Who Are the Gardening Experts?

Gardening advice is all around us. It's available on the internet, at Starbucks, in your grandmother's kitchen, and in the mailbox. I certainly try to do my part to enlighten fellow gardeners about the best way to garden, often learned from mistakes I've made. As a trained Master Gardener I cringe when I encounter information that is blatantly wrong, though the purveyor of the "facts" affirms their validity.

This week it was "professional", or rather, "commercial" seed and nursery companies that drew my ire. As I've mentioned in previous blogs, seed and plant catalogs are rolling in to my country home. I love thumbing through the pages and envisioning new plants that I'll try in one garden section or another. I hardly noticed when I read a blurb in one that their "experts" had determined my Hardiness Zone to make my plant selection easier, but imagine my surprise and shock when I saw that they had printed my Hardiness Zone as "7"!

Last month I devoted a blog to the USDA Plant Hardiness Zones. My Colorado garden grows at 7,500 feet elevation. On a good day my Hardiness Zone is "5". A quick glance at the USDA's Plant Hardiness Zone Map shows that there isn't a single part of Colorado that is within a few hundred miles of Zone 7. Yet somehow the gardening experts trying to sell me their products are "advising" me to purchase plants suitable for the deserts of Arizona. Of course, I'm sure the number was generated by a computer, but loading my zip code into any of the online Hardiness Zone calculators delivers an appropriate Zone 5. Whoever programmed their computer couldn't even add an accurate Zip Code to Hardiness Zone calculator.

Two of the offenders are Gurney's Seed & Nursery Co. and Henry Field's Seed & Nursery Co., both with addresses in Indiana. I suspect they're in cahoots by telling me my Hardiness Zone is 7 because, upon closer examination, their catalogs are surprisingly similar. Colors are the same, product codes are the same, pictures are the same, and the misguided computer is probably the same.

I don't know about you, but I'm hesitant to trust information from someone, or a company, that feeds me inaccurate information while trying to convey a sense of accuracy. This is prevalent in the gardening world. Someone discovers something that works great and tries to make a buck by telling you it will work for you too. But my garden is different than your garden, which is different than my cousin's California garden, which is different than my brother's Arizona garden.

The best place for me to find accurate local information is in my own home town. Master Gardeners in my area are trained for gardening information that applies to my area; this is the same across the country. Local nurseries rely on producing plants that will prosper in my area; if they sell the wrong plants they can be out of business. Gardeners down the block and around the corner know what works and what doesn't... for our area.

Be careful about following all of the gardening advice you hear, even mine. I try to qualify information I present as it applies to my garden or gardens in general, but not everyone does that. Many of the big box stores in my area begin selling tomato and pepper plants in early March. Our temperatures can warm up quickly and many people are anxious for spring planting. The official last frost date for Colorado Springs is May 15. I've had dozens of newcomers to the area who attended one of my basic gardening classes and told me about planting a garden that was devastated by an April snowstorm.

Big chain stores will sell truckloads of plants like blueberries and azaleas, but Colorado soil is alkaline and blueberries and azaleas require acidic soil. You won't always see that on the label and a typical store clerk won't know the difference. Like the plant catalogs above, these same stores sell Zone 7 and Zone 8 perennials to unsuspecting gardeners with the belief that they'll survive our Zone 5 winters. They won't.

Many gardening books and national gardening television shows are produced on the East Coast. They present great information, but that information is often accurate for just the East Coast. One recommendation I've seen in print many times is to add fireplace ashes to your soil. That works great for Eastern soil, but is one of the worst things you can do to alkaline soil like mine. I know that because I know more about what is best for my garden.

Find out about your area, your garden specifically. Continue to find internet sources and TV stars and authors, but don't trust everything. If your health was threatened, you'd get a second opinion from a different doctor. Well, the health of your garden is threatened every time you try something new so get a second opinion from a different gardener.

I'll continue to offer gardening advice based on my training and research. I'll do my best to identify what will work for a Colorado garden and what works for gardens in general. Most of what I write is general in nature and will work for most gardens. Notice that I'll often quantify with "some", "many", or "most" gardens; rarely will I say "all" or "every". It's up to you to determine what's best for your garden. When it comes to what you buy and plant, you're the best judge, not a malicious computer, TV pitchman, or store clerk.

Gardening advice is all around us. It's available on the internet, at Starbucks, in your grandmother's kitchen, and in the mailbox. I certainly try to do my part to enlighten fellow gardeners about the best way to garden, often learned from mistakes I've made. As a trained Master Gardener I cringe when I encounter information that is blatantly wrong, though the purveyor of the "facts" affirms their validity.

This week it was "professional", or rather, "commercial" seed and nursery companies that drew my ire. As I've mentioned in previous blogs, seed and plant catalogs are rolling in to my country home. I love thumbing through the pages and envisioning new plants that I'll try in one garden section or another. I hardly noticed when I read a blurb in one that their "experts" had determined my Hardiness Zone to make my plant selection easier, but imagine my surprise and shock when I saw that they had printed my Hardiness Zone as "7"!

Last month I devoted a blog to the USDA Plant Hardiness Zones. My Colorado garden grows at 7,500 feet elevation. On a good day my Hardiness Zone is "5". A quick glance at the USDA's Plant Hardiness Zone Map shows that there isn't a single part of Colorado that is within a few hundred miles of Zone 7. Yet somehow the gardening experts trying to sell me their products are "advising" me to purchase plants suitable for the deserts of Arizona. Of course, I'm sure the number was generated by a computer, but loading my zip code into any of the online Hardiness Zone calculators delivers an appropriate Zone 5. Whoever programmed their computer couldn't even add an accurate Zip Code to Hardiness Zone calculator.

Two of the offenders are Gurney's Seed & Nursery Co. and Henry Field's Seed & Nursery Co., both with addresses in Indiana. I suspect they're in cahoots by telling me my Hardiness Zone is 7 because, upon closer examination, their catalogs are surprisingly similar. Colors are the same, product codes are the same, pictures are the same, and the misguided computer is probably the same.

I don't know about you, but I'm hesitant to trust information from someone, or a company, that feeds me inaccurate information while trying to convey a sense of accuracy. This is prevalent in the gardening world. Someone discovers something that works great and tries to make a buck by telling you it will work for you too. But my garden is different than your garden, which is different than my cousin's California garden, which is different than my brother's Arizona garden.

The best place for me to find accurate local information is in my own home town. Master Gardeners in my area are trained for gardening information that applies to my area; this is the same across the country. Local nurseries rely on producing plants that will prosper in my area; if they sell the wrong plants they can be out of business. Gardeners down the block and around the corner know what works and what doesn't... for our area.

Be careful about following all of the gardening advice you hear, even mine. I try to qualify information I present as it applies to my garden or gardens in general, but not everyone does that. Many of the big box stores in my area begin selling tomato and pepper plants in early March. Our temperatures can warm up quickly and many people are anxious for spring planting. The official last frost date for Colorado Springs is May 15. I've had dozens of newcomers to the area who attended one of my basic gardening classes and told me about planting a garden that was devastated by an April snowstorm.

Big chain stores will sell truckloads of plants like blueberries and azaleas, but Colorado soil is alkaline and blueberries and azaleas require acidic soil. You won't always see that on the label and a typical store clerk won't know the difference. Like the plant catalogs above, these same stores sell Zone 7 and Zone 8 perennials to unsuspecting gardeners with the belief that they'll survive our Zone 5 winters. They won't.

Many gardening books and national gardening television shows are produced on the East Coast. They present great information, but that information is often accurate for just the East Coast. One recommendation I've seen in print many times is to add fireplace ashes to your soil. That works great for Eastern soil, but is one of the worst things you can do to alkaline soil like mine. I know that because I know more about what is best for my garden.

Find out about your area, your garden specifically. Continue to find internet sources and TV stars and authors, but don't trust everything. If your health was threatened, you'd get a second opinion from a different doctor. Well, the health of your garden is threatened every time you try something new so get a second opinion from a different gardener.

I'll continue to offer gardening advice based on my training and research. I'll do my best to identify what will work for a Colorado garden and what works for gardens in general. Most of what I write is general in nature and will work for most gardens. Notice that I'll often quantify with "some", "many", or "most" gardens; rarely will I say "all" or "every". It's up to you to determine what's best for your garden. When it comes to what you buy and plant, you're the best judge, not a malicious computer, TV pitchman, or store clerk.