Q & A

Just because I don't write back doesn't mean I'm rude. I'm a wallflower at heart, plus Mom told me never to talk to strangers. A sleepless night = a deep desire to bond with my virtual gardening friends. Here's a brave attempt at responding to your questions:*

How To Start a Garden at High Altitude
- Buy a pair of gardening gloves and go nuts! A bit of peat moss helps dry soil conditions. Put your blinders on Memorial Day. Mother Nature just loves to hand us a final deep freeze when we're all out there camping for the long weekend.



Barnsley Babies Lavetera
- These lovely Tree Mallows do very well in High Altitude Gardens, thriving in our dry, low-nutrient soil.



High Altitude Lilac Bushes
- Lilacs love life in the mountains. That's because they are typically over-watered and over-fertilized in normal garden environments. Prune them after they bloom. These big, pretty bushes start working on next year's buds a month after they produce this year's fragrant flowers.


Planting Trees in High Altitudes
- Dig a hole 3 feet wider than your tree. This provides loose soil for roots to easily spread. Hold off on the fertilizer for a couple of years. Young trees are working hard, we just can't see that since most of the action is underground.

High Altitude Deciduous Trees
- Planting deciduous trees in your High Altitude Garden does more than beautify the neighborhood. Decomposing leaves adds vital nutrients to our poor, native soils. Visit Arbor Day and discover a world of tree options beyond the standard Blue Spruce. (Sort by drought tolerance.)

Dry Condition High Altitude Grass Seed

- Jim, please. I agree that Kentucky Bluegrass is lush and lovely. That's why it does so well in Kentucky, where it rains all the time. In the desert Southwest, the cost of a beautiful lawn comes from maintenance, not installation. Water bills are high because we're running out of water. Dwarf Fescue is an equally lush turf grass - drought tolerant, slow growing. We've got better things to do than mow the lawn every weekend. You can also kiss ChemLawn good-bye. Dwarf Fescue requires little to no fertilizer.

Utah Mushroom Hunting
- It might surprise you to discover that Utah has some of the best mushroom hunting in the world. Just don't eat them unless you're really, truly sure they're not the poisonous kind. Grab your trowel and head to the High Uintas. For more on 'shrooms, click here. (And, no, I don't know which ones get you higher than a kite.)


Park City, Utah Hardiness Zone
- According to the USDA we're zone 5. According to the Arbor Day organization, we're zone 6. That's because the USDA hasn't updated their growing zones in 16 years. Zone 6 plants are a fairly safe bet, in areas of your yard where snow drifts create a thermal blanket, keeping plants warm.

Carlton Daffodils
- Chris, you're a gardener after my own heart... All daffodils are happy in our High Altitude Gardens. Carlton and King Alfred Daffodils are two varieties that naturalize, making more daffies, as time goes on. Other varieties are reliable bloomers but the bulbs won't spread over time.



High Altitude, Dry Soil, Flowering Bushes
- Lavender, Honeysuckle, Six Hills Giant Cat Mint, Tree Mallows, Butterfly Bush, Barberry, Boxwood, Juniper, Privet, Sage, Winterberry... to name a few. Do the world a favor and plant varieties that inspire butterflies to nest.



Nurseries Selling High Altitude Grape Seedlings
- Havier, try this place - it's a good resource. Be sure and send us a bottle of wine for this hot tip.




Kelvedon Wonder
- Mary... bless your pea-pickin' heart. This is my favorite, too! Kelvedon Wonder is a sweet, crunchy, quick-growing pea variety, ideal for high altitudes and short-growing seasons. (65 days to harvest.) Start a veggie garden.


Tomatoes
- Don't fall for those gloom and doom stories from the local nurseries. If gardeners can grow tomatoes in Russia, you can grow them at 7,000 feet in Utah.



Do Hollyhocks grow at 9000 feet altitude?
- Sabeeh, hollyhocks are happy to grow anywhere you don't want them to. They would probably grow well on Everest if someone would just scatter a few seeds...





* Half the fun of blogging is meeting people from France, China, Afghanistan, Russia, UK, Portugal, Hong Kong, Canada... though, in all honesty, I haven't a clue what grows well in your neck of the woods. Oh, and while I do appreciate the compliments, I am not the slightest bit interested in marrying any of you nuts from Brazil.

Flowering Hedges

Big Max Perennial Sunflower (zones 4-9)

6 feet tall, loaded with blooms
Bonus: Drought tolerant!

There's only one downside to pay day and that's the sad fact that it doesn't come around often enough. But, it certainly is a happy frenzy on the day the paycheck arrives.

I went shopping! For drought tolerant, wind tolerant, Kate tolerant big, big (5 feet tall or more) perennials. Because the front yard of my property gives new meaning to the term 'Dante's Inferno.'

Maximiliana (above) is a perennial sunflower, destined to become the flowering hedge in my front yard. It blooms in August after it's companions, the Arnold Schwarzenegger ("I'll be back...") of roses, grows weary of entertaining us:

Rosa x 'Nearly Wild' Pink Floribunda (Zones 4-8) blooms all summer and puts up with a ridiculous amount of abuse.

Father Hugo is a tried and tested monster of a rose who shrugs off many forms of torture:

Rosa hugonis, 7' tall, 4' wide, zones 5-9. Father Hugo Shrub Rose is what I like to call Kate Tolerant, (which means when I forget to weed him, prune him, or even water him, he'll be just fine.)

Hugo has a short-lived burst of gorgeous lemon-yellow flowers each spring. But, that matters not to the native birds who nest in his thicket all summer long. * Very painful thorns prevent outdoor cats from 'visiting' the nests.

Tip: Don't discard the black one-gallon pots your perennials are sold in. Use them as a root irrigation system for the young bushes and trees you're planting. Sink the pots into the ground, next to new plants. Fill with water once a week. The water goes directly to the roots, where it will do the most good.

Bellflowers

This time of year, I'll do pretty much anything to feed the gardening habit. That's why I took on a freelance project that involves charts and analysis of all things...

So, I'm wasting a good bit of time staring out the window and daydreaming about bells...

Not so much the bell curves of these charts and graphs I'm expected to create. More on the order of:

The 300+ members of the lovely Campanula Bellflower family.
If I could squeeze them all into my garden, I'd probably do so.

Like fine art, sometimes flowers are captivating and we don't immediately know why. It might be the soft colors or gentle lines.

Some gardeners say it's the perfection of the Campanula's bell-shaped flowers they find so pleasing.

Campanulas are reliable perennials requiring no special care, just a bright, sunny location and good drainage.

Most are lovely shades of blue and lavender though the white varieties tend to bloom for longer periods of time.

Bellflowers range from very large (4-5 feet,) to very dainty (6 inches, perfect for rock gardens.)

Three growing in my garden:

• Campanula carpatica 'Blue Clips' USDA zones 3-8, blooms: July-September
• Campanula rotundifolia 'Bluebell of Scotland' USDA zones 3-8, blooms: June-September
• Campanula persicifolia Moerheimii, 'Bellflower Moerheimii', USDA zones 4-9, blooms: all summer.
  

As I dilly dally the hours away on this most boring chart-building project, it occurs to me... there's no such thing as a bell curve to life. Ups and downs create the jagged edges that come from successes and failures all along our path. Though... wouldn't it be lovely if life ran that smoothly?

Oh, The Places I'd Go

Easy-growing flower garden that won't break the bank:

< - Fringed Shasta Daisy 'Aglaia'

They say youth is wasted on the young, but I don't know if that's true. Most of the youngsters I see are having a swingin' time and that's 'cause none of them are fretting about how to pay the mortgage.

< - Lavender 'Purple Bouquet'

What I am pretty sure about is that money is wasted on the rich. There are numerous species on the endangered list in my little town. None are as threatened as one defenseless group.... people who work for a living.

< - Lavender 'Hidcote Pink'

At first I was thrilled that so many millionaires were migrating to this area. Especially because they were bidding like crazy on my crappy house!

< - Echinacea 'White Swan' and 'Magnus' Mix

Then I discovered it was because they planned to tear it down and build what they call 'a nice vacation home.' (That hurt.)

< - Russian Sage

We attended a flower garden class put on by the County Extension Agent. He had this brilliant idea of asking us to go around the room, introduce ourselves and explain what we wanted to learn...

< - Fragrant Daylilies

The first gal announced they'd recently built a second home here and her husband had given her $40,000 to 'spruce up the yard.' You can imagine how quickly the rest of us clammed up after that.

< - Japanese Iris

If you have $40,000 to spend on high altitude landscaping, purchase multiples - seven one gallon containers of each of these flowering perennial varieties... And hire someone like me to do the hard labor. (Someone like me, not actually me. I've got plenty to do in my own yard.)

These beauties are all drought-tolerant, easy growers, ecstatically happy with the alkaline, clay soil conditions that plague us gardeners in Park City, Utah. Most improve clay soil, over time.

Use the remainder of your budget - $39,000 - on the most amazing vacation you could ever dream up. Because, really, in the grand scheme of things, can't you find better ways to spend that dough?

In the words of Dr. Seuss: Oh, the places, I'd go...

Heirloom Tomato Plants

For information on quick-growing heirloom tomatoes, click here.

This is way too pretty to be an heirloom tomato. Most tomatoes have been hybridized to look perfect. The downside to messing with the natural order of things is that it also removes most of the flavor.

All I really needed was one itty bitty tomato seedling. One - quick growing, sweet, juicy, perfect for a container, willing to happily flourish on my deck - tomato plant. But, turning me loose at a Community Garden plant sale is just asking for trouble.

So, I went a little hog wild. I bought these luscious veggies pictured below, plus a trunk load of flowering perennials and one ultra risky 99 cent investment in a Rouge Vif D'etampes.

But that's okay. It's for a really good cause: Wasatch Community Gardens

Heirloom Veggies:
When you think of heirlooms, visions of Grandma's jewelry box dance in your head. Well, most Grandmas. Mine preferred junk jewelry over the diamonds, rubies and emeralds we all hope to inherit.

When you think of heirloom tomato plants think.... ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly... the best tasting tomatoes you'll ever find would have a tough time winning a beauty contest.

This is what I'm planting in my garden:



Black Russian Tomatoes











Armenian Cucumbers












King of the North Red Bell Peppers





It's entirely possible to grow veggies at high altitudes. Raised beds, with amended soil, improve your odds. Containers are great. Because up here in the mountains Mother Nature really is out to get you. If she discovers you're trying to grow veggies, she'll schedule a late season freeze in your honor, just to ruin your plans.

Veggies grown in containers grow faster. Plus, you can drag them back into the house on an exceptionally cold night.

Looking for unusual veggies and heirloom seeds? Look no further than Seeds of Change. They are working hard to improve your odds of growing heirloom, ultra rare, and good old fashioned farmhouse vegetables.

It's a Miracle!

Let me be perfectly clear --
I love Burpee.

I order from them every year and you should, too.
They are one of the GOOD GUYS.

Their vintage ads are pretty enough to frame and hang on the wall.

When I was young and naïve I wanted a job that involved cute clothes and great shoes so I took a job in advertising. It was hard for me to believe an ad career involved much more than that. Suffice to say, my attitude was a bit problematic.

That's why I pay a lot of attention to advertising. And, also why gardening ads drive me a little batty.

Ever notice how gardening commercials put the fear of God in you?

Buy this or that or you’re gonna fail for sure?
That's me! Well, not me precisely, I'm retired, but there's always someone eager to fill your shoes.

Companies predict doom and gloom because they have to. Gardens grow just fine without their products. If brands like Miracle-Gro can’t create hysteria you might figure out you don’t need them.

This being my blog, I'm free to throw a fit about all sorts of things. So, let's start with the 'thing' that spends $50 million on television commercials telling you how you'll fail if you don't use their product.

Miracle-Gro is a synthetic fertilizer that is prohibited from use in certified-organic farming.*

How could that be? Their commercials are so pretty!

• It works just like addictive drugs for humans. Once your soil has some, it wants some more. Over time, the ingredients in Miracle-Gro (and similar fertilizers) deplete the nutrients your soil creates naturally.

What to do?
It's this simple: Mix grass clippings into your flower beds. As the grass decomposes, it will improve your soil’s texture, stimulate microbial life and help prevent disease, all the while releasing plenty of nutrients to feed your plants.

Real gardeners don’t need miracles. This entrance way has never been fertilized:
* Studies conducted at the University of Wisconsin, Wallace Laboratories in El Segundo, California, among others. Write to me for more details.

Biking the C & O Canal

May is a tough month for mountain gardeners. First it's warm and then it snows and all it does all month long is tease you... Do what I do: run away.
Maryland is zone 7 - temps are warm and everything is blooming!

There are no mile markers on the road to self-discovery. Sometimes it feels like a super highway. Other times, a dead end.

Right when I think things are going just fine, I bump into more potholes and detours.... Days when I'm not quite sure where I'm heading... Or, even if this is where I should be, once I arrive.

It's these feelings, of being slightly lost, that have plagued me for a couple of months, now.

Good thing BK was in charge of the map.

Pretty soon I'm gonna have life all figured out. (And, when I do, you'll be the first to know.)

What I do know, for certain sure, is that when life becomes tiresome there is only one place to go - far, far away from where you are right now.


We pedalled up the C & O Canal.

Where Bluebells outnumber dandelions.

Pink Dogwoods wildly bloom, in defiance of the forest canopy covering our trail.


We biked 184 miles in 3.5 days!

(This does not include the side trips which were uphill in every direction.)


Swallowtail Butterflies danced along the trail, keeping pace with our bicycles.



We were... attacked by a goose, threatened by snakes, glared at by a hoot owl and mocked by a beaver.


We learned that booking lodging at a hotel called 'Hill Top' might not be the wisest choice if you're on your bicycle.







We determined that negative people have a leg up on us happy gals when it comes to the 4-petal dogwood flowers predicting romance.*




And, we found that there are some truly heroic B&B owners who will drive through the backroads of West Virginia to pick us up in the pitch dark, in the middle of freakin' nowhere, when we had most definitely run out of steam.


"I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me." - Emo Phillip

There's about a million locks along the C & O Canal, between Washington, D.C. and Cumberland, Maryland. But, after you've pedalled 100+ miles they all start looking the same.

* True love is a slam dunk when it comes to the Dogwood Trees, adored for their consistent, 4-petal flowers. Predict your fortune by plucking the first petal and say 'he loves me not.' The last of the 4 petals will always confirm that he does, indeed, 'love you.'

Long-Blooming Perennials

I work hard for a living and my flowers should, too. That means nixing lazy perennials that think they can get away with a bloom time of 4 weeks or less. (Slackers with the name Day Lily need not apply.)

These high altitude work horses flower 8-16 weeks with minimal care. All are drought-tolerant, much-loved by hummingbirds and butterflies.

Johnson's Blue Geranium
Geranium himalayense x pratense
Flowers: May - September
Full Sun
USDA zones 4-8




Redbirds in a Tree
Scrophularia macrantha
Flowers: June - September
Happiest at 6,000 feet or higher
Full to part sun, shield from wind
USDA zones 5-10





Cat Mint
Nepeta x faaseenii 'Select Blue'
Flowers: June - August
Full to part sun
USDA zones 4-9




Jupiter's Beard
Centranthus Ruber
Flowers: June - August, with deadheading
Full to part sun
USDA zones 4-9





Corkscrew Ornamental Onion
Allium senescens 'Blue Twister'
Flowers: June - September, with deadheading
Full to part sun/Loves clay soil
USDA zones 3-8







 
* Tip: Some of the most spectacular perennials bloom for very short lengths of time. Plant them among these long-flowering varieties for continuous color all summer long.

Aching Back

Raking, hoeing, weeding, mowing...

Schlepping hundreds of pounds of compost and mulch...

Digging halfway to China to find the roots of a stubborn dandelion...

Whoever thinks gardening is 'easy labor' hasn't toiled in my yard.

According to the calorie count website, this hard day's work burned off 3 Big Macs, a half dozen Snicker bars or 10 glasses of wine. (Now you're talkin'...)

Early Bloomers: Primrose

Perky little Primroses are so misunderstood. They're generally sold as houseplants and most folks (me, too) assume they're tender annuals. Who can resist these cheery little flowers? So, we bring them home and put them in a sunny window and... watch them curl up and die.

Primroses can't take the heat. They're winter-hardy, zone 3 perennials who would love you to death if you'd just put them outdoors in a shady spot. They happily bloom, in early spring, at the same time as your Daffodils.

Down & Dirty

"You can bury a lot of problems in the dirt."

I don't know who originally came up with this quote. Perhaps a savvy gardener who understood the Zen factor in putzing around the flower beds.

Or, maybe Tony Soprano. He might have invented the term 'pushing up daisies,' too.

Whatever the case, you can bury a lot of problems in the dirt.

But, what if your biggest problem IS the dirt?

Testing soil is something people hardly ever do, though it's a nifty way to finger somebody else for your garden woes. Some plants need special types of soil. Nurseries sell what's pretty, not what's guaranteed to grow.

Why test your soil?

Because flying blind isn't exactly saving the world...

- When plants start suffering, the first thing we do is layer on the chemicals.
- Gardeners use 4 times more chemicals per square foot than farmers.
- Runoff from lawns and gardens is a bigger water pollution problem than farms and industry combined.

* Soil tests expose the failings in your soil, not your abilities as a gardener. I've got lots of things growing that I never should have planted (I just don't tell anybody.)
* Learn what your soil has an abundance of and also what it's lacking. Then you can amend your soil with dirt cheap organic matter that improves your odds.

Get your soil tested.

Jacobs Ladder

When Amy made the long, lonely drive over Parley's Summit to pay me a visit, she came bearing gifts. That might have something to do with the fact that I have Tivo and she does not. Or, because I promised her dinner and she was probably expecting something fancier than chili and Fritos. Whatever the case, I made out like a bandit on this particular night.

Jacobs Ladder 'Apricot Delight' is destined for a prominent place in my butterfly garden. It's a long-blooming perennial that does well in high altitudes and partial shade. (In higher elevations, flowers fade quickly when planted in full sun.)

Jacobs Ladder gets its name for the leaf structure: successive pairs of leaves, on opposite sides of the 18" stalk, resemble a ladder.

• Herbalists use this plant as a natural cough remedy.
• For cats, it doubles as a punching bag.
• I prefer it in a vase on the kitchen counter: bright green foliage and wispy pink blooms make a lovely wildflower bouquet.

* Jacobs Ladder, Polemonium caeruleum, 'Apricot Delight,' perennial, USDA zones 4-8. Pair it with the more common blue Jacobs Ladder variety to attract a number of unusual butterflies.

Crossin' the Line

Back in 1928, a group of friendly folks started a service called the Welcome Wagon. It was a sweet, little gesture to anyone new moving into the neighborhood. My Aunt took on this job for about 5 minutes, when I was a little girl. Problem was, we lived in a crappy town in South Dakota where everyone was eagerly moving out, not in, so the position was fairly useless.

These days, people's attitudes show up long before they do. We generally discover we're getting a new neighbor when we bump into a barbed wire fence and a sassy orange sign that indicates we're on another hiking trail that no longer exists.

I didn't have much of a criminal record until Robert moved in next door. Since then, the sheriff has visited me three times. (I kid you not - his last name is Gunn.)

It's all because my cat, Pete, has the audacity to stroll over there and sun himself on the guy's porch. I don't know how to reason with a cat. Today was Pete's third offense and Sheriff Gunn was back. Lucky for me there are no laws on the books, with respect to cats trespassing, though it's his duty to investigate. And would it kill me to try to be a better neighbor?

Well, yeah. At this point it would. And, why don't you ask Robert that question?

WIND CHIMES
No garden is complete until you add a pretty, little wind chime. Or, in the case of the garden closest to Robert's bedroom window, a half dozen wind chimes are in order. Big ones, small ones, I don't care, as long as they make noise. (Sandy, your solution is brilliant.) They don't call my neighborhood High Wind Estates for nothing... Visit the Wind Chime store.