Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Looking out my window in late February, I see no signs of greenery, fresh growth, or spring:  I do see about 30 inches of crusty snow, patches of treacherous ice, and – wait, what’s that?!  Is that the sound of opportunity knocking, garden-planning-wise??  

YES, it’s time to think about what we want to plant, and hopefully, harvest this spring and summer – time to rough out the what goes where in our 2018 garden, what seeds to start indoors, and what new gardening technique to try, or new crop to grow.

Besides, you were just lolling around on the recliner, eating stale Christmas cookies, and looking for something (anything!) good to watch on your 500+ channels.

Instead, let’s engage our gardening brain and think ahead to warm July: tall or bushy, green, productive plants, and delicious edibles growing exactly as we planned back in late winter. 

Here at Rancho McGinty, we are planning to reduce the amount of some crops we grow (fewer potatoes, kohlrabi, and squash – the decision to grow less squash took NO time), and instead focus on a salad garden, a salsa garden, lots of garlic, and sweet corn. We have a long undistinguished history with sweet corn – our growing season is short, our patience is thin, and the whole process seemed a waste.

These days, there is exists a number of short season (70+ days or so) varieties of sweet corn:  “Kandy Korn” from Gurney’s (513-354-1492), “Painted Corn” from Baker Creek (417-924-8917), “Yukon Chief” from Denali Seed (if they can grow veggies and corn in Alaska, we can grow them here!  231-421-4496), and “Early Vee” from Territorial Seed (800-626-0866).  

My gardening partner and wife Pat and I plan to grow sweet corn as transplants in biodegradable pots (corn roots hate to be disturbed), and later as seeds, once the garden soil temperature reaches 60 degrees or more. Corn is a heavy feeder, so we plan to use LOTS of aged chicken poo (our birds may not produce many eggs at -6 degrees, but their manure output has not slackened off a bit!), rototilled into the open garden early in spring.  We’ll use drip irrigation, so at least an inch of water is placed where it will do the most good, right at the plant roots – overhead watering can produce plant disease, and it’s also a waste to spray expensive water into the summer hot air. We’ll put the transplants out there about 15 inches apart, after there is no danger of frost, and we’ll seed the corn patch in a “block” (more than three rows wide, about 3 feet apart) to encourage pollination. We may try planting and seeding through black plastic film: the black plastic not only helps raise the soil temperatures, it also reduces weed growth, as corn hates competition.

When the baby stalks are about 6 inches tall, we’ll side dress the plants with either blood meal or aged chicken poo, on a weekly basis, until the stalks are knee high. If we decide to use the black plastic mulch, we’ll apply a liquid, filtered, homemade tea version of the blood meal or poo using an inline injector on the drip irrigation system. All this effort to raise sweet corn – we’ll know by August just how successful (or not) we are.

March is a good time to spray your fruit trees with dormant oil, providing the daytime temps are above freezing, and now is the time to finish your late winter fruit tree pruning – remember, you’ll have fewer water sprouts if you prune before the warm weather returns (warm weather? Yes, please). Speaking of trees, remember to spread those woodstove ashes all around the drip lines of your trees – you’ll see more and higher quality fruit.

Now is also the time to remove all the berry canes that bore fruit last year – those canes are probably yellow or brown now, as differentiated from this year’s fruit bearing canes which will be green or purple.

If you are growing currants, this is a great time to lop off all those older (3-years-plus) trunks – you will appreciate the larger harvest, and fewer thorn punctures.

While there is still snow on the ground, you (and your bank account) will benefit from taking a seed inventory: after several years of reduced seed crop yields, seed packets are both more expensive, and filled with fewer seeds. Count what you already have, and order your seeds now – and don’t forget your gardening neighbors, as they may have seed to trade.

Finally, this is a good time to start some of those precious seeds so the transplants will be ready to go outside in a timely manner:  tomatoes, peppers, parsley, onions, chard, eggplant, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and cabbage will all benefit from a transplant headstart in the open garden.

GARDEN CALENDAR   

On March 8, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., our plucky plant platoon, the Pend Oreille County Master Gardeners, will offer a class, “Growing the best vegetables, fruit, and flowers,” at the WSU Extension Office (227 S. Garden Ave., Newport). Lots of local information on how to improve your garden yield; and for the proud, competitive gardener, there will also be information on how to enter your beautiful produce into our local county fairs. You can call the office (509-447-2401) for more information, and to register for the class.

On the 13th of March at 7 p.m., our local gardening club will meet in Camden Grange for the first time in 2018: from our members, you can expect lots of weather whining, loud lies about last year’s harvest, and lots of defiant drivel on just how good this year’s garden will look and produce. Members are asked to bring along a favorite snack or non-adult beverage, and any unwanted plant seeds or cuttings for our trading table. We will have a class on seed starting for the beginner, and information on how to garden in our challenging environment, from local gardeners who actually know what they are doing. You can always check here at the blog for the latest information.

On March 15, our favorite Master Gardeners will offer another class this month, on gardening with kids. This class, which runs from 7-8:30 p.m. at the Extension Office, will NOT provide tips and tricks on how to keep those young garden slaves (I mean “youthful garden volunteers”) from checking their cellphones every two minutes, while meantime ignoring every instruction you emphasized five minutes ago!  I’m telling you, cattle prods are the answer to many (MANY!) of those…oops. So this class WILL offer may helpful hints on how to make your collective (adults and young helpers) gardening experience both positive and life-affirming. You can call the Extension Office for more information, and to register for the class. 

That’s it for this month.  Remember, all that snow and ice WILL eventually melt away, leaving mud. Just sayin’.