Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category

• Hail pulling a Houdini

  Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

  Small, summertime hail storms in the Colorado Front Range could disappear by 2070, according to a recently published study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

• Drifting toward answers on lost crops

  Thursday, December 8th, 2011

  If you shop with any regularity at the Abbondanza stall at the farmers’ market, you might have noticed some gaps in their inventory this fall. Dried beans and winter squash are mostly what Shanan Olson, co-owner, says people have commented on missing. They ask why, and she’s not sure how to reply. Pesticide drift on their organic-certified farm in 2010 cost most of their fall harvest, a $250,000 loss. At least, that’s what they can piece together. What really happened to their crop has been a complicated puzzle to solve.

• Peeking in on priceless plants

  Friday, November 4th, 2011

  The doors to a prized collection of plants are opening to Boulder — for just a few people and only briefly. On Nov. 8, the CU greenhouse on 30th Street will allow a few people in to tour the greenhouse and develop a better understanding of the work that happens at the greenhouse and the work plants do in our daily lives.

• Cultivating farmers on small farms

  Thursday, July 28th, 2011

  Rows of squash, beans, corn, broccoli, lettuce, potatoes and tomatoes are tended by apprentice farmers, coming out even on the recent blazing hot afternoons to plant seeds, pull weeds and cover potato plants in hay and dirt on a small farm off the Diagonal Highway near Niwot. The one-acre Everybody Eats! farm is planted on 3.5 acres of land leased from the Shepherd Valley Waldorf School. The farm was founded by Dave Georgis, who started the seeds now planted in neat, student-friendly rows in his basement earlier this spring.

  Everybody Eats! is one of several farms and school partnerships in the Boulder area.

• First tomato of the season

  Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

  Whether it’s genetics or zeitgeist, I felt compelled last year to start a vegetable garden. My younger son, now grown, helped me plant a test garden of sorts, haphazardly sowing veggies amid our flowers and opening up one vegetable bed, in which we planted green beans, broccoli, peppers, cucumbers and squash. It was an exciting time, as we both crept out to the garden each morning to see what had sprouted. Though we didn’t plant that much, we got so much food out of that last-minute agricultural experiment that we decided it was time to become full-blown urban farmers.

• Gifts for gardeners

  Friday, December 11th, 2009

  A recurring theme emerges when asking local nurseries and garden-supply stores about their hottest gifts of the holiday season.

  Several mention hydroponic growing systems. Hmm.