Advice for novice seed catalogue browsers

    On Christmas Day, I was watering shrubs and decided to spend a few minutes cleaning up a small gardening area, which led to more than an hour of cutting, raking, ripping, hauling and general removal of dead leaves and stems from irises, daylilies and Blanket Flowers.
    I believe this is the first time I’ve worked in the garden on Christmas Day since moving to Colorado in 1995. But, in those 15 years, I have learned to go with the flow of nature.  Anything I can get done in December and January is that much less that I will have to do in April and May when the serious work gets going.
    If you find yourself with some time on a warm, dry day, feel free to clean up your garden beds. You can cut back any of your flowering and foliage perennials any time during the winter, including ornamental grasses, or you can leave them up until spring if you like the look. Dead foliage and fallen leaves do provide some natural mulch protection for the roots and eventually the new shoots, so you may wish to leave some of that in place. Do not prune rose bushes until late April, no matter how ratty they look. Pruning roses too soon may encourage growth, which will freeze and die and turn black and you’ll want to prune that off, which will just make it worse.
    Pruning deciduous trees and shrubs should be done in late winter or early spring. Entire books have been written on pruning, but there are a few basics you should know before you take clippers or loppers to the branches. The Colorado State University Extension Service has several online publications that describe pruning. You can find them at www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/pubs.html. Do a search for “pruning” or scroll down and select “Colorado Master Gardener Publications,” then pruning. If you don’t have Internet access, you can call the Master Gardeners at 303-637-8100.
    On a cold, wet day you can entertain your inner gardener by browsing the seed catalogues which started arriving in mid-December. If you’re not on any of those mailing lists, do an Internet search on “garden seed catalogues.”
    Google currently boasts about 370,000 results, enough to keep you busy for a long time. Some of these catalogues are works of art, with page after page of stunning flowers in every shape and color you can imagine, and plump, juicy vegetables.
    I couldn’t get past the second page in the Botanical Interests catalogue before I knew I would need to order some “Broom Corn, Amish Rainbow Blend.” Botanical Interests is a local company located in Broomfield, where broom corn was grown in the early 1900s for making brooms. This is an annual plant that grows 5 to 6 feet tall and, like ornamental grasses, has fall-colored sprays of seed heads that provide visual interest during the winter, as well as seeds for birds. You can read about these seeds, including when to plant them and the fact that it’s not really a corn, it’s a sorghum, at www.botanicalinterests.com.
    It’s hard not to go overboard when shopping from seed catalogues. The biggest rookie mistake is buying too much of too many things and then realizing they all need to be started indoors 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost. Unless you’re really committed to dealing with seed trays and lighting and daily watering and rotating, you might want to limit yourself to mostly seeds you plant directly in the ground. The other common mistake is ordering with no idea where things will go in your gardens. More about planning next time. For now, make lists in pencil and resist the urge to send off your order.

Linda C. Young, a Brighton resident, is a certified horticulturist and a member of the Garden Writer’s Association. She also has certificate in landscape design. E-mail her your gardening questions at lyoung_111@msn.com.