cooperative extension

I am fascinated with German bearded irises with their frills, color combinations and scent. I’m also interested in the changes that occur to the flowers after a number of years. I have had deep goldenrod ruffled irises lose their ruffles and fade to a lovely light yellow after years in the same location.

My neighbor Mark, now known as “Chip” after Chip Gaines from “Fixer Upper” on HGTV, acquired his new moniker after building an amazing fence to enclose his wife’s garden (with her help of course!). Since we have major animal challenges in our neighborhood — ground squirrels, rabbits, deer and bears — a strong defense system is essential for successful vegetable production. The impressive garden fence that "Chip" built should keep all the critters out.

The Coronavirus has made many people want to grow their own food. At the Foothill Garden, a partnership with The Greenhouse Project and Carson Tahoe Health, Will Pierz, the garden manager and farmer, is growing some unusual, but hardy edible plants.

My friend Millie is a plant explorer. She experiments getting groceries to grow. When she told me she was growing celery from the butt-end of what you buy from the grocery store, I was fascinated. How? In water? In soil? She went on to say she also grows sweet potatoes. I had tried that in high school, so that didn’t surprise me. But when she showed me a picture of her sweet potato plant I was impressed.

I have been a grass warrior lately. Grass persists in exploring and establishing in areas I don’t want it: under shrubs, twined in flowers, out of the edges of the lawn, under the trees, in the field and so on. As a grass warrior, I have employed various attack strategies from hand-digging, weed-whacking and mowing with three different mowers — a riding mower, a small area electric mower, a rough area mower and finally, a tractor.

Yes, we all love the nice weather. However, with the sun and lovely temperatures come weeds, the plants we all love to hate. For a weed is simply a plant out of place, or better yet, a plant you wish was any place other than your place!


Seriously, “lasagna gardening?” Readers may remember my article on hügelkultur last year, a centuries old Eastern European method of no-dig raised beds made out of logs, branches, leaves, grass clippings, straw, cardboard, petroleum-free newspaper, manure, compost and/or other organic matter. Topped with soil and it’s ready to plant.

My friend Roni is redoing her vegetable garden and asked me if corrugated metal materials were safe for building raised beds for vegetables. Since I had no idea, I started doing some research.

Each spring, the Carson City Chamber Leadership Institute Class is fully immersed in their class project. This time last year, the Class of 2019 was as busy as bees preparing the land behind the Carson Tahoe Cancer Center to build the city’s first bee hotel hoping to attract bees to pollinate The Greenhouse Project plants.

My friend Julie from Incline laughingly asked me recently if she could come garden at my house since her property was buried in snow. While that’s not feasible, it got me thinking. Others may wish they too could garden during these “Stay at Home” times but not have space for an in-ground garden and need to garden indoors, on a patio or on a porch.


My gardening clothes stink and I’m a happy woman! I’ve been pruning a Rhus trilobata, commonly called skunkbush sumac. Its name tells the story. I should have left my malodorous garments outside rather than carrying that pungent scent into the house. Oh well, I don’t care. I’m happy because I’m pruning. It takes so little to put a smile on my face.


I’ve been watching the apple buds, waiting to see swelling begin, waiting for color to start showing. Last week I was excited to finally see a bit of color. Then, snow and overnight lows in the low twenties hit, which is just like last year, when we had no apples. I hope the cold doesn’t kill the blossoms and my apple crop again this year.

It snowed six inches last night. This followed the four inches it snowed a day or so before. I’m grateful for the extra moisture for the trees, the lawn, all my plants and all the native trees. As I wrote a few weeks ago, I had been doing the water on and off, drag hoses, drain lines boogie for a number of weeks. This water-laden snow is a welcome, although temporary, reprieve.

Each season brings its joys and its challenges. I’m excited after winter to see the delights of Spring with all the blooming forsythia, flowering plums, daffodils, and other plants displaying their colors. I generally forget the spring problems until suddenly I’m seeing ground squirrels, ants and weeds. All of a sudden, I feel as if I have to hurry to catch up with the pests.

YERINGTON — Lyon County has announced the following changes in operations in response to COVID-19 and the Governor’s recent announcement as to the State of Nevada’s Response to COVID-19.

Successful Nevada gardeners know that Nevada soils are worth the toil to ensure a great garden. Our native soils are low in organic matter due to low rainfall amounts. In addition, they are more alkaline than soils rich in organic matter. The alkalinity of a soil often interferes with micronutrient availability causing nutrient deficiencies in plants. The good news is that by adding organic matter, our soils can support healthy plants and yield good harvests.

My friend Sarah suggested I write about forcing blossoms indoors since we are all anxiously awaiting spring color to arrive on trees and shrubs. Forcing blossoms gives us a lovely spring preview. The idea is to cut finger-sized non-essential branches of spring-flowering trees and shrubs, stick them in a vase of water indoors and wait for blossoms to open.

I just read an interesting article called “How are gardeners adapting to climate change?” in the British magazine “Gardens Illustrated.” The authors interviewed head gardeners at National Trust properties across the United Kingdom. All the gardeners were seeing effects of climate change such as “floods to drier summers.”

I turned my sprinklers on this past week. So did my gardening neighbor Roni. Her comment was “Ugh!” Mine was “On. Off. Drain. Repeat.” Turning drip systems and sprinklers on and off is tedious, but necessary. We haven’t had enough rain or snow to thoroughly soak the ground.

I saw the darndest landscape last week. I was in Incline Village at a friend’s house that backs up to Tahoe Boulevard. My friend said, "Look at the neighbor’s back yard; you won’t believe it!”

It’s February already. Days are longer and happily, it will soon be planting time. According to USDA plant hardiness zone map, most of us will be relatively safe planting based on Zone 6b, with temperature lows ranging from minus 5 to 0 degrees F.

I love to hear from readers. One reader and friend, Paul, suggested the following for article ideas: 1. How to deal with those tiny flies that seem to come from indoor plants. 2. This is the best time to take down danger trees, since the insects will not jump to healthy trees now. 3. This is the time to order from plant catalogues and plan for your gardening in the spring.

Carson High School Senior Cade Crookshanks, 17, has been selected by the Nevada Section of the Society for Range Management to participate in the High School Youth Forum, a SRM sponsored youth activity held jointly during the 73 Annual SRM meeting. The meeting will be held in Denver, Colo., Feb. 16-20, 2020.

We often call many of our spring perennial flowers bulbs. However, botanically speaking, not everything we call a bulb is a true bulb. For example, is an iris a bulb? A corm? Or something else, such as a rhizome or tuber?

I write weekly articles and I rarely remember from week to week what I wrote. So, I reviewed this past year’s production for some of my favorites.

Red wriggler worms are decomposing work horses. They eat paper and food scraps turning them into compost, a nutrient-rich material for plants.

I asked Cory at The Greenhouse Project to share a worm composting method. He suggests a 3-bin method, starting with plastic bins approximately 1-1/2 feet by 2-1/2 feet. The boxes are shallow, because worms are surface-dwellers and prefer to live in the top six inches of bedding material.

Although the calendar doesn’t quite agree, winter is here. We were given a white Thanksgiving followed by rain and then more snow. All this precipitation is good for our trees both ornamental and native.

Winter sun and drying winds can damage not only our skin, but the bark of trees and shrubs. It seems obvious that plants might get sunburned in the summer, but less intuitive that it also happens in the winter when it is called winter sunscald.

This Thanksgiving holiday has given us a lot to be thankful for. Let us be grateful for the recent precipitation. Let us be grateful for a climate with minimal plant diseases. Let us be thankful for all the other gardeners out there working to provide habitat for pollinators and other beneficial insects. And, let us be grateful for soils teeming with life, filled with organic matter that hold water without drowning plants.

If you too have been thinking of planting new trees or shrubs, plant now, instead of planting in the spring when the soil is cold. Trees do best next year when planted this fall when the soil is warm. Even as the temperatures drop, the soil stays warm until hard freezes last for weeks.