◆ Look online for educational opportunties.
By Hudson Hill
UW Cooperative Extension
Living with the coronavirus means most things are getting done differently. That is certainly true with the University of Wyoming. It is a change but if we want information or education right now, we really have to look for it virtually and online.
At this time of year, the grass is getting green and it is time to start thinking gardening. The University of Wyoming has lots of information to review out there.
I have three websites to share as a recommendation my favorite is: uwyo.edu/barnbackyard/. There is a lot of information on this site and it is really easy to understand. Also lots of good gardening info can be found at: uwyo.edu/mastergardener. For general information and to find UW publications, this is a good place: uwyo.edu/uwe/.
Good luck and stay safe during these interesting times and give our office a call at 307-885-3132, if we can help.
• Watering Tip
Gardening in western Wyoming is different than other places. One of the ways that it is most different is how we perceive our need for irrigation.
When making plans for how we will irrigate, it is best if we plan with the plant in mind. For our yards the University of Wyoming guideline is usually an inch a water a week. In general, that guideline would be followed with the instructions to apply that inch of water once a week.
In western Wyoming we quite often irrigate too often and not enough. Many automatic sprinkling systems are set up to deliver one tenth of an inch of water a day every day and that certainly will keep our grass green but it doesn’t encourage our grass to grow roots down and develop water and nutrient gathering capabilities.
Also, the biggest problem is it does not take care of our trees in late summer. Often in late summer we can have trees in our yards living with green grass all around them and they are in serious drought stress because the soil beneath where the tree is trying to live is powder puff dry.
So start out in spring with giving our yard’s a deep watering once a week and watch how it works.
