CMG Begins This Week – Time to Plan Your Garden

Time to plan your garden. That’s plan, without the “t”. Even with snow crusted a foot or two deep over the yard, and temperatures in the teens, as the days lengthen, our home gardening goals feel like they are beginning to emerge from the cold! Seed catalogs are arriving at FFA and the excitement is palpable! And, to top it off, I begin my study as a volunteer in the Colorado Master Gardener program for San Miguel County this Thursday. There is much to learn!

Here are a few garden musings and some of the upcoming local gardening-food projects in and around the Norwood area as well as some resources for planning a successful garden this year in Colorado.

2019 Just Has to be Wetter

If you were in the Norwood area last year you lived through what some locals referred to as the 1,200-year drought so we’ll have to see what remains of the garden this spring. They say that the last time it was this dry out here the Anasazi left the area! But we are having a great snowfall this year so FFA is optimistic for a much wetter spring and summer in 2019.

PlantSelect.org

Plant Select is a great resource to use when planning your high-altitude garden in Colorado. Plant Select is a collaboration between Denver Botanical Gardens and Colorado State University and horticultural professionals in the region. According to Pat Hayward, Director of Plant Select, the region goes from Montana down to northern New Mexico. When they select plants for our region they are chosen for their long season of interest and beauty and are able to perform under low-water conditions. The plants are resilient to our challenging climate, are non-invasive and unique. All plants are trialled at both Denver Botanical Gardens at Chatfield and at CSU to help assure success.

Norwood Community Garden

If you live in Norwood and are looking for a place to garden organically, this is the time of year to reserve your plot at the Norwood Community Garden, a non-profit, community project formed in 2010 by one-time CMG Joann Mueller and friends. NCG is located at Mesa and Grand Streets, in Norwood. Contact Joann at 970.327.4290 to reserve a space; there are still several plots open for the 2019 growing season. A 10-by-10-foot garden is $20 for the season and a 20-by-40-foot in-ground bed is $40.

Gardening for Food Program
The organic Fresh Food Hub in Norwood sells locally grown dairy, meat and produce. The Hub is sponsoring a Gardening for Food program at the Norwood Community Garden that is a free class open to the public on Fridays from 5 to 7 PM during the 2019 growing season. The plots designated for this program will be gardened by participants. All food grown will be brought to the local Food Bank for distribution.

Cooking for Health Project
We have some amazing foodies and knowledge in this town! Cooking for Health, also sponsored by the Hub, teams up with Gardening for Food and uses the fruits and vegetables produced from the Norwood Community Garden. You’ll learn fun and affordable ways to cook produce and add nutrient-dense whole food to your diet.

Catherine Peterson, long-time local, foodie and USDA-certified cooking teacher, will cook, and explain dietary practices and food management in the Food Bank waiting room of the Focus Christ Church, at 1472 Spruce Street, in Norwood. Along with printed recipes and health literature, all the food cooked during the demonstration will be given out free to participants for tasting. This will be held the second Thursday of the month but dates might vary, so please call Michelle at 970.708.8664 to confirm.

For more information on the Cooking for Health or Gardening for Food programs, contact Leila at 510.205.4550 or at leliafli@yahoo.com.

Telluride Foundation

Funding for Cooking for Health and Gardening for Food comes from the Telluride Foundation. The Telluride Foundation provides many grants to the up-and-coming businesses of our town and helps make our community a better place to live. If you have time, check them out at the link above and if you can, show them some love with a donation.

WEED

What article about Colorado gardening would be complete without a reference to WEED, the West End Economic Development project, that is. With the elimination of uranium mining in Nucla and Naturita, our West End economy has been depressed, but in the last two years the area is feeling more optimism with support from WEED, a funding project that promotes the burgeoning hemp-growing industry and local recreation initiatives.

Here is the background on how WEED is changing life in the West End from the High Country News

Chirpings of Hope for Spring

Well, as I said, there are many springtime chirpings of hope in the catalogs, local projects and gardening information that we at FFAs are immersed in. Now that we live on an acre, with an animal manger just outside our door, we think we might convert it into a greenhouse. We have the structure and all that needs to be done is to tear off the tin roof and siding and add some Solexx. That might be a bit ambitious but I think that a greenhouse up here at 7,011 altitude is a requirement for better gardening results.

Above is our animal manger where the previous tenants housed a team of sled dogs! Since John has no interest in having multiple Huskies–it isn’t safe to reveal my fantasies here about owning more dogs–We plan to turn it into a greenhouse, with a bit of work.

Great Neighbors

Finally, no post about Norwood gardening would be complete without the people who have been here many years before us, leading the charge with organic growing ideas and improving the local design landscape. I am lucky that some of them are my fantastic neighbors: Mary, a horticulturalist and landscape designer (and great bridge player to boot), who has shared her two huge tomes of CSU gardening information with me for my classes! Mary has also kindly passed along to me her rare Dunstra Early Strawberry apple tree, a delicate, heritage apple that was grafted onto a sturdier apple tree base, that she completed during an Apple Core Project Workshop. And Jen, another neighbor and a co-founder of the Apple Core Project, which aims to reestablish heritage apple orchards in Montrose and San Miguel counties, who informs me I will probably have to wait for 6 to 8 years to see any apples! I am so very thankful for these wonderful neighbors.

The CSU gardening tomes: thanks for sharing this great information with me, Mary!!

Everywhere you go in Norwood, especially if you hang out at the Hub, where I volunteer, you meet people who are master gardeners, horticulturalists, foodies, ranchers, bakers, entrepreneurs and producers. Norwood is a pretty exciting town full of growth and change for what on the map might otherwise appear to be just another sleepy little town!

For the last three years we were part of the Fraser Community Garden.Here’s the Story..It’s a Great Way to Meet People And Get to Know Your Community