Growing Points

The generous once-a-week winter watering schedule offered by Colorado Springs this year has led many homeowners to believe that the drought is over and landscapes no longer need supplemental water in late winter/early spring. In addition, many people have been lulled into complacency as a result of 2003’s above- average snowfall and the refilling of some of our region’s reservoirs. However, unusually dry soil conditions and limited water resources resulting from many years of below-average precipitation cannot be corrected in one year. As of January 2004, snow pack is below normal. The drought in our region is not over, but ongoing despite some improvements.

Consistent moisture is necessary to prevent drought-stressed landscapes, which are more vulnerable to disease and insect infestations and branch dieback. During February and March, homeowners need to water established trees, shrubs and lawns once a month. Landscapes and plants installed within the past two years need to be watered twice a month. Beginning in April, landscapes should be watered three times a month. In Colorado Springs, residents with odd-numbered addresses will water on Saturdays; those with even numbers will water on Sundays. Watering is allowed for a maximum of three hours per day. Irrigation should take place early on a day when temperatures are above 40 degrees F and there is no snow cover.

Because trees are the largest, hardest-to-replace investments in a landscape, give them watering priority, irrigating evergreens first as they do not become dormant in winter and are actively transpiring and utilizing moisture. Trees should be watered within and beyond the drip-line at a rate of approximately 10 gallons of water per inch of trunk diameter. Water using a trickle from a hose, a soil needle or a soaker hose. Overhead spraying is inefficient and should be avoided.(continued on top of right column of this section)

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Similar watering techniques should be adopted for shrubs, which should be given second watering priority with evergreens being watered first. All shrubs will benefit from 5 gallons of water, with larger established shrubs requiring up to 18 gallons. For complete information on watering during winter, go to www.watersaver.org/saveourshade.asp.

Lawns should also receive water when there is no snow cover. A hose with a portable sprinkler is the best way to water where irrigation systems have been drained for the winter.

In addition to supplemental watering in winter, trees, shrubs and perennial gardens should be mulched. Mulch applied 3-4 inches deep within a plant’s drip line (but away from the trunk) conserves moisture, prevents frost heave and protects plant roots from the radical weather changes and drying Chinook winds of late winter and early spring. Mulch materials may include wood chips, bark, leaves and evergreen branches or needles.

Residents of our area need to remember that we live in a semiarid region and are always on the edge of drought. Current drought conditions have raised awareness of the need to conserve water, and now may be the perfect time to incorporate proper winter watering/mulching techniques along with drought-tolerant plant selections into regional horticultural habits so that landscapes of the future will be better adapted to withstand our region’s climate.

Related Fact Sheet:
7.211: Fall and Winter Watering,
www.ext.colostate.edu/PUBS/GARDEN/07211.html

Some of the best plants for dry shade/partial shade in our climate are members of the Heuchera (pronounced HYEW-kur-uh) family. This genus of tough native American wildflowers was once represented in gardens only by our grandmothers’ coral bells (Heuchera sanguinea). But in the past twenty years, plant breeders have concentrated on bringing out the fantastic foliage colors possible through hybridization, producing cultivars with magnificent broadly lobed leaves ranging from green to bronze to burgundy and even purple on top with purple, pink or silver underneath. Leaves can also bear white, purple or silvery markings, producing an effect similar to stained glass. Some leaves have ruffled edges. When plants are in bloom for 3-6 weeks every summer, lush mounds of foliage are topped by airy wands of dainty flowers, the fabled “coral bells upon a slender stalk.”

These drought-tolerant, disease-resistant beauties are approximately 12 inches wide by 18 inches high (including flowers), and grow best in well-drained soil in full to partial shade, though some varieties can take full sun. They graciously endure a host of indignities in our climate: poor soil, wind, hail, untimely frosts, and deer. Though deer may taste these hairy-leafed plants, they rarely devour the whole thing, and their snacking serves to create a denser mound of foliage. Whether used as a ground cover, specimen plant, rock garden plant or perennial flower, heucheras are sure to be successful additions to western gardens.

Cultivars commonly available in Colorado Springs nurseries include:
1 Firefly: bright green leaves with brilliant red flowers
2 Palace Purple: leaves are bronzy-green above and purple underneath, with white flowers
3 Snow Angel: green and white variegated leaves highlighted by pink flowers
4 Bressingham Bronze: mahogany-red leaves topped by sprays of white flowers
5 Plum Pudding: silver-netted burgundy foliage with pink flowers.

Now is the proper time to begin preparing your ornamental grasses for the coming spring and summer.

Grasses benefit from the removal of the previous year’s dead foliage. The foliage should be removed in late March or early April, before new growth resumes. If new growth is observed, do not cut the green foliage. The growing point is located at the soil surface, so the old foliage may be cut back to within several inches of the soil. The following suggestions will simplify this task. Tie the foliage with a piece of twine or string to make cleanup easier. Cut the foliage with a pair of sharp hedge or pruning shears. Wear a pair of garden gloves while pruning as the sharp edges of some grass leaves can cause minor cuts. The removed foliage can be composted or placed in a trashcan.

Most ornamental grasses are rapid growers and should be divided at least once every three years. Dividing the clumps is not difficult. After removing the foliage, clear the area around the grass clump. Using a sharp shovel or spade, cut through the clump to sever the roots. Then, cut around the perimeter of the clump portion to be removed, freeing it from the mother plant. The removed portion may be replanted in another location, given to a neighbor or gardening friend or composted. Where a portion of the clump was removed, fill the hole with soil and water it to allow good contact with the remaining grass roots.

The removed clump portion can be further divided by cutting through it with a sharp knife. Don’t rip the stalks apart, as this will damage the shoots and roots.

When planting newly purchased or divided grass clumps, dig a suitable size hole and amend the soil with compost or Canadian peat moss. Firmly pack the soil around the clump and water well. Placing a mulch of wood or bark chips around the transplanted clump will help to keep the soil moist. Transplanted ornamental grasses should be watered frequently until they are well established.

Both established and transplanted grasses respond to fertilizer. An organic fertilizer, applied in the spring, will feed the plants during the growing season. Do not apply excessive amounts of fertilizer, as it will cause the grass to grow too fast and some taller varieties might have to be staked to keep them from falling over.

Information on ornamental grasses, which do well in the area, may be found in the following Colorado State University Extension Fact Sheet:
7.232: Ornamental Grasses
www.ext.colostate.edu/PUBS/GARDEN/07232.html

In the midst of winter, many gardeners along the Front Range are admiring their dried plumes of ornamental grasses and wondering if they’ll survive to bring forth new growth this spring. If sensible cultural practices have been followed throughout the year, the grasses should burst forth this spring even bigger and more lush than ever. Of the 45 grasses I planted in my garden two years ago, only two Eulalia grasses planted in late fall did not survive.

I have been seriously growing grasses scattered throughout my perennial beds for 2 years. I would like to share the following techniques and experiments that I have tried, including successes and failures.

Propagation was an ongoing activity last year although the best time to divide a grass and plant it is in the spring. If a potted grass was large enough or root bound in the pot, I divided it with a saw into 2 or 4 pieces. Occasionally this could be quite hard work. Some of the divisions went into pots and others straight into the garden. I also loosened or trimmed the tight roots that had developed around the edge of the pot. The grasses rebounded from this treatment quickly and I ended up with more grasses for the money spent.

Amending the soil is definitely recommended. I have gooey clay on the north and east sides of my home and sandy granite on the south. With amendments, the grasses are growing equally well in both locations.

At planting time, I used organic bagged compost made from forest products or bulk compost made from tree and grass materials. Both have worked well.

I have been experimenting with beds amended with 2-3 inches of horse manure, old potting soil, and shredded leaves. I tilled this into the bed in the fall and planted in the spring. The grasses appeared to like this treatment.

Fertilizer is not needed for grasses if soil amendments have been used. If fertilizers are needed, a slow release 3-1-2 or 4-2-1 is appropriate. Excessive nitrogen makes grasses grow too tall and fall over. I have occasionally mixed _ strength balanced slow release organic fertilizer into the soil at planting time. I have not noticed any ill effects from this. Last spring I did top dress most of my grass beds with 1-2 inches of organic compost. I also threw alfalfa pellets over all my beds in an unscientific manner and scratched it into the top layer of the soil.

Except for a small area with 9-foot tall hollyhocks and 4 _ foot flopping yarrow, my beds are healthy and doing great. Grasses growing in pots will need liquid fertilizer which may be leached out with each watering. I occasionally added _ to _ strength all-purpose liquid fertilizer with no ill effects.
Mulching is recommended. During the fall, I applied 2 –4 inches of coarse shredded mulch. Under this, my favorites received 1-2 inches of organic compost. After taking the Colorado Master Gardener class, I became concerned that I may have suffocated some of my grasses. I removed the excess mulch in early spring as soon as the soil thawed. Under the mulch, the soil and compost were rich with earthworms, some huge and fat. I mulched again this year, this time with less mulch. The mulch allowed the earthworms to remain alive, healthy and active and work their magic in the soil.

Last year I grew grasses such as mixed Miscanthus sinensis, Festuca glauca, Fountain grass, and pink Cortaderia selloana successfully from seed. It has taken my seedlings about one year to reach a robust gallon size. My method of germinating seeds is to place two plastic trays with clear tops on top of a large plastic tub approximately 12 inches deep, 22 inches long, and 16 inches wide, with a light bulb on the bottom. The temperature can be adjusted by changing the wattage of the bulb. I have used a 25-watt or 40-watt bulb. This creates a bottom heat of 65-75 degrees. The temperature can be checked by inserting the small outside sensor of a digital indoor-outdoor thermometer into a seed pot. The seeds I purchased did not need stratification. Some seeds from an unknown grass plant that were given to me did do better after cold treatment in the refrigerator.

The grasses in my garden benefited from supplemental winter watering. My soaker hoses remained in place, under the mulch, throughout the year and were very useful for winter irrigation. Overhead watering can damage delicate dried foliage and plumes. Winter water early in the day, as soon as air temperatures are above freezing, and when the soil is not frozen.

Last year, all of my divided grasses and grasses sprouted from seed created a bumper crop in pots. Fall had arrived and I could not locate information on what to do with these grasses. Fall planting was not recommended. I decided to conduct the great potted grass experiment. Part of the grasses went into the house in sunny and

filtered light locations, part went into the greenhouse and part went into the garage which is unheated and does not have a window. I took pity on the grasses in the garage and moved all except one into the house. Some of the grasses were quite large so I trimmed most of them to about 6 inches. The Miscanthus initially grew and then disaster struck. My plants became covered with aphids and black sooty mold. A dark streaking developed on some of the leaves. I was constantly spraying the grass with insecticidal soap and water. Some of the grasses dried out completely and died. The rest succumbed to root rot. I attempted to save the grasses with root rot in progress by trimming off the damaged roots and repotting. I placed the pots on small inverted saucers within larger saucers to help with drainage. I put them into the heated greenhouse and outside in early spring.

All these grassed died except for one shoot of Miscanthus sinensis ‘Cabernet.’ This is still growing in the yard. The grasses growing outdoors have had no problem with insects or root rot. The only grass to survive intact in its large pot was M. ‘Siberfeder,,’ which spent the winter in our unheated garage. I did water it during the winter and there was no problem with root rot or insects. I monitored the minimum temperature during the winter and the lowest it reached was 40 degrees. This grass is still doing well in its original pot outside.

The pink and white pampas that spent the winter in the greenhouse and house performed superbly. There were no insect or root rot problems and the grasses continued to grow. If the pot dried out and the grass wilted, I added water, and all was fine. I trimmed a 6-foot grass to about 12 inches. The pampas grass continued to grow with brown stubby ends. It was not very attractive. They grew quite happily last summer in their pots outside.

The Miscanthus ‘Gracimillus’, Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hamein’, Saccharum ravennae, and pink pampas that spent the winter in the greenhouse did great. The feather reed grass had been growing in quite large pots. I divided these grasses in the fall, gave them a trim and a smaller pot, and put them in the cool heated greenhouse. The remained green and continued to grow slowly all winter with vigorous growth early in the spring. The fountain grass sat and did nothing all winter, sprouted early in the spring, and is growing vigorously outside after being divided. The Miscanthus acquired a few aphids that I sprayed to control.

All my grasses in the yard received a trim early last spring. The Nassella (Stipa) tenuissima, Festuca glauca and Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’, which are cool season grasses, sprouted very early and had inflorescenses in June. They looked attractive and provided excellent winter interest.

Miscanthus ‘Morning Light,’ M. ‘Siberfeder’, M. ‘Variegatus’, M. ‘Yaku Jima’, M. ‘Cabaret’, M. ‘Cosmopolitan’, Giant Sacatoon grass, and M. ‘Gracillimus’ also provided good winter presence and structure to my sparse winter garden. Some of my grasses did not bloom the first year. The white pampas grass and M. ‘Cosmopolitan’ both bloomed in a spectacular fashion but the first heavy snow knocked them all down and the inflorescences ended up in vases.

Miscanthus ‘Gracillimus’, M. ‘Yaku Jima,’ Giant Sacatoom grass, Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubru’, Dwarf Fountain Grass ‘Hamein’, and M. Silberfeder’ also bloomed the first year. The outside pampas grass did not survive the winter.

What did I learn from my first year of growing grasses? Hardy potted grasses that go dormant will spend the winter months in my cold dark garage or greenhouse. Pampas grass will again grace my house in winter. I will continue to top dress my grasses with compost once or twice a year and mulch liberally with special attention to my zone 6 grasses. Fertilizer is probably not needed. I will continue to propagate and plant ornamental grasses as long as there is appropriate space in my yard. They are truly easy to grow and a magnificent asset in the garden.

Everyone knows that the amount of information on the World Wide Web can be overwhelming. But it’s also impressive, and if you have a few techniques for navigating the information, it’s quite useful! Web-savvy gardeners I know use the web to…

• get information about plants
• get information on pests and diseases (plant problems)
• get design ideas for their landscapes
• find “how to” information on creating outdoor structures, pathways, raised beds, etc.
• purchase plants and seeds
• find label information for pesticide and herbicides

In this article, I’ll share some techniques for finding the information you need on the web. You will find it helpful to read it while sitting at your computer with your web browser open so you can try some of the techniques as you’re reading.

Getting Started with Online Extension Publications
So how do you get started? If you’re gardening in Colorado, you can’t go wrong by getting acquainted with the publication web site at Colorado State University Cooperative Extension’s site. Type www.cerc.colostate.edu/factsheet.html in the address bar of your browser. You’ll quickly see that publications are offered on more than just gardening. But the categories are well organized; you might even want to print the page with all of the garden publication titles, or even better, bookmark it or add it to your list of favorites in your web browser. All of the publications are available in HTML format (basically a regular web page) or in PDF format (which will open in a free reader program) PDF is the best format to choose if you’re going to print the publication, but go with the HTML format if you just want to read it quickly and don’t need to save a copy on your computer.

Using Search Engines to Find Information
If you’re ready to venture out further, try using a search engine to look for specific information you want. Search engines abound on the web, but one of
the most user friendly is Google. Go to www.google.com, and you get a fairly clean looking page with a “search” box. The more you use the search engine, the better you will get at knowing what words to put in that search box. If, for example, I want to learn about slime mold and possibly find a picture of it, typing slime mold into the box and clicking “Search” should give pretty good results. Go ahead and try it now.

Just by looking over the first search results page, you can usually tell if your search terms worked the way you wanted them to. You can also look at the URL below each result to get an idea of where the information is coming from. Look at your search results for slime mold and you see several results coming from URLs with a “.edu” in them. This tells you that the information is likely coming from a university and maybe even a cooperative extension program. (Sometimes the title of the search result will tell you that, but often it does not.)

If I’m just looking for a picture of slime mold, I’ll make use of another handy feature in Google, the image search. I don’t even have to retype my search terms. I just click on the “image” tab on the page, and voila! I get a page of tiny pictures of slime mold that I can click on to see bigger versions. Go ahead and try it.

And if I want to find out more about how people deal with slime mold, and the web search didn’t give me all that I needed, I’ll try a newsgroup search by clicking on the “groups” tab on the page. Now I can check out discussions in newsgroups about slime mold. Try it!

The web has become dominated by commercial web sites. So sometimes I have a hard time finding plant information because all of my search results are from companies wanting to sell me the plant. In this case, I’ll try to be more specific with my search terms, or I’ll switch to a newsgroup search. For example, when my crab cactus was sick, I first searched on crab cactus and got lots of “Buy a crab cactus now!” search results. I then tried searching on shriveling crab cactus since the leaf segments seemed to be shriveling. I got a few web results (none trying to get me to buy a shriveling crab cactus), but I went ahead and tried a newsgroup search. After a little reading, I discovered that my crab cactus condition was probably terminal – and sure enough, it was.

The newsgroup search can be really useful. Type best time to prune lilac in the search box, click “search,” and you’ll be surprised to find out just how many others have asked that very same question! I often find myself tacking the word Colorado on to my search terms to see if I can get more locally appropriate information. Try this both ways and notice the number of search results you get.

Here’s one final search tip. When searching on slime mold, you’ll get any page that has those two words on it, and not necessarily next to each other. If you put quotation marks around the terms slime mold you’ll only get pages that have the two words right next to each other. Try this now and notice how the number of results decreases over the search without quotation marks.

Finding Reliable Information
How do you know whether you’ve found a page on the web with reliable information? Good pages should indicate the source of the information (logos, headings, tiny print at the bottom of the page). The URL can contain clues too. As I mentioned before, a “.edu” usually indicates a university or someone at a university. “.gov” indicates a government web site – you may see cooperative extension web pages with either of these suffixes. I often find pages with a “.uk” at the end, meaning this page is coming from somewhere in Britain (and there are many British gardening web sites!). So keep in mind that growing information on these sites may not be accurate for our growing conditions. “.org” is another possible suffix which means the page should be from a noncommercial organization. And finally, there is “.com” – and it is with these URLs that you need to exercise more discretion. Any commercial entity on the web has a “.com” in its URL. These are the sites that want you to buy their plants or products, use their services, etc. There are some extremely helpful sites with “.com” in their URL though.

It doesn’t hurt to look at more than the first web page that seems to answer your questions (just like it’s a good idea to ask more than one person or check more than one book). Eventually, if you use the web enough, you may discover a handful of reliable sites that seem to answer most of your questions. Be sure to bookmark those sites or to add them to a “favorites” list (usually an option in one of the menus at the top of the screen).

Using the Web to Buy Plants, Seeds, Etc.
If you’re looking to use the web to buy plants, start first with the companies you’ve ordered from via catalog. Nearly every one of them will have a web site, and they’ll print their URL in their catalog – or just go to Google and search on the company’s name. Often the first search result you will get will be the company’s web site (try searching on Burpee for example).

You can also ask friends and family who they order from. And then you could always do a newsgroup search at Google on best online nurseries or something similar and see what other people have said. If you’re uncomfortable giving your credit card information over the web, you can still use the company’s site to find all of the items you want (be sure to jot down the item numbers). Then use the company’s phone number to place the order.

Good Luck and Have Fun!
Who hasn’t woken up in the middle of the night with a vexing gardening question?! With a little practice, you’ll be able to find just about any information that you need at any time of the day or night on the web.