By Jim McGinty
Our temperatures are moderating for August (or at least not the 100-degree-plus days of mid-July, anyway!), and local gardens are exploding with future food. Now it is just a matter of keeping everything appropriately wet and weeded – in fact, at this time of the gardening season, most plants would really appreciate a “booster,” in the form of dippers full of manure or compost tea – just apply the juice to the plant bases, and stand back!
With the ripening strawberries and raspberries, gardener/wife Pat and I were forced to compete with bullying yellow jackets and other assorted/stinging insects who devoured everything WE wanted. In response, we draped a Ree-May frost blanket over the black poly hoops in the bed, and now WE get to harvest the ripe fruit for our ice cream smoothies.
The garlic harvest is complete, and I gave the final product a B-: our early single-digit frosts last November really set back the brave little garlic sprouts who found themselves exposed to intense cold without benefit of an insulating snow cover. Add the +54 degree weeks during February, followed by more cold temperatures, and one can easily see why the garlic bulbs could be confused as to their expected size and shape. Fewer bulbs, and smaller bulbs resulted, though the flavors and aromas were amazingly concentrated. Fresh garlic, locally-grown, is the best, no matter what.
Out in the garden here at Rancho McGinty, the tomato and pepper plants are dense with dark green leaves, and covered with lots of flowers and fruit. In the potato bed the early crop (especially the “Red-Gold” variety) is being harvested as I write, ready to be fried with fresh garlic and onions. The cabbage tunnel (Ree-May over hoops again, to keep out the cabbage looper “butterflys”) is filled with four new varieties, as we experiment to find a small, two-person/one meal head of cabbage – kielbasa and cabbage, yum – I’ll report back on which variety grows best in our garden.
Out in your garden, remember to keep applying water to your fermenting compost containers/bins, as the critters who live there-in survive and thrive best in damp conditions, and in turn, they will continue to make your “brown gold” soil amendment. As you harvest in the garden, remember to pick ALL the ripe produce, even if you have no immediate use for it, as the plants will stop producing food if you leave food on the plants/vines. No immediate use for all that produce means you have delicious food to benefit your neighbors, friends and local food bank, or maybe you can learn how to preserve the harvest by canning, freezing, or drying: somewhere in your neighborhood is a grandmother or grandfather with time, experience, talent, and the equipment to show you how to make jam from all those raspberries, or how to dehydrate tomato slices – just ask around!
If you are growing melons on the ground, be sure to separate the fruit from soil contact with a board or brick, to prevent rot, and if you are growing squash for your chickens (happily, chickens are famous for their under-developed taste buds), you might try using a trellis to elevate the evil veggies to gain garden real estate, and make harvesting (the word “culling” is actually more appropriate for squash…) easier.
GARDEN CALENDAR:
On the 2nd of August, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County will offer their annual Garden Tour with self-directed visits to local gardens featuring raised beds, water features, koi ponds, and wild life refuges – there will also be guided tours of the landscaping at River Mountain Village Assisted Living, and the CREATE Art Center. You can call for more information on the tour at 509-447-6453, or just show up at the WSU/Pend Oreille County Extension Office (227 S. Garden Avenue in Newport) between 12:30 and 1:30 p.m. on the 2nd for a ticket, map, and descriptive brochure – cost, including refreshments at one of the stops, is $12 per person.
On the 11th, our local gardening club will tour one final garden for the season: we will leave Camden Grange at 7 p.m. for a nearby home garden, complete with raised beds built from recycled picnic tables, assorted crops of zucchini (…what?), cucumbers, carrots, broccoli, radishes, cabbage, and lots of peas – the gardener has been having trouble with a visiting/marauding mother moose and her twins in the cherry orchard, so we may see some wildlife as well (normally our garden club members are fairly sedate when out in the public – oh wait, you mean the MOOSE is wild – got it).
Next month will be an indoor meeting/class for the club, as the evening hours are too dark for meaningful garden tours.
On the 12th, I’ll be teaching a class on planning, building, and using home garden raised beds (maybe I’ll snag one of those picnic table raised beds on the 11th - hmmm). Class will run from 1-3 p.m. at the Newport College Center (1302 W. Fifth Ave., Newport), and you can call 509-447-3835 for more information or to register.
That’s it for August – be safe in the summer heat – drink fluids, wear appropriate clothing, and don’t put your hands anywhere until you check for permanently-angry yellow jackets and wasps.
See you out in the garden.
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