Turn under winter cover crops

If a winter cover crop of rye or Austrian winter pea was planted in the fall, turn it under a month before planting or seeding. I turned my winter rye under this past weekend adding “green manure” to the soil.

The large soil critters such as the earthworm pictured here (below right) and soil microorganisms will “chew” through the raw roots and tops over the next weeks for soil improvement. I left the soil “rough” and certainly didn’t step on and compact it. That’s an advantage of raised bed gardening – standing outside the bed to work your soil. It will not be tilled again when seeding or planting so the soil structure can be preserved as much as possible. More tilling would simply destroy it and there is no good reason for it.
















First, why do you need to wait a month before planting? The living critters working over the plants consume soil oxygen and can create plant health problems if not tilled in ahead of time. Once the bulk of the “raw” plants have been consumed, the soil environment stabilizes and lack of oxygen for plant root growth is no longer a problem.

Second, it’s about more than the buried plants. If it was only the plants we could find a way to chop them into fine pieces and instantly improve the soil. The secret is what the soil critters add to the mix and the squeamish need read no further. Simply know that without them, you couldn’t realize the soil structure and fertility improvement benefits from planting and turning under cover crops.

Large and small critters feed on the buried plants adding substances such as slime, mucus and fungal mycelia. Analyzing these substances show things such as gums, waxes and resins which glue soil particles together. Clumped particles enhance the tilth, porosity, and water holding capabilities of soil – all good things for healthy plant growth.

Take care of your vegetable garden soil and it will take care of you.


Photo credit: Two soil spading photos - Carl Wilson

Late dormant season fruit tree pruning

Before buds break in March, prune dormant fruit trees. Recently I helped prune peaches in a Denver community garden (unpruned peach photo left). Peaches must be pruned hard every year as they only bear fruit on one year old twigs. Renew them yearly by pruning to replace nearly all fruiting wood. Two year old or older twigs are unproductive.














The photo left illustrates how hard this pruning should be on peaches (pruned branch left, unpruned tree right side of photo). You should end up with a skeleton of thick, blunt scaffold limbs sprouting very few thin, one year old twigs (photo right). Leave bearing twigs of 12 to 18 inches in length removing the shorter ones (bear small fruit) and longer ones (bear too many and are subject to breakage).

Twigs pointing upward and out at 45 degree angles from horizontal are most productive. Remove vertical and downward pointing twigs. “Stacked” twigs or branches growing over top one another shade the lower twig so remove one of them.

Prune trees to allow light into the center of the tree. With fruit trees, light equals fruit. Dense, unpruned trees will yield poorly. Remove dead and interfering branches, renew fruiting wood, and control size to keep bearing wood close to the ground.

Maintain a zone of equilibrium between excess growth (the rank growth tendency of the top of the tree) and poor fruiting (lower portion tendency). Do this by pruning harder in upper, outer portions of a tree to allow light in. Most home gardeners tend to prune mature trees too little.

Finally, remember that pears, cherries, apricots and most apples bear fruit on short spurs that last for some years. This is very different than peaches so don’t prune off the short spurs or you will have no crop.

Here’s hoping that spring freezes spare our fruit tree blossoms so we can have a good fruit crop this year.

Photo credit, All peach pruning photos, Carl Wilson

Vegetable Gardening 101 class

Learn the keys to successful vegetable growing on the Front Range including tips and tricks to make your gardening life easier. Colorado’s climate realities include a short growing season, cool summer nights, dry air, erratic late spring and early fall frosts. Soil conditions add another gardening challenge. The guiding hand of you, the grower, makes all the difference in altering growing conditions to achieve results. Come learn when and how to intervene to produce the vegetables you want for fresh eating and preserving.

Instructor: Carl Wilson

For: Beginning to intermediate gardeners

Dates: Saturday, March 20, 2:30 to 4:30 p.m.
repeated Saturday, April 10 same times

Location: 200 Santa Fe Dr., Denver

Click to Register: Denver Urban Homesteading
Cost: $25

Photo credit: Plant starting under lights, Carl Wilson

Consumer sources of garden information

Consumers are mining the internet for more and more garden information. If you are online reading Front Range Food Gardener, exploring online seed catalogs and university plant information websites, you’ve helped vault the internet from fifth to second most used source for garden information in the last year.

The national Garden Trends Research Report just released by the Garden Writers Association Foundation asked “Which of the following are your sources of gardening information?” Consumers rated top sources to be friends (43%), internet (29%), magazines (22%), books (22%), retailers (19%), newspapers (13%), blogs (7%) and other (18%).

I always urge people to look at the source of the information. Anyone can throw up a website or blog so look for who is writing. Is it a credible university, nursery, plant society, government agency or similar source?

There are certainly knowledgeable amateur gardeners but critically think through their recommendations and interpretations before buying their information. You can always run your own experiment and try growing one plant their way and one “normally” to see if there is any difference.

Do check if they are writing about plants in your hardiness zone and environment. This is why Front Range Food Gardener is localized to Denver and other Front Range Colorado cities. Our climate is challenging. While experiences elsewhere can inform us, they always need to be interpreted for how well they translate to our environment and soils.

Low elevation humid climate plant growing even in the north doesn’t always copy to high and dry plant growing in Colorado. Likewise growing in acid eastern U.S. soils doesn’t mean plants will perform similarly in alkaline Colorado soils.

Check back for more garden information and share your garden experiences on this blog. Note your city location so others can interpret how well information applies to them. We can all help each other be more successful food gardeners.

Vegetable varieties for high elevation Front Range areas

Larry Stebbins of Pikes Peak Urban Gardens recently spoke at the green industry ProGreen conference at the Colorado Convention Center. His favorite vegetable and herb varieties are listed below. If they grow at Colorado Springs elevations, they must be special. Varieties mentioned first in bold type are favorites. Other adapted varieties follow. If a variety is new to you, try it this season.

Artichoke Globe: Imperial Star (annual, 85 days from seed)
Asparagus: Jersey varieties
Basil: Genovese, Sweet Basil
Beans: Kwintus Pole, most bush varieties (Blue Lake, Tendergreen), Kentucky Wonder Pole
Beets: Detroit Dark Red, Bulls Blood, Chioggia
Broccoli: Premium Crop, Pacman, Early Dividend
Cabbage: most all, try Chinese varieties
Carrot: Mokum, Ya Ya, Kaleidoscope, Nelson, Danvers Half Long, Burpee A#1, Sugarsnax
Corriander: Santo
Corn Sweet: Bodacious, Ambrosia
Cucumber: Cool Breeze, burpless varieties
Garlic: Spanish Roja, Inchelium Red, Chesnok Red, Chet’s Italian
Kale: Red Russian, Redbor
Lettuce: Buttercrunch, romaines, leaf lettuces, mesclun mixes
Mustard: Osaka Purple, Mizuna
Onion: Candy, SuperStar White, Red Candy, Lisbon White Bunching, Copra, First Edition, Red Zeppelin
Parsnip: Hollow Crown
Peas: Sugar Ann, SugarSnap, Oregon Sugar Pod(snow pea), Garden Peas (Maestro, Wando and Marvel),
Pepper Sweet: Carmen, Green Bell (most varieties), Fooled You Jalapeño
Pepper Hot: Mexibell, Anaheim, Big Chile, Jalapeño, Mucho Nacho, Garden Salsa, New Mex Joe Parker
Potato: Russet, Yukon Gold, Red Norland
Radish: Cherry Belle, French Breakfast
Rutabaga: Laurentian
Spinach: Giant Noble, Tyee, Space, Melody, Bloomsdale
Squash Summer: Magda, zuchinni (most varieties), yellow, crookneck,
Squash Winter: Early Butternut, Table King or Table Ace Acorn, Buttercup, Spaghetti
Swiss Chard: Ruby, Rhubarb, Bright Lights, Neon, Fordhook
Tomato: Big Beef, Sweet Million or Sweet 100’s, Celebrity, Fantastic, Early Girl, Better Boy, Mortgage Lifter, Sweet Baby Girl

Chile peppers - back to the future

If you love to grow chiles and eat Mexican food, you will want to know about New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute. They have cleaned up the ‘Big Jim’ and ‘6-4’ chile varieties to yield 10 percent more and have 20 percent more flavor! The resulting heritage varieities are what these chiles used to be like before seed lines wandered off type. The fruit grown from CPI’s seed more closely resembles the flavor many may remember from years ago – and higher yield is an added bonus.

Do you have trouble maturing chiles in your shorter growing season area? You will be interested in NuMex Espanola Improved, a variety adapted to fewer days to maturity growing.

See the CPI Shop 2010 catalog for seeds as well as books and posters. Note also that they carry more than just chile peppers. Sweet, paprika, jalapeno, Cuban, Caribbean, ornamental and many other types of pepper seeds can be found in their colorful catalog pages. Pepper enthusiasts can also get the T-shirt and salsa.

CPI’s online catalog is fun to browse even if you have no thoughts of growing peppers this season. Before you know it you may just find a pepper that you have to try in your garden.

Photo credit - Caged pepper plant- Carl Wilson