Counting the petals—each tiny flower had four—and examining the foliage led us to conclude the plants were Crucifers, members of the mustard family. Sure enough, we were enjoying the pretty flower heads of Whitetop (Cardaria draba), an aggressive import from Europe and Asia that is listed as a noxious weed here in Colorado (List B). Oh dear.

A bulletin from Colorado State University states:

Whitetop is a deep rooted creeping perennial mustard plant that grows up to 2 feet tall, reproducing from root segments and seeds. Leaves are blue-green in color with the lower leaves being stalked and the upper leaves having two lobes clasping the stem. Plants have many white flowers with four petals, giving the plant a white, flat-topped appearance. Plants emerge in very early spring and have bloomed and set seed by early to mid-summer.

The bulletin then goes on to explain how incredibly invasive this plant is, how livestock refuse to eat it, and suggests ways to control it with herbicides.

Pulling the plant generally doesn’t work because the rhizomatous roots penetrate deeply (29-32 inches) into the soil. (One plant in the Pacific Northwest had roots growing 30 feet deep—try pulling that!)

You can try “frustrating” the weed by repeated mowing. The idea is to exhaust the food supply in the roots, until the plant literally starves to death. The problem with this method is that the first one to become frustrated is usually the gardener.

The only time the plant can be easily controlled by cultivation is at the seedling stage, but don’t wait. It only takes three weeks for a seedling to start producing root buds. These buds become creeping roots that quickly overwhelm adjacent plants, until all you have is a large patch of Whitetop.

Whatever you do, don’t let the plants go to seed. In just one season, a single plant can produce between 1,200 to 4,800 seeds!

Whitetop arrived in the U.S. many years ago, its seeds hiding in a bale of hay. Since then it has spread throughout most of the country. Here in Colorado it usually grows at elevations between 3,500 and 8,500 feet—i.e., most of the state. It prefers disturbed soil, full sun, and moderate moisture, especially at this time of year. In other words, it loves our yards.

It’s important to learn to recognize the noxious weeds in your region (just Google “noxious weed list” and the name of your state). If ignored, they will overpower the landscape, starting with your yard. Besides, it’s illegal to have them growing on your property. We all need to pitch in and help control these aggressive invaders.

Further reading:
http://parks.state.co.us/SiteCollectionImages/parks/Programs/ParksResourceStewardship/Whitetop.pdf

We had stopped for lunch, and were alternately taking bites of our sandwiches and grabbing our binoculars. Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers, Rock Wrens, and Gray Vireos abounded. I was surprised to see Gambel’s Quail running under the junipers; I thought of them as living a bit more to the south. I was told that the species had been introduced to Western Colorado as a game bird.

Then we noticed something strange. There was a white bird running around with the quail, and neither of us recognized it. We had to check this out! Abandoning our lunch, we grabbed cameras and binos and approached the area where our mystery bird was. Of course, the closer we got, the farther the bird ran. I quickly grabbed some unsatisfactory photos (shown here), and we enlarged them on the camera display.

Sure enough, our white ghost was a Gambel’s Quail, but it was almost entirely without pigment. Dark eyes, brown topnotch, and a brown mark down the wing separated our subject from a pure albino. The proper designation for a bird lacking some pigment in its plumage is “leucistic,” pronounced “lew-KISS-tic” (the Greek prefix “leuc-” means “white” or “colorless”). Albinos completely lack melanin, and thus are completely white and have pink/red eyes.

According to Project FeederWatch, “Leucism is a genetic mutation that prevents melanin from being deposited normally on feathers. … [L]eucism comes in two main varieties — paleness, an equal reduction of melanin in all feathers; and pied, an absence of melanin in some feathers creating white patches.” Our bird represented the first type.

Of course, a bright white bird stands out against red sandstone, and I was surprised that the quail hadn’t been eaten long ago. Since leucistic birds also frequently have trouble attracting a mate, the gene for leucism doesn’t get passed along very often, and is rare in a population. We were quite fortunate to get a glimpse of this rarity.

On a similar note, we have a leucistic Red-tailed Hawk here in Colorado Springs. Our local Audubon chapter gets regular inquiries about the “big white bird” near Palmer Park. (I’m currently the Answerer-of-Email for Aiken Audubon). From the bird’s large size, we’re guessing she’s female. Surprisingly, she has successfully mated and raised young during each of the past several years. Her continued survival may be due to her status as apex predator, living as she does in the middle of a city.

Our quail was easy to ID, with its unique body shape and size. Other leucistic birds may totally confuse a birder. Imagine trying to put a label on a mostly-white warbler, for example! That’s one reason I’m trying hard to notice attributes other than color when I’m out looking at birds… just in case.

Pests may be persistent, but we gardeners are not helpless. I like to remind myself that I am smarter than an aphid and more cunning than a flea beetle. When it comes down to a battle for the harvest, there are lots of tools at our disposal. As a master gardener, I was taught the principles of Integrated Pest Management, or IPM. Rather than just reaching for a spray can, this approach is multifaceted. There are many ways to outwit a weevil.

Gardeners using an IPM strategy will first consider varietal selection and cultural control methods, realizing that the goal is management, not the annihilation of every single pest in the garden. When significant damage begins to occur, physical and biological controls are implemented. Chemicals, even organic ones, are a last resort.

The first step in maintaining a healthy garden is choosing the right varieties, or cultivars. Newer hybrids are bred for disease resistance, or at least disease tolerance. In plant species where disease has traditionally been an issue, it pays to do some research before buying a new bush or tree, or ordering seeds.

For example, cucumbers, and zucchini and other summer squash, are particularly susceptible to powdery mildew. With this in mind, breeders have come up with varieties that are tolerant to this fungal disease. That means that your plants will continue to live and produce a good harvest even if their leaves are covered with fuzzy white mildew.

Or, take tomatoes. There are an amazing number of diseases that attack tomatoes. Nematodes, Tobacco Mosaic Virus, Alternaria stem canker, and various strains of Verticillium wilt and Fusarium wilt are a few of the most common. Thankfully, breeders have developed varieties that are resistant to many of these diseases. They are marked in catalogs (and on plant labels) with initials such as VFN, or perhaps TMV. A helpful website, tomatodirt.com, offers an easy-to-understand explanation of what all the letters stand for, but in general, the more letters listed after the variety name, the healthier your plants are likely to be.

It’s sad to lose a squash harvest to disease, but losing a tree is much more costly and harder to replace. Fireblight is a bacterial disease that attacks members of the rose family, such as crab apples, pears, cotoneasters, hawthorns, pyracanthas, blackberries, raspberries, and mountain ashes. The disease is particularly prevalent along Colorado’s Front Range region.

Once a plant is infected there is no cure, so prevention is important. Many of these plants are now available as cultivars that are resistant (although not immune) to infection. Colorado State University has published a list of apple, crabapple, and pear varieties, giving their varying susceptibilities to fireblight.

In general, it’s best to check on disease resistance when buying new plants of any type.  The easiest way to solve a disease problem is to not have one in the first place. Choosing the right variety can make all the difference.

I’ll cover more aspects of IPM in the future.

I’ve had a feeder outside my kitchen window every summer for about eight years now. One year, May 1 brought a heavy snowfall, with temperatures in the 20s and the wind whistling about the eaves. Surely the birds were snuggled somewhere safe and warm, I thought. Maybe most birds were, but at least one Broad-tail braved the storm to get to my feeder. If the hummingbirds are that eager (desperate?) to have a sugar water snack, the least I can do is offer what they expect.

Often friends ask me about feeding hummingbirds. Either they’ve never done it before, or previous attempts failed to attract any birds. Here’s what I tell them.

Which Feeder?
The first consideration is choosing a feeder. You can spend as little as $4.00, or considerably more. The birds won’t care a bit; it’s more a matter of aesthetics. It’s important, however, that the feeder be easy to clean. Many of the fancy models have very narrow necks, too small for even a bottle brush. Since I live in a very windy area, and my feeder is on our second-story balcony, I avoid glass or anything else that is easily broken. Glass and ceramic look pretty, but one strong gust and I’m sweeping up the pieces.

This is my favorite feeder. It was made by Perky Pet and features a wide-mouthed plastic bottle that holds two cups of sugar water. The red color attracts the birds, and it doesn’t have those yellow plastic flowers (a squirrel happily gnawed off the yellow flowers on my previous feeder).

I prefer the vertical orientation. The “flying saucer” shaped feeders (like the one at right) are also popular, but mine never hang evenly. All the water ends up dripping out of one side, while the uphill birds get short-changed. Maybe I just have lopsided hooks!

Sugar Water
Once you have your feeder, it’s time to fill it. There’s no need to buy a nectar product—a simple sugar-water solution can be made using 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. Heat it until the sugar melts (stirring speeds this up). Cool before filling feeder. Store excess in the fridge.  Don’t use it if it develops mold or starts to look cloudy.

It is important to use plain old granulated table sugar. Honey, agave nectar, and all the myriad other sugar substitutes are hazardous to the birds. For example, honey supports the growth of a potentially fatal fungus in the hummingbird’s throat. The dangers of red dye are not known, so avoid that too. You don’t need it anyway.

The sugar solution will last several days in the feeder. How long depends on the outside temperatures, and the amount of sun the feeder gets. Be sure to change it if it starts to look hazy or it becomes contaminated. If you wouldn’t drink it, neither should the birds. Thoroughly scrub the feeder inside and out. Rinse well, then refill.

Attracting Birds
Give the hummers a week or so to find your feeder. Once they know where it is, they’ll remember exactly where to find it from year to year, as my experience shows.

If your patience is wearing thin, and you know hummingbirds are in your area, perhaps you need to do a bit of advertising. Especially if your feeder is hidden under the eaves, the birds might not see it. Try typing a big red bow—the kind you’d put on a gift automobile—around some object close by. Or use a red towel, a blanket… or paint a red bull’s-eye on your lawn! (Don’t blame me if the neighbors complain.) Make sure it’s visible from above. Something big, bright, and red should get their attention!

Remember, you’re just providing dessert or a quick energy drink. Hummers primarily eat insects, not sugar. Avoid using toxic pesticides in your garden, keep the feeder clean and filled, and you’ll soon have a steady stream of dazzling beauties coming to your yard.

Here in my high altitude garden, I can’t afford to be so picky. Forget long-season heirlooms and humongous beefsteaks. I just want a tomato that will ripen before it freezes to death! It does, however, have to taste better than store-bought. Isn’t flavor the whole reason to grow tomatoes in the first place?

Still, some varieties have fared better than others, both in my garden and my kitchen. Here are some that I plan to grow again.

Cherry Tomatoes
Because they’re so small, cherry tomatoes tend to be earlier, which is a good thing when  killing frosts are a possibility in both June and September. At around 60 days to maturity, my hands-down favorite is Sungold. It’s I liked these even when I didn’t really like tomatoes (I’ve since come to my senses).

The disease resistant plants stayed healthy all season long. The only problem was a tendency to split; even watering and a deep mulch are helpful. Even with some lost fruit, one plant is plenty, unless you plan to eat nothing else all summer (not a bad idea!).

The intense golden orange color is a nice change from red, and lets your guests know that you grew them yourself. Seeds are available from Pinetree, Johnny’s and other sources.

Regular-sized Tomatoes
If you live in a short season area and don’t plant to start your own transplants, odds are you’ll find Early Girl seedlings at your garden center. Early Girl has been the standard for early tomatoes for decades. The reason? Most catalogs list it at 57 days to maturity. (Do to my chilly nights, I find it takes almost twice that long in my Colorado garden.)

Early Girl may not be the most delicious tomato ever, but it’s a giant stride removed from anything you can get at most markets. The flavor is perfectly fine, and when eaten warm from the vine, with the juice dripping off your chin, I promise that you won’t be sorry you grew this variety.

The other tomato I make a point to grow every year is Early Goliath (photo at top of page). It matures at the same time as Early Girl, but out-performs its predecessor in almost every way. The plants are fuller and stockier, good for preventing sunscald at high altitudes. They’re resistant to every disease you can imagine. The fruit are bigger, too—almost big enough to placate my beefsteak-loving husband. And they’re absolutely scrumptious.

Unfortunately, the only place I ever found it for sale was Totally Tomatoes. (I’ve had great service from them, but usually this is the only variety I want to buy from them, and I hate to pay more in shipping than for the seed packet!) This year, I discovered that Reimer Seeds also carries Early Goliath. I’ve never ordered from them; if you do, please let me know about your experience.

I’ve tried a number of other varieties over the years, each touted as the next best early tomato. Some have been better than others, but none really measured up. Either the plants failed to thrive, or the fruit was insipid.

Apparently a lot of seed companies share my experience. I’ve noticed that the early tomatoes they were excited about previously have been replaced by a different variety come the next year. As one catalog described their latest offering: “For decades we have been looking for an extremely early tomato that sets fruit in cool weather and also tastes good. Polbig may be the one.”

My solution is to plant several varieties I like, and then trial one or two new varieties each year. I’ll let you know if I hit the jackpot. Meanwhile, which tomatoes do you recommend?

As I mentioned in the quiz, I saw this bird near Grand Junction, Colorado, in May.  Even a non-birder will probably recognize the flat face and upright posture as belonging to an owl. The real question is, which owl?

North America is home to 19 species of owl. That makes this ID much easier than, say, choosing from among 54 wood warblers or 49 emberizid sparrows (not to mention the non-sparrows that look like sparrows). Still, 19 options is nothing to sneeze at.

Since the bird is sitting in a tree, we can get an idea of its size—much larger than an Elf Owl, Flammulated Owl, or Northern Saw-whet. Still, size is difficult to estimate, even with a handy branch for comparison.

The next useful clue is the feather “ears” on top of the head. Not all owls have these tufts, so that narrows the field to one of the three Screech Owls, a Long-eared Owl, or a Great Horned Owl. (We’ve already eliminated the much-smaller Flammulated Owl.)

Because the bird was seen in western Colorado, it’s highly unlikely that it’s a Whiskered or Eastern Screech Owl, but you never know.

A quick look through the field guide reveals that this bird looks nothing like any of the contenders. But wait—it’s May. Perhaps we have a fledgling!

Checking the illustrations confirms this guess. This is definitely a very young owl. Most young owls are fluffy and gray like this, but only the Long-eared Owl has ear tufts at this age. And that is what this is.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m notoriously awful at spotting owls. I confess—I did not find these by myself. The pair of breeding adults was documented during a survey for the new Colorado Breeding Bird Atlas. I was on a field trip associated with the Colorado Field Ornithologists annual convention, and, trusting our commitment to the owls’ safety, the surveyors shared the location of the nest with our trip leader. As he reminded us, it’s important to avoid stressing any bird, but especially one that’s nesting.

Laying out your veggies in beds lets you cram more plants into a smaller area, producing more veggies in less space with fewer resources. That’s a claim that’s hard to beat! It’s no wonder that gardening books are touting the advantages of raised beds and “square foot gardening.”

The basic idea is that, instead of leaving empty space between rows, the plants are spaced the same distance in every direction. For example, instead of a linear foot of row (with a foot of space on either side) producing four carrots, you can harvest 32 carrots in the same amount of space!

Beds should be sized so that the gardener can reach into the middle without stepping on the soil. Mine are four feet across. They can be as long as is practical; mine are twelve feet. Standardizing my bed size allows me to build 4-foot-square hail screens, shade panels, and coldframe lids that fit anywhere in my garden. Having my beds be 4 x 12 (just shy of 50 square feet) also allows me to calculate fertilizer application rates easily.

These growing areas are separated by permanent paths.  The actual beds are never stepped on, so the soil stays loose and easily penetrated by roots. Much less water, fertilizer, and amendments are needed because they’re concentrated where they will do some good instead of being wasted on non-productive soil.

Even better, the mature plants are arranged so their leaves just meet, creating a living mulch that shades the ground and greatly reduces the number of weeds. Mulching the space between growing plants keeps weeds down in the meantime.

In very arid climates, beds can be sunken below grade by a few inches, reducing evaporation. Here along the Front Range, where summer thunderstorms can bring torrential rainfall, raised beds have the advantage of draining rapidly. They also warm up earlier in the spring. If you have pets or small children, raised beds can help them see where it’s ok to walk. Raised beds can just be hoed into place (as shown here), or they can be contained by untreated wood or other building materials (as in the top photo). If I could start over, I’d probably use cinder blocks (spaced to allow some drainage), topped with plastic decking strips that I could sit on while weeding.

Since the beds remain in the same spot from  year to year, it’s easy to add irrigation. We have plastic pipes buried along the ends of the beds. From them, risers deliver water to screw-on soaker hoses spaced about 12 inches apart (I have very sandy soil). A valve for each hose allows me to control water flow. I can turn it off completely if the bed is left fallow, or to dry garlic.

There are a few downsides to raised beds. The beds must be worked by hand; it’s impossible to use a large tiller in them. Even my lightweight mini-tiller is hard to control from the path, and it dumps dirt outside the bed. (Of course, since I never step on the soil, I hardly ever till it anymore.)

One extremely wet year, drainage became a major issue. The beds became bathtubs full of saturated mud. Water couldn’t drain into the compacted layer at the bottom. We’ve since added French drains, solving this problem. (Now we’re suffering from drought. It figures.)

Finally, as I mentioned last week, some crops just aren’t suited for growing in beds. Corn needs to be in blocks of at least 16 plants (and preferably more). Winter squash is much too big. It’s hard to hill up the dirt around potatoes grown in a bed. But this is an ideal way to grow root crops, greens, and bush beans.

In spite of these drawbacks, for most crops, beds allow you to grow more veggies in les space with less work and fewer resources. Clearly, gardening in beds is the way to grow.

Can you identify this bird? The photo was taken near Grand Junction, Colorado in May.  My answer will appear next Monday.

]]> http://blogs.icta.net/plover/2012/04/23/bird-quiz-4/feed/ http://blogs.icta.net/plover/2012/04/19/having-a-row-to-hoe/ http://blogs.icta.net/plover/2012/04/19/having-a-row-to-hoe/#comments Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:00:38 +0000 LAH http://blogs.icta.net/plover/?p=6006 Earth Day is this weekend, and what could be a more appropriate celebration than starting a vegetable garden. And for those of us in the Pikes Peak area, it’s finally time to get some dirt under our fingernails.

If this is your first year growing veggies, the first order of business is finding a promising spot for the garden. I talked about this in a previous post. Next, you need to decide how big to make the garden. This involves not only your desired yield, but also how you lay out the garden. Will you have traditional rows, wide rows (pictured here), beds (raised or otherwise) or a combination of these? Today I’m going to talk about rows… next Thursday I’ll cover beds.

Most non-gardeners assume that vegetables must be grown in rows, with minimal distance between plants in a row, but two to three feet between rows. This idea is reinforced by fact that directions on most seed packets give row-to-row spacing, along with how far apart to thin individual plants.

Laying out a garden in rows has some advantages. If you are using mechanical cultivation, the wide spaces between rows allows room for wheels and machines. Large-scale farms use rows for this reason. If your garden is large and you intend to run a tiller through it during the growing season, rows may be the best option.

Rows also enable furrow irrigation. Again, commercial farms frequently use this method. Water runs between all the plants, soaking the soil without wetting the leaves and spreading disease. On the downside, furrow irrigation is fairly inefficient, and definitely not the best choice for an arid region with limited water.

Row-based gardens require the most space for a given harvest. There is a lot of space between plants. All that space receives water, fertilizer, mulches, and amendments, but produces weeds, not veggies. If you don’t use a mechanical tiller, you’ll spend a lot of time eliminating those weeds.

Rows are good if you want to grow lots of large plants—tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, large cabbages—and are pretty much essential for growing wind-pollinated corn.  (Corn needs to be planted in blocks to ensure that pollen from the tassels lands on all the silks; otherwise you’ll have empty cobs!)

Rows are also appropriate for vertically grown crops such as tall peas and trellised pole beans. Alongside one edge of our garden, we built a couple of frames from PVC pipe. One I covered with nylon netting for the peas. The other I strung with garden twine. Peas wrapped their tendrils around the netting while beans wound themselves around the string. In both cases, harvesting was a snap.

One variation on row gardening , often used for large, vining plants such as both summer and winter squash, is “hill” gardening—putting several plants in one spot and leaving several feet between these clumps.

Planting in hills also leaves a lot of empty space between plants, particularly at the beginning of the season. Covering that ground with mulch, or a quickly maturing crop, can help keep weeds down. If you aren’t planting anything there, there is no need to add amendments or water. Just enrich the soil in the area where the plant roots will be growing.

Gardening in rows isn’t the best option for many other veggies. Root crops such as radishes, beets, and carrots are so small that a single row is a huge waste of space. Leafy greens—lettuce, chard, etc.—also do much better growing leaf-to-leaf. Next week I’ll discuss the pros and cons of gardening in beds.

We were up with the sun, arriving at the park before the rangers opened the pay station. You have to park at the entrance and walk in—and that’s when we learned there was one minor detail we hadn’t considered. Bentsen is a fairly large park, encompassing more than 1,300 acres. Normally, a free shuttle runs around the park loop, stopping frequently to let people off and on. However, it was Monday. Due to a budget shortfall, the tram did not run on Mondays. I would have to walk.

I enjoy hiking, but lugging over 20 pounds of camera gear around the park all day didn’t excite me. Still, I wanted to see (and photograph) those birds. So off I went.

Happily, I didn’t have far to go to the first feeding station. It is a huge boon to birders that the parks and refuges keep these stations stocked with sunflower seed, peanut butter logs, and citrus fruit. The birds have become habituated to the gawkers with the binos, and you can get great views.

As I walked up to the bench, several other birders were pointing at the branches to my right. And it was that easy. The Black-vented Oriole was hopping between the shelter of the foliage and the peanut butter feeder out in the open. I happily set up my tripod and started taking pictures.

Realizing that this may be my only opportunity to observe this Mexican bird, I spent a while just watching its behavior, noticing its markings, and just enjoying myself. Then it flew off to digest its breakfast, and I started paying attention to the other birds in the area.

Like the other sites we’d visited, this one was well stocked with the standard Rio Grande birds: Green Jays, bright red Northern Cardinals and orange Altamira Orioles. Plain Chachalacas and Great Kiskadees made a ruckus. Northern Mockingbirds were abundant. So were Golden-fronted Woodpeckers (top) and Orange-crowned Warblers. Scouring the ground under the feeders were White-tipped and Mourning Doves, and…. Those are Clay-colored Thrushes! Called Clay-colored Robins until recently, the thrushes are the national bird of Costa Rica. I hadn’t seen any on my trip five years ago, but now I was seeing at least a dozen. Another lifer for the morning!

It fascinates me how birds that are common some years can be almost completely absent in others. The thrushes weren’t the only bird I had missed on my earlier trip. In 2007, everyone had commented on the absence of Buff-bellied Hummingbirds. This year there were plenty. I’d only seen one Olive Sparrow last time, but this time we saw them all around the feeders at Laguna Atascosa NWR. Perhaps the drought currently plaguing Texas has something to do with it. Birds used to finding water in the wild are more likely to appear at the parks’ water features. Food is more scarce too, bringing more birds to the feeders. Whatever the reason, I was certainly grateful to be filling in the gaps on my life list!

I hoisted my gear and headed farther down the road. A grassy picnic spot yielded a Black Phoebe and a Vermilion Flycatcher. An old tree housed a snoozing Eastern Screech Owl. I passed bicyclists in bright colors and other birders with olive-drab shirts and floppy hats. Seeing a bench by yet another set of feeders, I plunked down mostly so I could rest my shoulder. A female cardinal was playing hide-and-seek in the bushes—here, gone, here, gone, he… wait a minute! I did a double take. I’d been watching a cardinal (I have photos of her to prove it), but suddenly I was seeing a different bird—a Phainopepla. What a treat!

It was time to head back to the entrance. My ever-helpful husband had run some errands and was calling to tell me he had my lunch ready and waiting. Since it was well past lunchtime, I reluctantly packed up my camera and headed back up the road. Even if you have to walk, Bentsen is a great birding destination!