“Bamboozled by the Weather!” should be the headline for this column: out in the garden at Rancho McGinty, we don’t know if we can plant out the tomatoes (frost every night for the last two weeks), water the garlic (the weather forecaster/truth-stretcher has promised rain nearly every week), or re-plant the onions (the first wave of onion sets look pretty pathetic three weeks after planting). Is it Winter, Spring, or Summer? We’ll know by September…
The cool weather seedlings (kale, chard, cabbage, bok choi, etc.) look pretty healthy in their new plastic-film cold frame (Bi-Mart/Deer Park, $25 – good deal, per the wifely seed supervisor, Pat), and the fruit trees are showing new leaves and/or fruit blossoms. Even the recently grafted heirloom apple trees (thank you Jane and Su!) are budding above the graft union – more baby apple tree goodness.
If you have been holding off planting your new fruit trees, now is an excellent time to finish that chore: I like to dig an over-sized hole for the root ball, throw in some compost and an equal amount of aged chicken house scrapings (a heady, piquant blending of poo, dirt, and wood shavings), and place the root ball at about the same height as it was in the plastic pot (a little lower is better than a little higher). Backfill with local dirt, and water the tree in until all the bubbles stop – make sure to provide an inch of water to the tree every week for at least the Summer. Many authorities tell new fruit tree owners to prune back the baby tree by up to half it’s shipping height, to encourage root production, but I’ve had amazing success with just letting the fruit tree develop on its own – I do prune out broken or crossing branches, but other than that, I figure the tree knows better than me. At Rancho McGinty, we have to protect every bit of possible food (garden crops, orchard trees, berry patch, etc.) from the predations of the foul (yet delicious!) white-tailed deer: I usually surround new trees with a cylinder of two-by-four inch welded wire fencing, three feet in diameter, and five feet high, with an ancillary six foot tee-post zip-tied to the cylinder. Feel free to remove the protective cylinder when the tree dies in twenty-five years, or when you just want to watch the tranquil, charming deer devour your food and your tree – preferably through a four-power scope.
For those of you with flowering forsythia, now is the time (post-yellowness) to prune your bushes, and now is also the time to prune out all the dead, brown, icky canes in your raspberry rows.
One can also take time to plant all those perennials such as asparagus, rhubarb, and horseradish, and it’s time to push our luck and plant seed for those other cool weather crops (peas, carrots, beet, spinach, cabbage, potatoes, radishes, parsnips, and onions). In the strawberry bed, you can pull off all the over-Winter mulch, so the penetrating rays of the life-giving Sun can warm those new leaves and runners – just remember to hold off fertilizing the plants, unless your goal is good-looking strawberry leaves. June-bearing strawberries are most efficiently fertilized after the harvest, and ever-bearing varieties should be fertilized half-way through the season.
GARDEN CALENDAR:
On the 6th of May, I’ll be teaching a class on backyard composting, from 6 – 8 PM, at the Newport College Center (1204 W. 5th St., Newport). We’ll learn the hows, the whys, and the whens of successful Brown Gold production: you can call for further details or to pre-register for the class at 509-447-3835.
On the 9th of May, our local gardening club will be selling plants and garden goodies at the annual Garden Expo, held at Spokane Community College (1810 N. Greene St., Spokane), from 9 AM to 5 PM. The event brings together over two hundred garden plant and product vendors, with free gardening classes and demonstrations all day. The Expo is free, though I recommend you wear comfortable shoes, and bring a purchases-transport (wheelbarrow, red wagon, donkey, etc.) - oh, and bring money.
On the 12th of May, our local garden club members will still be recovering from our hugely successful Expo sales extravaganza, and at our monthly meeting, we will have a knowledgeable guest speaker on the subject of early 1900’s apple orchards and homestead apple trees. In our community, we have a LOT of small, abandoned apple tree orchards, usually the only indication of a small, abandoned farmstead from long ago. We will meet in Camden Grange at 7 PM, and we will snack, drink (non-alcoholic, as far as you know), and be merry. See you there.
On the 20th of May, I will be teaching a class on the Foundations of the Veggie Garden at the Newport College Center from 6 – 8 PM: new and experienced gardeners will learn how to plan, start, and improve their gardens, and how to curb all those impulses toward squash concession.
Remember to call the College Center for pre-registration at 509-447-3835.
That’s it for this month (and that’s a lot!). See you out in the garden.
Jim writes a monthly gardening column for the Elk Sentinel, and is a master gardener and president and founder of Elk-Camden Garden Keepers. He has a dog named Buster and a really smart wife, Pat.
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