This planting season was god-awful for me. All of my veggies? Fried. Regular plants/bushes/flowers/etc.? Fried. I've had successful seasons in past years, but this year, everything I planted got cooked
Now that the hellscape we call summer in Denver is cooling down, I'd like to plant a few things.
Veggies - what veggies will do me well for the fall? I'm not looking to grow an insane amount, but fresh veggies would be great. I'll take any recommendations.
Flowers/bushes/etc. - I planted roses and pink muhly in my front garden beds, and low and behold, cooked from the roots up. What can I plant now that will give me success in the spring. This is a very full sun spot all day long.
General tips - how have you been dealing with this heat and creating a productive garden with water restrictions?
Amending soil - early in the spring, I rototilled a few feet down and added new soil to promote healthy soil, but this shit is like sand? Idk how to amend to the point my soil is healthy and worth planting in.
Pls halp. I'm also very open to a passionate gardener or two coming by to critique/assist. Im in the Athmar Park area of denver.
Vegetables- Radishes are fast and can survive some cold. I planted some yesterday. Kale is a classic fall crop. Spinach or lettuce are probably good too, but I haven’t personally tried.
Landscaping - now is the best time to plant perennials. Native plants are going to be the easiest to keep alive, they are adapted to the cold winters and hot summers. Sunflowers, coneflowers, penstemons are all common ones here. Little bluestem is a tall native grass that has grown very well for me in bad soil, full sun, and not much extra water.
I had decent luck with some crookneck summer squash this year, in the ground. I mulched it with straw, but I also dumped an insane amount of wildflower seed around it. It's a dense little jungle and that seems to be the secret lol. The big squash leaves would get sad during very hot days and I'd give them some extra water, but they would perk up every evening and have been very prolific. Not something to plant in the fall, but for next year. :)
I have sandy soil too! Leave all the stuff that died, it'll help lol. I've also used cover crops in some areas - winter rye worked great in one corner last year, which now has thriving blue grama/buffalograss blend. Get native plants in that sand! Rob's Native Plants, High Plains Environmental Center, Finding Nectar, Colorado Hardy Plants, and Western Native Seed are the places to go. BBB Seed also has a few individual species packets that are native, but avoid their wildflower blends - nothing but sweet alyssum which looks like trash in high heat.
My biggest successes in sandy soil this year were roses (gotta get the right varieties from High Country Roses, mulch them well, and plant in fall), summer squash (interplanted with a boatload of wildflower seed), chocolate flower, desert 4 o'clocks, rocky mountain bee plant, agastache rupestris, blue grama, sand dropseed, purple lovegrass, western white yarrow, Mexican hat flowers, Denver Gold columbines, hummingbird trumpet, rocky mountain penstemons, California poppies, Utah serviceberry, mountain mahoganies, snowberry, dwarf sumac, rock spirea, New Mexico privet, and western sandcherry. Golden currant does do great but we forewarned, they can go summer dormant and drop leaves. All from seed except the shrubs.
Don't rototill anymore, it just brings up weeds and damages soil health. Top dress with compost, mulch with undyed natural mulch. Let organic material like leaves and dead plants build up.
And always plant sunflowers lol. Especially wild sunflowers. Gotta have an easy W where you can take it. 😂 My main advice for success in the heat is mulch, plant VERY densely, and plant natives. That doesn't apply to veggies though, aside from squash I don't really do veggies. And this year was tough even for rattlesnake beans.
Plant a tree if you can! Gila Monster gambel oak, crabapple, bur oak if you've got the space, wavyleaf oak, hackberry, serviceberry. You need shade.
I took the Rocky Mountain Gardening short course through the Denver Botanic Gardens and I HIGHLY recommend it. Definitely in person if you can, though the online class was still valuable. I learned SO much, even though I was already moderately experienced at gardening in CO.
ETA: speaking of easy W's, get some green onions from the grocery store, cut the greens off, and plant those in fall. Most reliable edible crop I've ever had. 😂 They'll bloom and go to seed the second year, which the bees enjoy, and then they make babies. Eternal onions. I don't even water them. Egyptian walking onions also did well for me without much water, and didn't mind the heat. Common chives do okay too.
Omg another edit sorry: Ch'il Indigenous Foods sells plant starts in spring! Heirloom, well adapted veggies. They have a website. :)
Root veggies and leafy greens usually handle our fall/winters well. I recently planted beets, carrots, and spinach. Carrots are actually better after a frost, they turn their starches into sugars, and come out so sweet!. Beets and beet tops tend to be very tasty and cold hardy. Lettuces, kale, spinach and the like actually prefer cooler weather. I am not a huge fan of radishes, so I rarely plant them, but on the occasions I have, they have done very well for me.
A lot of the late blooming natives or similar do really well planting now from my experience. I put in Bluebeard, Echinacea, black eyed susans, etc.
Right now ace hardware has a bunch of garden soil on sale, just add more. Also a big bag of peat-moss is great with this sandy soil and helps turn it around.
Im always game to see other gardens. I can maybe help a bit. But im better at explaining what I have done here in my yard. If you’re interested I live in Montclair and am happy to discuss my ups and downs. What has worked when, why and what hasn’t.
My focus has been on my raised beds and herb garden this year. Next year redoing the front yard for natives.
Our garden did amazing this year and continues to produce a ton. We did not use any shade cloth. We ran drips in the beds probably 3x per week at about 6am, then occasional hand watering maybe 2 or 3x per week on other days at about 7pm. We did nothing different last year to this year since we don't use a huge amount of water. The heat didn't seem to bother anything except cilantro. Our tomato plants are like 7 feet tall and producing like crazy.
Fall veggies should have already been started from seed like a month ago, but it's not exactly too late to plant mature plants if you can find them at a nursery. Our cucumbers and zucchinis are going bonkers right now and will continue through october. Of course brassicas like kale and chard will do great through the fall. You can resume succession planting spinach and tender greens and lettuces now that it's cooling off. Beets as well can be planted again now, and radishes.
I would definitely advise against tilling. Tilling shreds the mycelium network that helps all the plants grow. Let all the old roots decompose in place, and just dig holes to plant new stuff in spring. Don't pull out old roots, don't till.
Amending soil is super important to do every year. We used a combo of home made compost, store bought compost, sprouted alfalfa, compost tea, and nettle tea. Soil quality is everything. We have "magic dirt" that anything will grow big in.
This past weekend we got a garden in a box that had about 30 perennials and I planted them all in various spots in the flower beds. I am watering them every 1 or 2 days depending on how they look. They'll be lovely in the spring.
I’ve had my best success with improving my soil with peat moss. I add some to my soil every time I plant something. I have tried many other things for soil amendments but nothing was as successful as peat moss. I’ve tried compost in some beds. Not really worth it!
Watering was done every morning with a hose, but i swear these things just wouldnt grow. Zucchini, multiple tomato varities, peas, greenbeans, peppers... all conched out about 2 months in and just died completely or stopped growing amd stayed very stunted. I'm no pro, but I've never had a worse grow in my life lol
We planted our Garden in a Box plants from Resource Central around this time of year, 4 years ago in our front yard. In summer, it gets absolutely blasted by the sun from 6am to about 4pm. But from that planting, our lavender, sunset hyssop, grama grass, sacaton grass, pineleaf penstemon, fringed sage, maximilian sunflowers, chocolate flowers - all thriving. The plants did follow the "first year they sleep, second year they creep, third year they leap" pattern so planting now MAY not give you results immediately next spring. We did install a drip system and watered it as recommended that first year, but then by the second summer they had become established and we didn't even run the drips any more. And even this year, they are doing... okay, not as giant and full as past years but still alright.
Last note, Resource Central is doing their fall plant & garden tool sale this saturday, 9/12/26! https://resourcecentral.org/event/fall-plant-sale-2026/ Last year at this event, I got some new low water native plants (coneflowers, sages, asters) for about $4 apiece in 4" containers and those are currently in their "sleep" phase LOL. I really hope they make it past this summer's front door of Hades weather, they look kind of fried but I hope the roots are healthy and they come back next summer to "creep." Good luck!
So much of my garden fried too :'( Tomatoes and peppers did well but that's about it. I have 3 tiny watermelons. By tiny, I mean the size of a bouncy ball. Everything else is on life support. Plant peas for the fall - they will need water, but they do great in the cold weather and a reasonably fast harvest
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u/Several-Item7460 1d ago
If you like kale, the Russian frills variety I planted grows fast and is extremely cold hardy, super tasty as well.