no grow zone

Chances are if you are a gardener, or thinking of starting a garden here in Northern Colorado, you are probably from somewhere else.

Maybe you still think you can grow plants like you did when you were in, oh, New Jersey or California.
Nursery owners aren?t malicious or anything, but they get a good chuckle when encounter such stubborn newcomers.
It just boggles their minds when people who have moved from a place like New Jersey, taken their kids out of the schools in New Jersey, sent Christmas cards back to their folks in New Jersey, garden like they are still living in New Jersey.
I don?t have anything against the people from New Jersey, I just use the example because census figures in the 1990s show that a substantial number of people who moved here are from there and because the nickname of New Jersey is the Garden State and seemed apropos for this article.
Things will grow here. After all, Weld County is the most productive agricultural county in the state.
However, everything is different.
The altitude is different, the rainfall is different, the length of the growing season is different, even the dirt is different (excuse me, soil).
Here is a beautiful example. Let?s say you are from New Jersey, you have bought a house with a garden plot in the back and you are going to grow your very first crop of Colorado vegetables this year.
You were gardening enough back in New Jersey to know that you have to amend the soil first ? that means break it up and add some beneficial components.
So you break up the soil with a mattock, mix in some fertilizer and lime and plant your cold-weather crops, like peas and lettuce and maybe some onion sets, because they like cold weather to get started on the business of growing.
Then you sit back and wait until it?s time for you to put the warm-weather crops in.
Well, you were doing okay until you put in the lime. This is common practice east of the Mississippi River where they have acidic soils. However, this is Colorado. The soils here are alkaline. You add lime and you are just making the situation worse.
Debbie Weakfield, the owner of Loveland Garden Center, sees it all the time. ?The biggest problems we have here are bad soils and the lack of water and temperature fluctuations. And don?t add lime. Anyone on the other side of the Mississippi would, but don?t add lime.?
A lot of people don?t even amend the soil, Weakfield says. ?They just stick some seeds in the ground and expect it to grow. ?But I watered it,?? Weakfield said. ?And they probably did.? This serves as an introduction to another of the soil problems in Northern Colorado.
Look at the dirt ? which sounds like a funny practice to do if you are not a farmer or soils engineer. If you do you?ll notice that Northern Colorado soil bears as anemic-looking beige color.
Squeeze a handful of it. You?ll notice a lot of clay in there. Clay is non-porous. In fact, about a foot and a half down, builders sometimes put a clay liner under all the topsoil to reduce water problems. The clay soils are one reason why you are supposed to break up your soil and run an aerator over your lawn in the spring.
If you don?t break up the soil in your garden, you can water regularly and very little of it will trickle down to the roots. ?We have poor drainage,? Weakfield said.
Don?t try to get out of breaking up the soil by adding something porous, such as sand. What you will get is cement.
Yes, some people have actually done that.
What?s maddening is that weeds will still grow in it. Never add sand. (Another nursery representative chuckled when she gave me this advice.)
Water is an obvious problem, but some people who have just moved here still have trouble getting used to it.
?Rainfall here is about 10 to 12 inches in a year,? said Kathy Reid, co-owner of Fort Collins Nursery. ?We have people who don?t water enough and people who water too much.?
Every nursery has lists of drought-tolerant, trees, grasses, flowers and shrubs. Fort Collins Nursery, for example, has them on handouts. If you are growing vegetables, however, they all want water. Trying to find a water-stingy vegetable is like trying to stop a three-year-old from playing in the dirt.
Reid says that your best bet is to use something like a soaker hose or a drip irrigator to reduce your water use
People who move to Colorado sometimes use the kind of sprinklers that throw water in the air to water their gardens. In a word, don?t. But if you absolutely have to, use it in the morning hours. Do not use it in the afternoon.
If you water in the afternoon, you are throwing water into the air at the hottest part of the day, which means about a third of that water is going to evaporate and never reach your plants. Look at your water bill in July and multiply the total by about one-third. The product that comes up is what you are paying to water the air.
Believe it or not, you can water in the twilight hours here. Weakfield does it, mainly because she says it?s the only time of day she?s around to do it, but only because the humidity here is so low. And she doesn?t like it. You try this anywhere else and you are just asking for a fungal disease, which loves cool, wet, night conditions.
Boulder County Extension Agent Kerrie Badertscher also recommends looking over the water laws for the state of Colorado and municipal water ordinances to make sure you are in compliance. With the recent drought, there are all kinds of draconian water restrictions in place. Some ban aerial sprinkling; others ban aerial sprinkling before a certain date; some have water limits based on the size of your land. It depends.
The last of the big three gardening problems is temperature fluctuations. These can be maddening.
?People bring plants in and out of doors all the time and they use everything to try and extend that season as long as possible,? Reid said. ?They use cold frames and Walls O? Water. It?s really great. Then we?ll have weeks of warm weather and they?ll put something out and the temperature will just drop 30 degrees at night just like that and kill them.?
The rule of thumb is that the soil temperature should be about 65 degrees Fahrenheit and you should be past the last killing frost date, which is about May 15 in Northern Colorado.
There are a couple of exceptions to that time frame. Cold weather crops, usually lettuce, spinach and greens can violate the 65-degree rule. You can plant them in early April and even very late March. Don?t plant them later, say, in June. Otherwise, they will take advantage of the sunny weather and bolt, which means they will send up a big, tall, flowery spike that will make the lettuce or spinach taste bitter. The other exception is peas, which are another cold weather crop.
When it comes to your warm weather crops, such as tomatoes, eggplant and cucumbers, the 65-degree rule is pretty strict. You can get a jump on the growing season by starting tomatoes, for example, in a seed starter tray inside. In fact, Weakfield and Reid almost recommend it, because you can shuttle the plants in and out of doors for a few hours as temperatures permit in order to ?toughen? them. Just don?t expose them to full sun right away.
Shade them a little by putting them under an eave or something suitable. Reid says people tend to forget the elevation. ?The atmosphere is a lot thinner here. I have had people put out things in the full sun like they did back home and it just fries ?em.?
When people are used to temperature fluctuations, they are only used to half of them. People expect the real hot temperatures of the day, but they forget about the nights.
?It can drop at night and it can drop pretty far and fast,? Reid said. Not far enough to snow, but far enough either kill a plant or hamper it?s ability to produce fruit.
Watermelons are a perfect example. It?s the night temperatures and the clay in the soil that make it difficult for them to grow in this area. Sometimes even plants that traditionally grow well in this area experience difficulties. Last year, for example, was awful for tomato growers. The main reason, Weakfield said, was because the nights were cool and humid, which tomatoes do not like. The weather also brought out fungal diseases, like early blight and made them worse.
Nurseries actually prefer rookie gardeners, in situations where they are moving from one part of the country to another. If you were an experienced gardener in New Jersey and then moved to Colorado, chances are you will go with what worked in New Jersey. Then if something doesn?t work, you will get frustrated, puzzled and in some cases, angry.
Rookie gardeners ?don?t have to unlearn as much,? Weakfield said.

rendezvous

? Colorado Gardening,
“http://www.coloradogardening.com” www.coloradogardening.com

? PlantTalk Colorado,
“http://www.ext.colostate.edu/ptlk/” www.ext.colostate.edu/ptlk/

? Fort Collins Nursery, 2121 E. Mulberry St., (970) 482-1984, www.fortcollinsnursery.com

? Loveland Garden Center, 1801 S. Lincoln Ave., (970) 669-3577, www.lovelandgardencenter.com.

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