Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Seventy-four degrees Fahrenheit, with blue skies, and fleecy white clouds – what better time to plant our favorite tomatoes and peppers out in the open garden – but wait!  

Those garden centers are salivating at the thought of you putting your expensive starts outside, and then WHAM!, we have a frost overnight, and you rush right down to those same plant people and buy some more!  Sort of a “lather, rinse, repeat” cycle until mid-June or so – or, OR, you could just wait a little longer (I do know that our local gardeners are not the most patient of people), and save money, time, and frustration (and a few tears – sob). 

The gardening old-timers in our area always told me to wait until the snow has melted off the north face of Mount Spokane before planting sensitive plants outdoors – the problem being that if we wait too long, the tomatoes, peppers, and most anything with a long growing season will not mature before our first killer frost. Thus, our gardening quandary:  plant early, and hope for no late frosts, or plant late, and hope for no early frosts.  

Here at Rancho McGinty, we hedge our garden bets by planting a few “volunteers” (read “sacrifices”) early, and then plant additional waves of plants that will either replace those first brave (but dead) starts, or that will supplement the harvest if no frosts occur.  And yes, we do occasionally have a mid-summer frost – we keep “frost blankets” or floating row cover (brand names of “Ree-May” or “Agribond”) ready to toss over precious plants when colder temperatures threaten.

Now is a great time to amend your garden soil with a final addition of compost, leaves, or aged manure – I like to rototill this layer and then prepare the seed bed, as it is seeding time for some of the cool weather crops:  peas, beets, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, radishes, parsnips, lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, turnips, etc.  

In the strawberry beds, now is a terrific time to pull off any mulch or covering, but remember to wait until blossoms appear before applying a thin sprinkling of fertilizer or manure – we want tasty strawberries, not lush leaf growth.

Speaking of berries, now is the time to plant or transplant new blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, etc. – remember to allow LOTS of growing space around the plants – as an example, we like to space to space the raspberry rows about 8 feet apart, thus leaving a “scratch-free zone” of about 2 feet for plant maintenance and berry harvest. Speaking of scratching, now is the time to prune out all of last year’s fruit-bearing canes – you can cut out all of the brown canes, leaving six or so of the green or purple canes per foot of row, that will produce berries this year.

This is also a great time to plant fruit trees, and perennials such as asparagus, rhubarb, and horseradish – in fact, this is a great time to be outside in the garden, breathing the clean, fresh spring air, and feeling the sun’s heat, and, well, just being alive – and knowing that you can safely store the snow shovels.

GARDENING CALENDAR

On the 8^th of May, our local gardening club will meet in Camden Grange at 7 p.m., for our last indoor spring meeting, as we will start touring neighborhood gardens in June. This month we will have another guest speaker and topic (additional details will be available here) as well as our usual “please take this home with you” table, lots of snacks and drinks, rumors and counter-rumors, and a lot of fun.

On the 12^th of May, plan to attend the Garden Expo, held at Spokane Community College (1810 N. Greene St., Spokane), from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The annual event is free, as is parking, and is THE place to purchase plants, garden equipment and supplies, and seek professional gardening advice from folks who actually know what they are talking about.  With hundreds of vendors, and delicious food opportunities, the event is an all-day affair, with classes and demonstrations, guest speakers, and you are likely to bump into a gardening someone you know! Even if you are “just looking”, be sure to bring a conveyance (wagon, cart, pack mule) as you will likely find something perfect for your garden.

That’s it for this month – plenty to do, and dry, warm weather in which to do it.  See you in the garden.