High Elevation Gardening Web Log "Blog"

For Northern Arizona gardeners, the place to start is the University of Arizona Web site (ag.arizona.edu/extension/horticulture.) This extension site offers information on gardening and landscaping topics for Arizona. Though much of the information focuses on lower elevations, several pages are helpful to high elevation gardeners such as the Flora and Fauna Image Gallery with pictures of natives and naturalized plants, the Plant Disease Web site for information and pictures of plant diseases, the Arizona Master Gardener manual, and the Southwest Gardening Information site which is a portal to a large number of other Web sites.

You can also link to the Arizona Meteorological Network (cals.arizona.edu/azmet/) which includes data from a weather station right here in Flagstaff. This site not only provides weather data but also a lawn watering guide based on precipitation for Flagstaff.

I regularly use articles from Colorado State University Extension (www.ext.colostate.edu/) to answer gardening questions. I like this site because almost all of the information can be applied to our high elevation gardening conditions. They have excellent fact sheets on Xeriscape, basic gardening techniques, irrigation, insects, and ornamentals. Lacking a search engine, it can be a challenge to find the right publication until you become familiar with the site

Another great site within Colorado extension is Plant Talk (www.ext.colostate.edu/ptlk/) which provides short, reliable, and timely information on more than 400 horticultural topics. Click on Wildlife Issues and you’ll hit upon the publication ‘Preventing Woodpecker Damage,’ a common problem for many Northern Arizona gardeners.

After the Colorado site, I often go to New Mexico State University’s Yard and Garden Web site (www.cahe.nmsu.edu/ces/yard/) for answers. Click on ‘How-to Publications’ and you’ll find dozens of useful articles on horticulture as well as agronomy wildlife, and water. You can search this site making it easy to find a particular article.

For specific garden pest information I use the University of California Integrated Pest Management Web site (axp.ipm.ucdavis.edu/) because it promotes the use of integrated, ecologically sound pest management programs and has ample information on how to manage and identify insects, diseases, nematodes, and weeds. It also has detailed information on pesticide safety.

Utah State University Extension (extension.usu.edu/htm/publications) also has excellent publications many of which apply to our gardening conditions. A neat site from their offices is Garden Utah! (gardenutah.org) which has easy to understand seasonal information that is based on their fact sheets.

Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/index.html) provides a clickable map so that you can access every extension Web site in the United States.

Now you can try to find answers to many gardening questions. But if you get stumped, you can always call the Master Gardener hotline.

You can access all of these sites from the Coconino County Extension horticultural Web site (ag.arizona.edu/coconino/horticulture/index.html.) Just click on Links.

By Hattie Braun
The author is a Master Gardener program coordinator for Coconino County Cooperative Extension. If you have a gardening question, call the Master Gardener hotline at 774-1868 ext. 19 or visit our Web site: highelevationgardening.arizona.edu.