Serving all of Eastern Laramie County since 1908
Serving all of Eastern Laramie County since 1908
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Americans have always been competitive. It doesn't really matter what the field is, from racing (the Daytona 500 is going on right now) or playing games or showing off our skills. We all want to be the best. Some of us have natural talents and abilities and some of us have to develop skills from knowledge and practice. Regardless of whether we have natural abilities or we have to strive to develop skills, it all requires hard work to be the best. Growing and showing vegetables is no different....
Here it is mid-February already and I'm listening to the wind howling outside. As I look to the north I see some pretty nasty looking storm clouds. To the south, just a leaden, gray sky. It's hard to believe it's nearly time to start seeds for this spring's planting. Of course, if you're growing completely inside, it can be time whenever you choose. Since I run a mix of indoor, greenhouse, and outdoor planting I am pretty much working with something all year long. For the purposes of...
What an irony. I sit here writing this article as another major snowstorm is bearing down on us like a slow moving freight train. Watching the weather, it sounds like another five inches or so with moderate wind. The wind will be the key, I think. If it stays light, we won't get lot of drifting and the snow will stay where it lands. Otherwise, well, who knows? The second part of the irony is that I just checked the lavender field and it's still under nearly three feet of snow and ice. I'll just...
Okay. After last week’s dissertation I hope everybody has their beds designed and seed purchased. If you do, you should be getting your seeds within the next week. Until you’re ready to start them in pots, be sure to put them in the vegetable tray of the refrigerator. Cool is great while heat will decrease the germination rate. Now let’s move to the next step in the process. And, believe me, there is a process to gardening. We’ve already covered steps one and two (design and ordering seeds) so it’s time now to move into step three. Step thre...
Spring is nearly here and, if you haven't planned your garden yet, you're behind the eight ball. In other words, it's nearly time for seeds to start going into the soil. There's a lot of preparation that goes into a successful garden, whether it's flowers or vegetables. The preparation needs to begin several weeks, if not months, in advance of planting outside. Over the past several months I've written articles on the various aspects of planning and planting a successful garden. This week I'm...
I’ve heard of elderberry all my life, but I’ve never paid any attention to it until recently when I began to learn of some of its medicinal properties. All I’d heard before was how good elderberry wine is. I’ve never tasted it and, as far as I know, I’ve never even seen it. Since I don’t drink, I never had a reason to even raise an eyebrow. Then I met Dan Young, a naturopath in Cheyenne who introduced me to elderberry, along with many other medical herbs and plants. That tweaked my interest. So I’m adding elderberry to my list of articles on t...
When I was a kid, my mother tried to keep me away from garlic because she said it would give me “bad breath”. It didn’t matter that it was good and made a dull dish exciting. It was all about breath to her. But, people have added garlic to foods to enhance flavor for thousands of years. Take a bland dish, add a few sprinkles of garlic and, VOILA, it suddenly takes on an entirely new flavor and goes from a boring and totally unremarkable food to something full of flavor that we’ll anxiously devour. Garlic is historically used in Mediter...
It’s hard to believe it’s nearly 2020! Another year come and gone and I just don’t know where it went or how it got past me that quickly. I don’t know if I’ve been that busy or if maybe it’s just old age. Could be a combination of both, I guess. This week I was thinking about poinsettias. Of course, I’m writing this just before Christmas. Mind you, the poinsettias I remember from my youth are nothing like those we buy in the stores here. In Florida, where I grew up, poinsettia plants were often grown outside year-round and sometimes eve...
Have you every hung dung on a stick over your door frames? Have you heard of anybody that has? Well…I suspect you have. Especially if you celebrate some of the older Christmas traditions. The word derives from two Anglo-Saxon words. “Mistel” is the word for dung. “Tan” is the word meaning stick or twig. Hmm. That sounds like dung on a stick to me. Now that I’ve ruined the romanticism of mistletoe for you, let’s start. As Christmas approaches, I can’t help but think back to my childhood and the Christmas traditions my family shared so many...
Are you interested in gardening? Or, are you one of those who truly believes they have a black thumb and could kill an artificial plant? If you have any interest in gardening, or fresh vegetables, or flowers maybe the Master Gardener program will interest you. I know this isn't for everyone, but if you're reading these articles you've already shown an interest in gardening. People have a lot of reasons for becoming a Master Gardener. Sometimes it's just for the love of gardening and plants,...
The Thanksgiving Day meal is known far and wide as a virtual cornucopia of food. In other words, there’s a lot of different stuff that adorns most tables on that day. I remember growing up we always had Thanksgiving dinner at my Grandmother’s house in Gainesville, Florida. The nice thing about Thanksgiving in Florida is that we would still be wearing shorts and T-shirts. No shoes. They were unheard of unless we were going to church or to school. If we were in public, maybe flip flops. But the Thanksgiving meal…OH, THE MEAL! I haven’t seen th...
One of the more important holidays of the year occurs next week...Thanksgiving Day. Started by a proclamation by President George Washington in 1789, this day was intended to be a national day of thanksgiving for the bounty God had given to our nation. It was only celebrated intermittently until President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it a federal holiday in 1863. The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these...
Last week I started to write about herbs, thinking I was writing about culinary herbs. Especially those that can be grown in the house and used fresh. Somehow the story took a turn and ended up on medicinal herbs. This week I’m going to try to rectify that and stay on topic. Herbs have been used throughout history to flavor foods as well as for medicinal purposes. In fact, the earliest recorded references to herbs date back to between 13,000 to 25,000 BC as shown in cave paintings in France. The Egyptians were writing about herbs as early as th...
I've pretty much shut down the greenhouse for the year now that we've had a couple of really cold periods of weather. During the day it would heat up just perfect and at night it still stays about 25 degrees warmer than the outdoor temperature. But when its 4 below zero outside and 24 inside, it's still too cold for tomatoes and peppers. Right now all that is left is the herbs. They can take some colder temperatures for short period and do just fine. So the rosemary and chamomile are still...
The days are cold The wind starts to blow Colors will pale All is snow But not necessarily. We can’t stop the days from getting cold or the wind from blowing or even the snow from coming down. Yes, the colors outside may pale, but all isn’t lost. With just a little bit of forethought we can bring some of those colors inside and brighten our homes through the dreary winter months. Many of you, probably most of you, grow a lot of flowers during the summer. But why stop there? What do you do with those flowers at the end of the season? Why not...
October. This time of year brings back memories of the Halloweens of my childhood. Spiced apples, bobbing for apples, caramel apples, popcorn balls and, of course, jack o'lanterns. Make that pumpkins in disguise. This holiday was a big one for my mother. She just loved scaring the neighbor kids and that just meant that there were always a lot of them that came to our front door. Halloween back then wasn't near as scary (in a dangerous sense) as it is today. The streets were loaded with kids and...
Fall is here. Umph! After last week's snowfall and freezing temperatures, I think many would say that winter is here. Not really. This is just fall in Wyoming. But just because fall is here and the harvest is over that doesn't mean that gardening stops. There is still a lot to do. In fact, it's time to get busy...time to start planting fall bulbs if you haven't already. Whether you're planting flowers or vegetables, there are several that can be planted in the fall. If you research vegetables...
There's a new villain coming to town. And it wants to take over every piece of ground it can. The name... Palmer Amaranth. We've discussed Dalmatian Toadflax, Cheatgrass and a few other noxious weeds over the summer, but this one is worse than all the others. Fortunately, it isn't here yet. At least not that we know of. But it has been found in Goshen County and in our surrounding states. Palmer Amaranth is a particularly fast-growing weed that can easily outcompete every other plant that it com...
Well, I was wrong. Or at least my hopes were. I truly hoped we could squeeze out another two to three weeks of nice, warm weather before it started getting cold. Last night my hopes were dashed. The low here at the house was 38 degrees. That's only six degrees from freezing. Freezing is the end of an experiment I have going in the strawberries and will mean a quicker demise of the vegetables in the greenhouse. Right now everything is still producing and I'd hoped to go into November. Oh. Except...
Trees. Beautiful and highly coveted in Laramie County. Did you know that at one time, and not all that long ago, there were hardly any trees in Laramie County except for those on the bluffs in Pine Bluffs? Nearly every other tree has been planted and nurtured to get to where we are today. It's taken a lot of work to have the wonderful treescapes we all enjoy today. Besides the hostile environment, we've seen the ravages of nature on our trees. Just think back a couple of years to the big...
This week I took down my hydroponic system in the greenhouse. No, it wasn't because of disappointment or failure or anything like that. I've learned all I could from that particular system and I had to remove it in order to begin building the permanent system. I was still getting very large, beautiful tomatoes and the peppers coming from the hydroponic plants were at least twice as large and three to four times as numerous as those from the soil-based plants. But I need to get started on the...
After last week's article I think you may have gotten he impression that I'm sold on hydroponics. If so, you would be correct. But, the question that remains is, "what kind of hydroponic system will work best?" There really isn't a simple answer. There are many types of systems and they all have a place. When I started this journey I didn't have a clue what I was looking for. The Internet was my vehicle to answers and it actually opened up more questions than it gave answers. I was looking to...
I've gardened in soil since I first started well over 40 years ago. I've had my share of successes and more than my share of failures, just like most everyone. Some of my failures were entirely my fault (i.e. forgetting to water) and some were beyond my control, such as the hailstorm a couple of years ago. I was in the shop when it started and opened up the door to see what all the noise was. I remember just closing the door and telling myself, "well, no more weeding this year." Everything was...
Roses are a beautiful and fragrant flower and one of the more popular found in yards around the country. They come in all sizes and colors, some with tiny flowers and some with large thick blossoms. They can be small tea roses or larger climbing roses. Some are easier to maintain than others, especially when it comes to preparing them for our cold weather that we all know is just around the corner. Too many of us, including me, don’t prepare our flower beds and other plants for winter as we should. I’ve had the opinion for years that if a pla...
Okay. So it’s not quite fall yet. But the harvest appears to be pretty bountiful already. I’m not growing much variety this year, but I’ve already canned 93 quarts of dill pickles and the cucumbers are just getting started. They aren’t even close to their peak yet. I’m hoping for about 400 quarts. Then I won’t plant cucumbers for a few years. Hmm. Make that quite a few years. If they’re still coming in what do I do with all the bounty? A few weeks ago I wrote about supporting your local farmers...
