SantaFe.com

Nearly an inch of rain showered on the Santa Fe area Wednesday through early Thursday, providing a little relief for a bone-dry year in which precipitation levels have been way off normal.

Snow was falling in other parts of northern New Mexico, mostly at elevations higher than 8,000 feet. A location just outside Angel Fire and Sandia Crest in Albuquerque’s Sandia Mountains had received as much as 4 inches through Thursday morning, while Red River got an inch, according to the National Weather Service in Albuquerque.

“This has been the first significant rainfall you’ve had since the...

Friday, May 16, 2008
by Kiera Hay • Journal Santa Fe

Thoreau would definitely love this place, I think as I sit with longtime Plants of the Southwest employee Susan Westbrook, each of us haloed by shafts of golden sun at our backs. Feeling like a warm, contented cat, I gaze around their spacious sales area, marveling at the simplicity. Nothing is extraneous in this nursery–there’s a modest selection of well-made gardening tools, wall displays of seeds and a collection of carefully-chosen resource books, most of them describing details about how to live la vida sustainable.

Back in the mid-seventies–1976, to be exact, a tumultuous year as...

Saturday, March 1, 2008
by Gail Snyder and Jennifer Spelman (Photographer) • localflavor magazine

The sun is setting when Heather Rowley, owner of Eco-Clean Albuquerque, finishes working in the house in Albuquerque’s Northeast Heights. It’s been a backbreaking day that began a tad after eight a.m. She has moved couches to vacuum underneath, climbed ladders to catch ugly streaks on windows, and scrubbed counters with white vinegar to bring out a gleaming shine. When Rowley walks out the door, she notices the dirty welcome mat on the front porch and cleans it, too.

If something attracts this energetic, hard-working woman’s attention, it’s bound to be improved by it. Ever since she was a...

Saturday, March 1, 2008
by Pari Noskin Taichert and Joe Picard (Photographer) • localflavor magazine

New Mexican bred Gordon Tooley emanates contentment. Unlike most of the world, he doesn’t crave more. In his early twenties, while working on a 700-acre farm in Maine, where he had followed his sweetheart Margaret, he witnessed a tree grafting demonstration. “I was like, ‘That’s me!’ I wanted to have a tree farm, and to grow things that are not common.”

Not a typical life goal. “I flunked out of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College. I wasn’t a theoretical kind of person.” A hands-on person, he obtained an AA degree from Colorado Mountain College in Outdoor Studies, worked at Mesa...

Tuesday, May 1, 2007
by Barry Fields • localflavor magazine

Gardening in Santa Fe can be more challanging than in other area with more rainfall and richer soil. However, there are many ways to have lush and charming outdoor spaces without using too much of our most precious resource, water. The first step in creating a xeriscape (or drylands) garden is to carefully choose the plants. Plants such as chamisa, russian sage, yarrow, gallardia, coreposis, penstemons and too many others to name provide bold color with very little supplemental water. The other important steps are proper soil ammending and installing a good irrigation system. There are...

Tuesday, January 15, 2008
by Kendall McCumber

With this season's rains bringing temporary relief to the drought many people are beginning to lament the gardening that they didn't do this year.

With such extreme water restrictions still in place, most of us still see landscaping as a risk instead of an investment. Why garden at all when there is a chance that we may be forced to let everything die? Why not wait until it seems more sure that we can water?

Well, for several reasons. First of all, it takes several years for perennials and shrubs to get established and even more for trees, all of which will make your outdoor living space...

Tuesday, January 15, 2008
by Kendall McCumber

Last article we talked about water harvesting and recycling. This is an over discussed but very important issue with much to be learned from. We are now at a turning point as to how we look at our water resources, both in building and in landscaping. Most homeowners still think of gray water use as annoying tasks like emptying out your bathtub with a bucket and rainwater collection as swampy plastic barrels under the canales. Both kinds of systems can work much more easily and smoothly but it does take an investment in a local expert.

How else can we utilize these great rains for our...

Tuesday, January 15, 2008
by Kendall McCumber

Vegetable growers are just now beginning to experience such delicacies as home grown peaches and tomatoes. There is nothing as sinfully delicious as ripe fresh fruits such as those. I always look forward to this time of year for these harvests because they remind me of just how bountiful and decadent Mother Nature can be.

For flower gardeners, it is much the same. We work all spring and early summer, and for a long time everything seems beautiful but not necessarily awe inspiring. Every summer it will hit me one day towards the end of July that I am there; I am at the peak of summer. And...

Tuesday, January 15, 2008
by Kendall McCumber

There are many ways to enjoy a garden. Your garden will delight all of your senses, but the two most obvious ones are sight and smell. While everyone has heard the expression “stop and smell the roses”, I find that often we don't because we don't know what we are missing. Roses are wonderful to smell if you put your nose to them, or if you cut them to put them on your table. Other flowers can delight the nose with scents from marshmallows to cinnamon to perfume.

Some of my favorite scented flowers reach their peak in August. Often the scents are strongest in the dark, so I make a point of...

Tuesday, January 15, 2008
by Kendall McCumber

As the peak of summer winds down, many of us wonder what to do and what plants will keep a garden interesting in this transition period of (hopefully) the last summer heat and when it cools down.

Annuals often carry us through this change of season, but they are running out of steam and will need to be fed. A well balanced fertilizer is essential at this point because the whole plant needs strength to live another two months. Look for the numbers 20-20-20 on the fertilizer box. Do not be fooled into a high middle number, phosphorus. Though this may stimulate budding early in the summer,...

Tuesday, January 15, 2008
by Kendall McCumber