Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

Talk about your weather swings!  Here in beautiful Elk, Washington, we went from 70 degree Fahrenheit days to 94 degree days in a week.  The tomatoes, peppers, Fava beans, bush beans, and late-planted sugar peas are loving the heat, as long as they have sufficient water.  Some plants, such tomatoes and squash, will produce flowers in this heat, but over 85 degrees or so, the pollen is infertile, and you just have ornamental flowers.  You could wait for the temperatures to moderate, or one could try covering the plants using shade cloth, or try installing water misting systems to reduce the temperature on the plants.  In any event, remember to water before the plants shows signs of heat stress (wilting plants, cupped/curled or yellowing leaves).  This is where you use your Mark I digital moisture meter to see if the plants need water:  push a finger into the soil to the first knuckle (your knuckle, not the plant’s knuckle!), and if the finger comes out wet or moist, you can move on to the next plant – if your digit is dry, you’ll want to add water.  If the digit comes up knawed-on or missing, you have a serious gopher problem.

In this kind of heat, drip irrigation shows its true value, by placing your expensive water right at the base of the plant where the water can do the most good, with minimum waste.

Speaking of applying water, remember to turn and water your compost piles/bins – compost will take forever to finish if the pile/bin dries out.

Here at Rancho McGinty, the 2019 garlic harvest is over, and the crop looks really good:  hardball-sized bulbs, minimal gopher damage, and lots of garlicky-goodness on the meal-time horizon.

In the garden, now is the time to plant your autumn crops, so as to maximize your harvest (your garden soil is too expensive in terms of sweat equity and inputs such as manure, fertilizer, etc., to just grow food for only the summer season).  Cool weather, short season crops such as lettuce, beets, carrots, spinach, kale, bush beans, and many more may still produce high-quality, low-cost food for you and your family – and the garden is already there, waiting for you!

If you are growing a mass of melons and/or squash, now is the time to start reducing the number of vines, flowers, and baby squash, in favor of bigger, more ripe, more numerous food items.  Pruning out some (10 percent or so) of the older, more ragged leaves on the plants will allow better air circulation (and fewer mold and wilt problems), and will improve sunshine access.  Don’t forget to raise your melons and/or squash off the ground in order to keep their little tushies clean of mud/mold/rot – a simple board, tile, or block will suffice.

Now is also the time to watch for those early season potato plants to tell you that “it’s time to harvest me!” Yellowing leaves, browning stems, tilting plants all mean that mashed potatoes, sliced and fried potatoes, French fries, and more spuddy-goodness await your probing  fingers.

GARDEN CALENDAR

August 4, our fearless flora fans the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County will offer their 28^th annual Garden Tour, from 1-5 .pm. in the Newport area.  You can call the W.S.U. Extension Office at 509-447-2401 for more details.

On August 13, our local garden club will conduct the final garden tour of the 2019 season, with a visit to a large, commercial-garden-to-be, with asparagus beds (green, and purple asparagus!), raspberry patches, salad green gardens, drip irrigation, Back-to-Eden wood chip mulch, and much more – you don’t want to miss this tour.  We will depart promptly at 7 p.m. from Camden Grange for a short drive to the garden site, and remember to bring your cameras or cellphones, as there is a lot to see, and some cool things to learn.  More tour details will be available on our club’s blog, here, or you can check our Facebook group page.

Remember to drink lots of fluids during this warm summer, and seek shade when your body says “whoa!” – I don’t want to read about you on the obituary page.