Plants are popping up all over

It was our second work week in the demo garden.  When we first arrived it appeared that it was still mostly daffodils and some tulips that had opened.  Boy, were we mistaken.  There is a lot that is starting to pop up all over the garden.  We continued our garden clean-up.  There was a lot we had not finished and some we left as cover in case it snowed again which was a good thing since it snowed two more feet.  We were anxious to see if there was any damage to the garden but everything seemed to come through just fine.  We had such nice weather before but today was very windy and we were bundled up more than last our last work day.  Here’s hoping that was our last snow.  It could still freeze until mid-May or so, but we’re hoping that the nice weather will be here to stay.

Here is what we found popping up all over:

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A bird used the Hawthorne bush for nesting:

Xeriscape Garden

The Xeriscape garden is coming along nicely.  It doesn’t look like much yet but for years nothing would grow there.  It’s right next to the street and parking lot and gets a lot of abuse when it snows and is surrounded by asphalt.  We pulled up all the old fabric and gravel that was there and we redid it and made it into a Xeriscape garden.  It only gets water from rain and the drip system so we only put plants that are drought resistant and have low watering needs.    We’re excited that these plants are coming back and are surviving.  We will continue to add to the garden but this is a great start and we’re excited that we’ve finally worked it and found some plants that will survive there.  This is what is popping up already in this garden.

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Herb Garden

There wasn’t much action in the herb garden today.  A lot was done the last work day and some of our herb plants were used at The Urban Homestead CMG Herb Booth at the Urban Homestead event.  Barbi, one of our demo garden volunteers helped with the booth which had 600+ people stop by to talk about herbs.

We continued our clean-up and of course there are always new weeds that need to be pulled.

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We were very satisfied after this work day.  The garden is cleaned-up and we’re ready to watch things grow.  We will continue to add plants and do regular maintenance (there is always a weed to be pulled) and always something to clean up.  We’ll start deadheading soon and it’s almost time to prune the roses.

Roses

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Gloria reported the garden was used for a rose pruning class by the Denver Rose Society.  Eight of our demo garden volunteers attended the demonstration.  The roses in our garden were used for the demonstration (minimal roses were used since it’s still a bit too early in the Douglas County area to prune roses due to the later freeze dates at this elevation).  We got kudos from the society and they were very impressed that ALL of our roses were correctly planted, we’ve never had any sucker shoots and we’ve done a great job of growing “rescue roses” (most of our roses are not new, they are roses that are on their last leg or can’t be sold and are donated to us).  In Colorado to protect the roses from the harsh winter cold the graft (bud union) of the rose is planted one to three inches under the top of the soil.  This also helps prevent sucker shoots from growing from under the graft or union bud.  For more information on selecting and planting roses in Colorado visit:  http://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/yard-garden/selecting-and-planting-roses-7-404/

What’s popping up in your garden?