Seed Starting Tips by Sandy Swegel Gardening can be frustrating for people who hate to wait. It’s not easy to speed Mother Nature along, so on a fine warm day, we find ourselves at the garden centers spending a lot of money on bedding plants or transplants. Seed lovers know that is not always a […]
Avoiding Plant Transplant Trauma by Sandy Swegel You’ve done all the work of getting little seedlings started. Maybe you’ve already hardened them off. Now, planting them in your garden has a few tricks that can make a big difference in how many vegetables you get to eat. “Breakfast-Lunch-Dinner” was one of the things I learned […]
Composting Tips by Sandy Swegel How to make bad compost: You need the right proportions of greens and browns to get the metabolic process going. Too much brown and nothing happens. Too much green and you either get slime or the greens just turn brown. You need the right amount of water. Too little water […]
Watch Out For Hawks by Sandy Swegel It is, alas, another snow day in Colorado. May 1st brought us 12 inches of snow. We’re so happy for the moisture but very grumpy about not being able to play in the dirt. Gardeners most often have our heads close to the ground. We’re weeding or digging […]
We Aren’t The Only Ones Who Love Dandelions by Sandy Swegel I may never pull another dandelion again. Well, at least not in my yard. But it was an utter joy to learn something new about dandelions yesterday while enjoying my morning coffee and looking out the window. We’ve had a very late Spring with […]
Easy Solution for Small Garden Pests We’ve been grateful all week for pollinators of all shapes and sizes and how crucial they are for feeding us and for making a beautiful world of flowers and trees. We know you understand our first priority to help pollinators by which is to create a habitat with the plants […]
How to Control These Pests In Colorado and the high plains, pest specialists say it’s going to be a banner year for cutworms and their adult form, miller moths. Most nongardeners think miller moths are a nuisance because they fly in every open door and window on summer evenings, hovering around all your lights. Gardeners, […]
Keep Record of Your Garden There’s nothing like April 15th, Tax Day, to remind us how much we wish we kept better records. I have matching boxes of good intentions. A box of receipts thrown together from the year with barely decipherable notes that need to be turned into reliable tax deductions. And a box […]
Why You Have to Keep the Hummingbirds Fed Hummingbirds are on the move. Do you have food for them? Fill your hummingbird feeders! I learned a new thing about hummingbirds this week. If you had a happy home for them last year with food and water, it is quite likely the very same birds will […]
Plant A Tree. “Only caring individuals can restore the places we inhabit. The ‘simple act of planting a tree’ not only restores the places we live, but makes us whole and powerful again.”– Paul Hawken, Smith and Hawken Queen Bee Becky of BBB Seed and I were talking the other day about how many fruit […]