Colorado gardeners face a combination of challenges when it comes to caring for outdoor plants. Every year we gear up for unpredictable extreme weather like May and September snowstorms and destructive hail storms from April through September.

If I had told my teenage self one day I’d be obsessing about the germination rate of pepper seeds, I would have shaken my head. Younger Gwynne was not interested in peppers of any sort. Sweet or spicy? Neither, thank you very much. Fast forward 25 years, and I’m elbow deep in pepper cultivation tips and feeling particularly proud of my Summer 2020 pepper harvest from the Furrow & Trowel garden. Colorado’s Front Range climate is inhospitable to starting warm-season vegetable s

Not long after diving into Let it Rot! The Gardener’s Guide to Composting, I learned that my love of fermented foods is not unlike my love for creating home compost. Both rely on aerobic bacteria’s labor to produce a successful end product. In the case of compost, success is marked by organic materials so well decomposed that they have broken down into what looks like rich, dark soil.