds with soil and keep soil moist until seeds germinate.

Seeds want to sprout and grow–and many do without our help.

But for as long as people have been planting seeds, they’ve been trying to make seed sowing easier.

Native Americans rolled their seeds in clay balls to protect them from sun, wind, birds, and other animals. The seed balls weren’t planted, but broadcast on top of the ground so when it rained, the clay would melt and start germination.

Dr. Bob Gough may have departed the gardening world last year, but he left gardeners with more than 17 books on horticulture including The Guide to Rocky Mountain Vegetable Growing.

I never had the opportunity to meet Dr. Bob Gough face-to-face, but I got to know him anyway. He was the author of the “Ask Dr. Bob” gardening column on the pages of Zone 4 magazine. One of his last books, written together with his wife Cheryl Moore-Gough, is one of my go-to resources for vegetable gardening in a tough climate.

Soon we’ll all be fretting over chilly days that delay planting, so now’s a good time to pick up a copy of this book and tap into some of Dr. Bob’s vegetable growing wisdom.

The book is a good guide for any gardener, but it was written especially for gardeners who grow in short-season climates like we have in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming,

For 2011, I grew six different varieties of large tomatoes and here are the results for four of them. The other two, Amana orange (an organic beefsteak) and Aunt Ruby’s German green (large green beefsteak) aren’t quite ready to pick yet.

But until they are, here’s the big tomato round-up for 2011. (I posted the small tomato results in August.)

The Better Bush tomato seeds were a free sample from Botanical Interests. This variety is a short season tomato (70 days) and I grew it in a large container on the patio. The nice-size slicing tomatoes grew on a very stout stem. The tomatoes were similar to a beefsteak in taste, only smaller. No plant disease problems. It’s still going strong.

Congratulations to Carrie Fritz of New Prague, Minn., for taking the top prize in the 3rd Annual Weird Veggie and Funny Fruit contest sponsored by WesternGardeners.com. Her Love Apple is actually three tomatoes that grew into the shape of one perfect heart. “Love Apples” (La Pomme D’Amour) is an old French term for tomatoes.

Our contest judge, Geri Koncilija, chose Carrie’s entry saying, “I really grew to love this guy.”

There’s also a lot to love about the background of Carrie’s vegetable garden.  Last year her fiance was deployed overseas so they couldn’t plant a garden, but this year they were able to plant one together.  Carrie wrote, “Our garden started out of love and has blossomed.” She also mentioned that a September wedding is in the works.

Second place goes to Amy Lambert, also from Minnesota, for her Tomato Grinch. Amy’s tomato caused Geri to break into the signature song from How the Grinch Stole Christmas: “You’re a rotter, Mr. Tomato Grinch, you’re full of dreadful spots. You have no place in a garden, you’re scaring all the crops.”

My mid-summer garden is filled with heirloom fruits and vegetables including some adorable round baby squash, long purple eggplant, tomatillos, 7 different kinds of sweet and hot peppers, cucumbers, herbs, and 11 varieties of tomatoes. Not shown are the trombetta squash that are just now starting to take off.

Everybunny ready for the Denver County Fair?

The first-ever Denver County Fair is just a few weeks away! The fun begins on July 28 and ends July 31 at the National Western Complex.

If you’ve wanted to win a blue ribbon for your gardening efforts, the fair is your chance to show what you grow.

WesternGardeners.com is sponsoring the In-Season Vegetables competition and I hope you’ll join in. The competitions are open to any Colorado gardener. The competition entry deadline is going to be extended past July 18. Walk-in entries will also be considered. Check the Denver County Fair website for details.

Check your garden for the biggest and the best veggies in these categories:

• Root veggies (like potatoes, carrots, kohlrabi)
• Leaf vegetables (like lettuce, broccoli, cabbage)
• Vine vegetables (like cukes, zukes, squash)
• Peppers of all kinds
• Garlic

Saturday was a cold day for one of the Plant a Row for the Hungry kickoff events, but that didn’t dampen gardening spirits. Volunteers, Elizabeth Staton and Cynthia Pasquale, kept busy by handing out free garden starter kits to more than 100 gardeners.

The kits included free vegetable and herb seeds from Colorado seed companies BBB Seed, Botanical Interests, and Lake Valley Seed. Gardeners promised to plant the seeds and donate extra produce to any of the Food Bank of the Rockies donation sites or food service agencies in their neighborhood.

More images from the day are posted on our Plant a Row Colorado Facebook page.

I want to send a special “Thank You!” to all the Plant a Row for the Hungry volunteers in the Denver Metro area who helped at the kickoff events on Saturday. That includes dedicated volunteers who helped hand out the free garden starter kits and gardeners who volunteered to help plant extra produce in their gardens.

I’m especially grateful to the CSU-Denver Master Gardeners and the Front Range Organic Gardeners who let us join in their plant sales so we could reach as many gardeners as possible. Several hundred people will be planting produce to help feed hungry families by donating fresh vegetables to food banks, church pantries, and soup kitchens.

More images from the day are posted to our Plant a Row Colorado Facebook page.

It’s Official. Spring has Sprung.

Even though the weather is still iffy, gardeners are ready to start the 2011 gardening season.

It’s been a long, cold winter and just about every gardener I know is itching to get outside.

There’s plenty to do, too.

There’s also plenty of time.

While it’s too early for many warm-season gardening tasks, like planting tomatoes and peppers or sowing cucumber seeds, there still are many lawn and garden tasks…

Here are 9 to try:

1. Plant cool-season veggies: broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, onions, lettuce, peas, radish, spinach, and other greens.
2. Prune shrubs to remove dead branches and crossing branches.
3. Sow tomato and pepper seeds, if you haven’t already.
4. Place catalog orders for specialty perennials.
5. Pull back mulch wherever green shoots have started sprouting.
6. Sketch out vegetable garden bed plan.
7. Cut back ornamental grasses.
8. Apply pre-emergent herbicides to prevent grassy and broadleaf lawn weeds.