Grow Local Colorado

Growing food in Colorado is a challenge. One solution is to switch to drought tolerant crops. To do so requires a market that is willing to try these new crops.

Are less-thirsty crops a solution to Colorado’s growing water problems? The state’s resilient, adaptable farmers can raise just about anything and use less water doing it. But will enough people buy it?

We planted our final two gardens this morning. Our Race garden is just a block away from SAME Cafe Denver and the other is at First Universalists of Denver.

In the last few weeks we've planted over 5,000 plants in our 20 garden sites. We couldn't have done this without the help of our wonderful volunteers. Some 400+ students helped with prepping and planting many sites while 240 adults put in 459 hours to get all of our gardens in. What a caring, dedicated and energetic community. Thank you for your time and help. We couldn't have done it without you.

How did your garden fare during the hail storm this week? If you got hit, you might find some of the tips from our friends at Denver Urban Gardens helpful. There is life after a hail storm.

Strategies to Combat Hail - Denver Urban Gardens To Replant or Not to Replant? Although there is no single solution to mitigate the impact of a severe hailstorm, it’s sometimes helpful to take a few minutes and remember some of the strategies we can pull out of our toolboxes to help promote healing. Gardens, like their caretakers, are resilient ...

The pesticide industry was built on one idea: that nature is a problem to be chemically managed.

It is 70 years old. Gardens worked for thousands of years before it existed.

- MARIGOLDS planted as a border release a root compound lethal to nematodes and repel whiteflies above ground simultaneously.

- COPPER TAPE around pot rims and bed edges delivers a mild charge that slugs and snails will not cross. Lasts for years.

- DILL IN FLOWER attracts parasitic wasps that lay eggs inside cabbage worms. The wasps do the work permanently once established.

- MESH ROW COVERS fitted at planting need no chemistry at all. A physical barrier that is reusable for decades.

- GARLIC AT BED EDGES releases sulfur compounds that deter Japanese beetles and suppress fungal disease in neighboring roots.

- BEER TRAPS set at soil level cost almost nothing and eliminate slugs without a single synthetic compound.

- NASTURTIUMS as a border trap crop pull aphids away from every vegetable in the bed. Let them take it.

- ALLIUMS INTERPLANTED with carrots confuse the scent trail that carrot fly uses to locate its host. The fly cannot find what it cannot smell.

Every pest has a natural predator, a barrier, or a plant that repels it. The spray bottle replaced that knowledge. It did not improve on it.

Doubling up today on installing gardens this morning.

Yale alumni helped us install one of our larger gardens, Holmes & Gardens. They weeded (2 huge garbage bags full!), planted over 250 plants, mulched, and compost tea'd in less than 2 hours. Thanks to their efforts we will probably once again get over 1,000 lbs of produce in the next few months from this one site alone. Thanks Yale Service Group!