Grow Local Colorado

How did your garden fare during the hail storm this week? If you got hit, you might find some of the tips from our friends at Denver Urban Gardens helpful. There is life after a hail storm.

Strategies to Combat Hail - Denver Urban Gardens To Replant or Not to Replant? Although there is no single solution to mitigate the impact of a severe hailstorm, it’s sometimes helpful to take a few minutes and remember some of the strategies we can pull out of our toolboxes to help promote healing. Gardens, like their caretakers, are resilient ...

The pesticide industry was built on one idea: that nature is a problem to be chemically managed.

It is 70 years old. Gardens worked for thousands of years before it existed.

- MARIGOLDS planted as a border release a root compound lethal to nematodes and repel whiteflies above ground simultaneously.

- COPPER TAPE around pot rims and bed edges delivers a mild charge that slugs and snails will not cross. Lasts for years.

- DILL IN FLOWER attracts parasitic wasps that lay eggs inside cabbage worms. The wasps do the work permanently once established.

- MESH ROW COVERS fitted at planting need no chemistry at all. A physical barrier that is reusable for decades.

- GARLIC AT BED EDGES releases sulfur compounds that deter Japanese beetles and suppress fungal disease in neighboring roots.

- BEER TRAPS set at soil level cost almost nothing and eliminate slugs without a single synthetic compound.

- NASTURTIUMS as a border trap crop pull aphids away from every vegetable in the bed. Let them take it.

- ALLIUMS INTERPLANTED with carrots confuse the scent trail that carrot fly uses to locate its host. The fly cannot find what it cannot smell.

Every pest has a natural predator, a barrier, or a plant that repels it. The spray bottle replaced that knowledge. It did not improve on it.

Yesterday's hail destroyed nearly all of the plants we put in at Benedict Fountain Park a few days ago. We are replanting this Thursday, from 8-9 am. If you have a chance, please stop by and help us get new plants into this garden.

We have big gardens and small gardens. Gardens at churches and gardens at schools. Gardens at shelters and gardens in backyards. All 20 of these gardens serves an important purpose, to ensure those lacking access to healthy food that they too should be able to eat delicious, fresh produce.

This is our garden at Sobriety House, a half way facility. What better therapy than to go out your back door and harvest some fresh tomatoes or basil or cucumbers or...

We'll be tabling at this FREE garden tour next Saturday. Hope to see you there!

Doubling up today on installing gardens this morning.

Yale alumni helped us install one of our larger gardens, Holmes & Gardens. They w**ded (2 huge garbage bags full!), planted over 250 plants, mulched, and compost tea'd in less than 2 hours. Thanks to their efforts we will probably once again get over 1,000 lbs of produce in the next few months from this one site alone. Thanks Yale Service Group!

Shout out to CSU Denver Extension's Master Gardeners and Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC). They planted our garden at Harvard Gulch yesterday. A perfect morning with some hard working and dedicated volunteers. This garden is bountiful thanks to their time and energy.

In most of Grow Local's gardens we battle bindw**d. This invasive plant is a challenge. If left to its own devices it will climb over and suffocate any and all plants in your yard and garden. Here is helpful info on battling this w**d:

The Vines That Bind – Southern Gables Neighborhood Association Well, this is Colorado... My wife Stormy and I have an uneasy relationship with w**ds on our lot here in Southern Gables. The back yard,,,,