By Jim McGinty
Here in the garden at Rancho McGinty, the mantra of the day is “So far, so good,”meaning no bad news, and some good news. Examples abound: the garlic is almost waist high, and the scapes (the pig-tail curly things at the top of the garlic stalks are the plant’s seed pods) are ready to harvest, batter coat, and fry, or maybe we’ll chop them into the salad instead of using green onions. We harvested, lightly steamed, and ate the first of the broccoli florets – covering the plants with floating row cover means that we have no aphids or other creepies hiding in the edibles, so that makes for an efficient dinner, as I don’t like to take a lot of time to closely examine my food for evidence of insect bodies and their daily wastes (ewww!). The potato plants are looking really good, with dark green leaves, and beautiful flowers in blue, white, red, and yellow: almost time to dig up some baby red spuds for a boil up with butter, salt and pepper, and maybe some chives.
The cabbage, both red and white varieties, are heading up, with big green leaves, and (due to a covering of the aforementioned floating row cover) no aphids or cabbage loopers in sight. The corn (sigh) is only about 10 inches high, so despite the old adage of “knee high by the Fourth of July,” our corn crop is still iffy – we will shortly see.
Our kale plants (both red and curly types) are also ready to harvest, so we’ll be cooking up a batch with bacon, onions, and garlic. Speaking of onions, the plants currently growing through the experimental black plastic polyfilm mulch are four times the size of the same onions growing alongside in the garden soil – may be the heat sink effect, or may be the lack of weed competition, but something is definitely efficient with the black mulch.
Out in the orchard, now is the time to continue the process of removing water sprouts or suckers, and thinning the remaining fruit to 6 inches apart or so. Wood stove ashes scattered around the drip line of the trees will help produce more and better fruit – the trees love the added potash (potassium ash).
In the garden, now is the time to mound up dirt or barnyard litter around the potato plants, to encourage more and better spuds – if you are growing early potatoes, you will want to reduce watering mid to late July as the plants keel over, and signal that the harvest is ready.
If you plan to continue the garden with late summer plantings of crops that can stand a few mild (early?) frosts (i.e., kale, chard, spinach, beets, radishes, broccoli, carrots), you will want to start the seeds of short-season (60 days or less?) varieties mid-July, so you can transplant in mid-August.
June-bearing strawberry plants will benefit from fertilizing now, while ever-bearing plants would appreciate a fertilizer boost mid-season (mid-July?) – aged cow poo, scattered rabbit poo, comfrey leaf or manure tea will all help.
GARDEN CALENDAR:
On July 9th, our local garden club will be touring a neighboring garden of yet another unsuspecting family: this month we will check out a large, developed garden featuring raised beds, drip irrigation, grow tunnels, compost bins, and much more. We will promptly depart from Camden Grange at 7 p.m. for a short drive, but possibly avoiding the still-under-renovation Elk bridge. As always, the public is invited to attend our tours, and you can check for more details on this and other club events on our Facebook group page, or here, our club’s on-line blog site.
On July 11th, those persistent providers of plant pronouncements, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County will offer a class on how you can best harvest vegetables and seeds. The class will run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the WSU/Pend Oreille County Extension Office, located at 227 South Garden Avenue, Newport, and you may register for the class, or ask pertinent (or impertinent!) questions by calling 509-447-2401.
On the 18th of July, our sister organization, the Backyard Beekeepers, will hold their
monthly meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the Deer Park Senior Center - veteran and wanna-be beekeepers will benefit from the local information on raising jungle-heat loving bees in a region where Winter temperatures drop (with some regularity!) below zero Fahrenheit.
That’s it for this month – so far, so good.
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