Winter is a great time to notice details about plants. For one thing, fewer plants are around, so you can afford to spend some time taking a closer look at those that are. Now that plants are peeking through the snow again (but while the white backdrop still persists here and there) its easy to notice some fairly striking color differences in the leaves that still persist.
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A lot of people will send or receive a bouquet of roses today, and they will be continuing a very long tradition.
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Plants, like most organisms, must overcome a number of challenges before they reach maturity. Seeds are heavily preyed upon by insects, birds and mammals, and new seedlings face stiff competition from one another for light, water and nutrients.
Germinating in the fall or early winter when many competitors’ seeds are dormant is one of the strategies some plants use to overcome competition from other seedlings.
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A Tangelo blooms in the Denver Botanic Gardens Orangery in winter.
Winter is busy, and not just for Colorado skiers. Gardeners are planning, dreaming and preparing; growers are tending indoor blooms; and propagators are starting plants to be ready for warm weather: busy! Evergreens are balancing photosynthesis and drought, orchids are delivering on the promise of color and beauty, and seeds are trying to intuit the fine line between germinating too soon and too late: busy! For some gardeners, winter means that their busy, short days can’t hold time to appreciate each bloom and everything that is happening.
You can’t always look ahead either. It was pure chance that I saw this white Tangelo blossom on a snowy day. (The Orangery at the Gardens looks lovely with the orchid showcase throughout.)
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As the Greek government, its creditors, and the bankers at the International Monetary Fund continue to discuss Eurobonds and interest rates, my thoughts have wandered from the European Central Bank to another sort of bank altogether—the seed bank.
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Usually I get to see the look on people’s faces when I give them a bag of delicious produce in winter from my passive solar greenhouse. You should have seen MY face the other day when Cord came home with a large bag of vine-ripened, delicious, juicy winter-grown tomatoes! From somebody else’s greenhouse!
Cord finished building a 44’ state-of-the-art totally sustainable passive solar greenhouse late last August and the owners lost no time in getting tomato plants in the ground soon after. They planted large potted tomatoes in deep beds at the base of the wall of stored water – the thermal mass.
Now, in January, they are 10 feet tall and bursting with tomatoes. Not only were they grown in winter – but with passive solar. And, oh yeah, at 8,000 feet in the mountains!
No tomato ever tasted so good. The juice ran down our chins. I started laughing while I was eating
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While taking advantage of the warm daytime temperatures in recent weeks to get some pruning in, I was hailed from the pathway nearby.
“Do you ever worry about seeds coming up early during warm spells like this?”
In a word, “no.” But why not?
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From time to time, the greenhouse team at Denver Botanic Gardens will build hypertufa troughs. These troughs are a great addition to a garden, especially for showcasing some of the rock garden plants, native wildflowers, and cacti that might otherwise be lost in a larger landscape. We sell our planted troughs at the Spring and Fall Plant Sales and occasionally throughout the season at the Shop at the Gardens. However, if you are interested in making your own hypertufa troughs, I would like to share with you our process and recipe for making a simple hypertufa trough.
Posted in: At the Gardens, Conservation & Ecology, Rocky Mountain Gardening - Comments(2)