Gardenig in state Colorado. Tips & Guides

We’re visiting with Patsy LaHue today.

Despite working predominantly in ornamental—especially naturalistic—horticulture, I hold an “interdisciplinary minor in organic agriculture” from Colorado State University. Early in my career I worked primarily in food crops, and before I was 20 years old I spent summers in bean-breeding fields, diversified food-cropping systems, and home gardens. Through my years of food gardening, I’ve found that growing tomatoes even at 5,000 feet here on the “Front Range” is a gamble. With frequent cool, wet summers or late spring frosts—or worse, early killing frosts in fall—ours is not a favorable region in which to grow classic, meaty tomatoes.

Exciting news from NASA – the space agency has selected the first science experiments designed for astronauts to deploy on the surface of the Moon during Artemis III (currently planned for 2026) – and one of them will grow plants!

The winding peaks and troughs of Arizona’s Verde Valley, weaving through jagged ochre mountains, dreamy cactus-clad deserts and deep volcanic canyons, make up some of the most iconic images of the American West. For thousands of years, the valley has been home to both the Verde River, one of Arizona’s only perennial wild rivers, and to Indigenous communities from the ancient Sinagua and Hohokam peoples to present-day tribes including the Yavapai, Hopi, Apache and Zuni. It is also home to 270 species of birds, 94 species of mammals and 76 species of native amphibians and reptiles. All this makes the Verde River key to the history, culture and ecosystem of central Arizona. 

How to Grow and Care for Sea Thrift Armeria maritima

Since entering horticulture professionally over a decade ago, I’ve noticed a correlation on the Colorado Front Range between wood mulch (also called arborist chips) and water-wise gardens. A beautifully designed garden goes in, with appropriate irrigation and plant palette, and the garden looks great—briefly—before languishing. Plants in these beds never quite take off, or they fail before their natural lifespans are over. I casually refer to this as plant/mulch mismatch, and it’s an issue I see too often, maybe because mulch is anything but exciting to the average homeowner.

This extensive unirrigated planting of cold-hardy cacti and succulents basks on a warm south-facing slope in the Undaunted Garden at the Gardens on Spring Creek in Fort Collins, Colorado in zone 4b/5a. In late May and June, the cacti bloom in hot colors along with the ice plants. Thanks to these plants’ interesting evergreen forms as well as the finer textures of similarly dry-loving companion plants such as red yucca for contrast, the garden has abundant year-round appeal. The maintenance for this planting is simple and not extensive—a bit of cutting back and cleaning up of companion plants both as they finish blooming and in early spring along with weeding is all that’s needed. However, this requires agility and dexterity as many plants are sharp and prickly.

In a second building on his property in Springfield, Oregon, Gared Hansen grows mushrooms containing psilocybin, a psychedelic compound that grows naturally in the environment. Hansen harvests the mushrooms after each flush sprouts from the bins and bags in which he plants them. Everything harvested within a 24-hour window counts as a harvest batch, which he sends to a certified lab to be tested. Once approved, Hansen, the owner of Uptown Fungus, packages the mushrooms and sells them to the handful of service centers that have opened in Oregon over the past few months.

Interior design trends have an intriguing way of reflecting the world we live in outside of our homes and even inside our phones. 

The Rocky Mountain Region is stretched over 10,000 feet in elevation change and nearly over the full longitude of the Continental United States. Within this massive spread fit more than six biomes, ranging from the grasslands and prairie edges of northern New Mexico to the alpine of Montana. Despite the impressive diversity in soil and climate, many people in the area garden on our region’s namesake: rocks.

This list of the Best Outdoor Christmas Plants, with their beauty and colors, is precisely what you need to uplift your home garden with Christmas vibes this winter.

Back in May, Lex Madden, bar manager at Point Easy in Denver, Colorado, told BHG that “the spritz is absolutely the drink of summer!” 

WHEN YOU SHOP for food—whether produce or meat or eggs—and see a label that says “organic,” what do you think that means? At its most fundamental level, I guess I always thought it meant vegetables grown on the fields of an organic farm—like, in the soil, or animals raised in its pastures.

Indoor plants can be a fantastic way to put a new dimension to any room of the house. If you like your green friends with a big stature, then you will love these Pictures of Tall Tree Like Houseplants!

eurotravel / Getty Images

Wondering what to plant after potatoes? There are several factors to consider including crop rotation and the time of year. Crop rotation is a key strategy for reducing pest and disease problems, as well as nutrient depletion. The other point to keep in mind is timing. Potatoes can be dug in mid to late summer as a new potato crop or left to mature for a fall harvest of storage spuds. When you harvest your potatoes can influence what you next plant in the bed. Below I share my ten favorite vegetables to plant after potatoes to help you grow a healthy and productive garden.

You’ve probably heard of companion planting: Grouping different plant species near each other to the mutual or sole benefit of one or the other. Companion planting methods are used for various reasons, most commonly to repel pests. Herbs, including thyme, are often recommended companion plants. So what companion plants go well with thyme? Read on to learn about companion plants for thyme.

If you’re interested in an organic solution for problems with your garden and houseplants, you may want to consider neem oil. “This botanical pesticide is used as an insecticide, which is most effective on immature insects,” says Barbara Smith, consumer horticulture extension agent at theHome & Garden Information Center at Clemson University. “It does have some fungicidal benefits for diseases such as powdery mildew.”

Header image: The future of agriculture? Nick Dragotta

Header image: Glenn, in the NASA mailroom, received letters from fans of all ages. John Glenn Archives, The Ohio State University, CC BY-ND

Header image: The finicky fruit took some time to adapt to California’s climate. Print Collector via Getty Images

Header image: The tiny floating duckweed plant is uniquely suited to meet the nutritional needs of astronauts. Dr. Jared J. Stewart, CC BY-ND

Dr Luis Zea from the University of Colorado Boulder is the Principal Investigator for the Deep Space Radiation Genomics (DSRG) study, an experiment headed for the Moon on NASA’s Artemis I mission. In this short video, he explains why he’s sending yeast into space.

Because I value potable water, I prioritize its use. Edibles and newly planted shrubs and trees, which are highly vulnerable to drought stress, earn the right to receive water from my spigot. When plants become established, meaning that they’ve regenerated enough roots to sustain themselves without supplemental irrigation, they’re only watered when the need arises.

Regardless of whether you are just starting your gardening journey or are already a gardening pro, the question of how to stop detrimental pests from destroying your hard work will inevitably arise.

For those who are looking to buy a home for the first time, the feat can seem like quite the hurdle. With housing prices and interest rates still high, and a competitive market, it’s tough out there! And the number of first-time home buyers are dropping, too, because of those high prices—according to personal finance site WalletHub, 26% off home purchases were made by first-time home buyers in 2022, down from 34% the previous year.

Everyone loves falafel—it’s a year-round staple, and the frozen options at Trader Joe’s make it incredibly easy to prepare. But today, you should probably rid your freezer shelves of any Trader Joe’s falafel: In the company’s third food recall this week, on July 28 Trader Joe’s recalled its fan-favorite Fully Cooked Falafel after being informed by the supplier that rocks were found in the food.

Horsenettle is a Southeastern native, perennial weed and a member of the nightshade or Solanaceae family. The nightshade family also includes tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and potato. This presents a problem for home gardeners because this weed and other nightshade weeds can serve as alternate hosts for leaf spot diseases, viruses and a host for the Colorado potato beetle. The Colorado potato beetle primarily attacks potatoes and eggplant but will occasionally feed on tomatoes and peppers.

Various kinds of borers can impact crabapples, not just the apple-bark borer, I know now after reading the fact sheets from various Cooperative Extensions around the country. Unlike the one in the photo up top, with borer entry points at eye level, one of my trees has damage at the base, more like what you’d expect from a vole, but there’s a tell-tale sign, Dennis explained: the presence of frass, or sawdust-like reddish debris that’s a combination of wood particles and insect wastes. Where you once would have seen cambium, you see frass. Sometimes cracks in the bark will also ooze sap.If you have a strong stomach and want to see what I am up against, Clemson University and Colorado State have some lovely photos of borers. I would have taken the shots myself had I been able to locate the hideous creatures, but so far no luck. If you are looking for me tomorrow, I will be out there with pieces of wire probing the tunnel system that was once my tree’s infrastructure, to

I have two other Abies concolor here (I know, there’s evidence of my former“everything in threes” insanity again), the other two grown naturally, unshorn, and therefore quite different-looking. I won’t tell you what I paid for the big guy, all thick and a perfect pyramid and already near 10 feet tall when he came to me to live on my hillside of a backyard, among the crabapples and a giant island of ornamental grasses. The others were scrawny little things, maybe 3 feet high, though each is more than 15 tall now.The white, or concolor fir, a Western American native species ranging from Colorado to Southern California, New Mexico and into Mexico, can grow to 100 feet in the wild, apparently, but in a garden setting you are more likely to see it get to 30 or maybe 50 feet in time, and half as wide.Its long needles, which are particularly silvery-blue in the cultivar ‘Candicans,’ curve outward

The latest longing for a way to store my garden produce properly overtook me last week, when I was looking for images of roots (as in those ant-farm-like diagrams of a cross-section beneath the soil surface of the prairie).  One of the “autofill” suggestions that appeared when I started typing r-o-o-t into a Library of Congress photo-archive search was the phrase “root cellar,” and I could not resist.Suddenly, down the rabbit hole into underground repositories of yesteryear I went, touring historic root cellars around the United States that had been surveyed as part of a Histori

The listing for ‘Aunt Ada’s Italian’ in the catalog from Turtle Tree, a biodynamic seed company and just across “town” here from me, said that the variety came from Italy to Colorado around the turn of the 20th century, with a family called Botanelli. It’s likened to a “small, buttery snap lima” in flavor when steamed. I quickly steamed a bowlful for supper, and drizzled the beans with some olive oil and a dash of salt. Delicious (though admittedly a whole different texture than what you expect from a snap bean, whose seeds are rarely part of each mouthful)!My vines (supported on a bamboo tripod) are a couple of feet taller than the 6 feet predicted, and they started to bear in about 60 days. Pick them when they are not too big (maybe 3 inches long on average) and the seeds inside are starting to show. From the number of flowers on the plant yesterday despite the good haul of pods, I’d say there are plenty more to come.Want to use them for soup or another dry-bean recipe? Let the pods go all the way to withered and tan on the vine, and follow the dry-bean how-to here.This is the second new-to-me

My inspiration comes from Blake Schreck of Garden Tool Company, who in the low-humidity environment of Colorado (where the company’s headquartered, and has an astonishing retail store, too) doesn’t worry as much about the main enemy of most metal tools: rust. Here in the Northeast, as in the South and everywhere else but the arid zones, we do.Too care isn’t sexy, Blake agrees. “The last thing I want to do after a day of gardening is go clean my tools,” he admits. Sound familiar?With that in mind, we came up with this list of simple steps that don’t take too long.5 can-do tool-care tipsEasiest of all, maybe: Simply rinse soil off

I LOVE THAT the species name for this bug, hilare or hilaris, means cheerful or lively, and indeed its nymph stage (top photo) is colorful as a clown. The adults are bright green and shield-shaped. With its sharp, piercing mouthparts, the green soldier or stink bug is good at eating most anything plant-wise, but really enjoys black cherry, flowering dogwood, pine, highbush blueberries, apples, eggplants, tomatoes and much more. A more complete list of the green stink bug’s diet and a look at its life-cycle. They can damage soybean crops, and out West, Acrosternumis a pest of almonds.squash bug, Anasa tristisIF THE GREEN SOLDIER BUG’S name is cheerful, the most common squash bug’s, Anasa tristis, says it is sad–which is what it was making me when I was picking these guys off regularly earlier this summer.  How to prevent and eliminate squash bugs.three-lined potato beetle,Lema daturaphila or trilineaWHEN I FIRST SAW THESE on my potato foliage in late spring, I thought

[podcast url=” http://podcasts.am1020whdd.com/~am1020wh/shows/mp3/A_Way_To_Garden-December_9_Lia_Babitch_Turtle_Tree_Seeds.mp3″]I PROMISED Lia I wouldn’t make her try to explain the entire system of biodynamics on the air–but in very short: It’s a system of agriculture that incorporates the power of all the dynamic, subtle forces of nature and does not incorporate any synthetic inputs like chemicals. Ever.“We don’t do any of the bad stuff that ‘certified organic’ doesn’t let you do,” says Lia, “but we also do a bunch of good stuff that helps the soil and the ecosystem.” (You can read more about it here.)my q&a with lia babitch of turtle treeQ: First: Let’s get a little background on the Turtle Tree seed company, Lia.

Just as the birds are trying to tell one another something with the sounds they make, we too need a vocabulary for what we’re hearing. Otherwise, it can be overwhelming, to say the least. The book helps us learn the words to describe sounds, and more.  Nathan Pieplow is an expert “earbirder” who has been intensively studying and recording birds since 2003. A South Dakota native, he lives in Boulder and teaches writing and rhetoric at the University of Colorado.He joined me on my public-radio show and podcast to help us understa