Hi Wasatch!

Welcome to the Friendliest Little Gardening Forum in the West! We've been pretty slow around here lately too, but questions usually bring "the right folks" out of the woodwork, so bring on your "new to this crazy climate" questions.

You get to enjoy the snow first tomorrow, but we'll be getting it here in Denver tomorrow nite! So, no dirt tomorrow, but we could consider "growing" some Snow Angels!?!

Skybird

P.S. You're not the only one around here who talks to their plants! :-)

Thanks SB!

I'm busy reading posts from way back trying to learn my way through this crazy short season gardening but I'm sure I'll have questions soon enough!

I always thought the Wasatch valley was warmer than the Front Range. Guy I used to work with was from Vernal, and he always talked about the watermelons they would truck up from the valley, certainly not something you find out here lol.

Course, it is still a significant change from Florida, where the limiting factor is HEAT rather than cold!

One thing you can revel in is the lack of bugs and humidity, which I also believe is responsible for toning down a lot of the disease problems that people in the South have... And the fact the soil freezes over the winter means that nematodes aren't an issue either ;).

Welcome to RMG! We look forward to having you!

Wasatchyousay,

Welcome! Love your screen name. I have family that winters in the Gulf Shores area of Alabama and I visit there once a year or so. I love that area, it's so lush and tropical. I just got back from a visit a week ago. I told Skybird that if I'd known all I had to do to get the weather here to warm up was leave, I'd have left sooner!

I'm sure you've had some growing pains adjusting to an arid climate and shorter growing season. This did feel like a brutal winter. We had snow cover for months, which is kind of unusual.

We're glad you found us and are looking forward to your posts!

Barb

Thanks Zach and Barb.

Zach, you hit the nail on the head with the bugs, heat and humidity. When I talk about our Florida garden to co-workers they often say how easy it must have been with our year round growing season. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was battle after battle after battle. Bugs, bugs, heat, bugs, sun, disease, bugs, disease and more bugs. And you're right about the freeze. Nothing EVER died. And don't get me started on the nematodes, or the salt content of our deep well. There were days when I threatened to take a flame thrower to the whole dang thing. The husband kept telling me about gardening in Utah and how easy it was. If I said it once last summer I said it a hundred times, "Look at these plants! Look at all the fruit! I haven't seen a single bug!" The abundance from our tiny little patch was mind blowing and practically effortless.

Barb, I'm from the central east coast right on the beach. If I knew you were heading that way I would have hitched a ride. And I'll definitely be sending you that way next winter so you can send back some warmer weather when I've had my fill, which is right about November 1st, lol. We still have a good size chunk of snow/ice in our parking lot at work from the plows. The guys felt sorry for me because I finally broke out the big guns and started taking a shovel to it so it would melt faster. They're pretty much over it as well so I'm hoping we'll have that thing melted by Friday.

Thanks for the welcome! I'm still reading the old posts and found a bird thread the other day. We're also backyard-birders and I loved looking at all the photos. We've got some really good ones as well. I'll have to play around and figure out how to post some.