Elk-Camden Garden Keepers

WEEDING BETWEEN THE LINES

By Jim McGinty

Lots to do in the garden – water everything, harvest, add compost or fertilizer, weed, replant or reseed the Autumn garden, plan for the 2020 garden – so much to do, and all with the thought In mind, that some time soon-ish, we will experience our first frost.  Ugh.

Daytime temperatures are still in the eighties Fahrenheit, so be sure to monitor the soil moisture levels in the garden, especially in your raised beds, as they dry out much faster than the soil in the open garden.  

If you are going to try an Autumn garden (to be harvested before the first killing frost – it says here in fine print), now is a good time to add compost or fertilizer to those beds or areas.  Even with an imposing deadline (and I do mean “dead” line) of first frost, there is time to plant or seed short season (forty-five day or less) somethings that will be edible:  baby carrots, cauliflower, kale, lettuce, bok choi, bunching onions, radishes, golden zucchini, turnips, bush beans, beets, and many more.  With a little effort on your part, and a long, warm lead-in to cold temperatures, you can potentially harvest a second crop of low-cost, high-quality food from your garden.

Above all else, now is a great time to closely look at your garden, with the intention of improving next year’s garden:  where will you rotate your 2020 crops, especially those susceptible to evil blight problems (potatoes, tomatoes, egg plants), or soil borne problems (garlic).  Which areas will need some fertilizer, and which areas will need a lot of fertilizer – we use an every other year light application of composted fertilizer approach here on Rancho McGinty.  Some gardeners use the four-year fertilizer approach:  heavily fertilize in year one (plant hungry crops like corn), no fertilizer for year two (plant squash and pumpkins), no fertilizer in year three (plant beans), and in year four, use the mostly-depleted soil for potatoes (helps reduce potatoe scab).  Then start over with a heavy application of poo.  

Right now is the time to trim back all those plant flowers.  Example:  we don’t have time for squash (actually there is NO time for squash – yuk) flowers to grow into mature fruit – you will have to decide if you want to remove all those precious flowers, and force the plants to focus on food production for you, or do you want to harvest a lot of immature, inedible (but I already used the word “yuk”) squash pods.Towards the end of September or in early October, it will be time to plant garlic:  I like to plant the individual cloves (pointy end up) in four inch deep trenches, six inches apart, with rows sixteen inches between (so I can carefully walk down the rows when weeding next Summer).  I rake the hilled dirt back onto the cloves, water heavily to settle the cloves, cover the area with six inches of mulch (to reduce weed competition and minimize over-Winter frost heaves), then walk away until next March.

If you have been wisely waiting until cooler weather, to plant new trees or bushes, the end of September is a good time for this chore – rainfall depending, you will want to provide lots of water to your new food factories.  With the recent underground rodent (gophers, moles, voles) invasion, I have started planting my precious heritage fruit trees in home made wire baskets:  I buy a three foot wide by ten foot long piece of galvanized half inch opening hardware cloth, and cut it into three equal-armed crosses (ala a Templar knight cross - a one foot square bottom, with four one foot square arms), bend the arms up at ninety degrees, and attach the arms together using wire, or zip ties.  I dig an appropriate hole in the orchard, drop the basket cube into the hole, add tree and dirt, and voila!  So far, three years into this concept, none of the new trees have been nibbled to death.

GARDEN CALENDAR

On September 10^th, our local garden club will offer an indoor class on making concrete leaf castings – you have probably seen these giant (twenty-four inches wide, or more!) leaf-shaped casts, complete with leaf ribs and veins, used as planters, bowls, or bird baths.  We meet in Camden Grange at 7 P.M., and as always, the public is invited to attend.

For more details on the class, and for additional gardening information, you can check out our Facebook group page, or look at our club’s blogsite:  www.elk-camdengardenkeepers.blogspot.com.

On the 12^th of September, those big-hearted boosters of bushy bounty, the Master Gardeners of Pend Oreille County will offer a class on backyard composting for the home gardener, taught by none other than my own self. The class will offer instructions, advice, and tips on creating your own “brown gold” from inexpensive or free ingredients, from 6:30 – 8:30 P.M., in the W.S.U./Pend Oreille County Extension office (227 South Garden Avenue, Newport).  Cost for the class is $5, and you can register for the class, or maybe ask additional questions, by calling the office at 509-447-2401.

That’s it for now – time to harvest the bush beans again, the sugar peas for the last time, and the fava beans for the first time – it’s great to be a gardener!