Weeding between the lines

By Jim McGinty

The month of March already!!??  Here at Rancho McGinty, we are currently seeing about five inches of crunchy snow outside, and there are hidden ice patches just waiting for a barnboot mis-step.

So, is it too early to garden? Yes.  Is it time to plan our 2020 perfect, never better garden?  Yes.  If you have not already ordered your seeds and/or plants, now is the time to do so – many seed companies have described “the perfect storm” of 2019 seed crop failures:  too much rain, flooding, drought, and early ice storms caused shortages of some seed varieties, and a predicted shortage of seed potatoes, onion seed and starts, and seed beans (dry, green, shelly, etc.).  Not a time to panic here, as you can always substitute readily available seeds such as  ornamental or poisonous squash, for all those silly seeds for cabbage, tomatoes, sweet corn, and other crops which actually taste good.

Our garden this year will focus more on proven crops, and less on experimental crops:  “Amish Paste” tomatoes rather than yellow pear tomatoes, “Purple Viking” potatoes rather than fingerling potatoes, “Dwarf Blue Curly” kale (which is STILL growing through the snow and ice!) rather than lacinato kale.  Don’t get me wrong, we will still experiment with lettuce, sweet potatoes, and short season (60-70 days) varieties of dry beans and sweet corn, just to see if we can produce more food with our fewer Growing Degree Days (GDD).  So, Growing Degree Days are a measure of how much sunshine strikes a square yard of garden soil during the Summer gardening season:  here in Elk and Camden, we suffered a twelve percent decrease in 2018, and a thirteen percent decrease in Summer heat in 2019, due to a number of reasons.  If you gardened at all last year, you probably noticed that a long, wet, cool Spring set back our tomatoe transplanting dates, and that our harvest season ended early with a BANG in late September/early October with single digit temperatures.  

We will be improving our gardening techniques this year in an effort to increase the heat:   in our raised beds, we will cover the hoops with floating row cover (“Ree-May” or “Agribond” brands) for most of the Summer gardening season.  We will be planting our row and block crops (onions, sweet potatoes, sweet corn) through black plastic mulch, and we will be using a “fertigator” (which is an inline fertilizer irrigator, hence the name J) in conjunction with our drip irrigation hoses.

We’ll see if all this helps produce food, or if it is unnecessary, and we have just been over reacting to green tomatoes.

Out in the orchard, the time is approaching (mid-March?) to apply dormant oil to your fruit trees, assuming the night time temperatures finally stay above freezing.  The dormant, or “Supreme” oil smothers most over-wintering pests such as scale, bud moth, leaf roller, coddling moth and other uglies.  If you spray fungicides to help control peach leaf curl, mid-March may be the right time, as well.

And all those wood stove ashes you produced over the Winter, will be much appreciated by your fruit trees, if you sprinkle the ashes around the drip line of your trees – more and better fruit will result.

In the berry patch, now is a great time to prune out all those brown, spent canes that produced berries last year – be sure to leave the green or purple canes that will soon be covered with ripe, delicious berries.

If you grow currants or gooseberries, now is also a great time to prune out the oldest, thickest trunks – watch out for those thorns!

Finally, take some time to inventory and inspect your gardening equipment: those expensive tools might just need sharpening, de-rusting, handle replacements, or you may find that a particular tool is missing (I continue to find those pricy tools when my roto-tiller digs them up every Spring!) – you will probably find that this year’s model is significantly more expensive than last year’s model – lesson learned?

GARDENING CALENDAR:

On the 9^th of March, the W.S.U./Pend Oreille County Extension Office in Newport will begin a small agriculture class on Biointensive and Sustainable Small Farm Vegetable Production.  The class has been organized by local farmer Sandy Coehlo, and will run every Monday for six weeks in the afternoon from 3 P.M. to 4:30 P.M. at the Extension Office (227 South Garden Avenue, Newport).  Class topics will include planning, starting, and maintaining a biointensive farm on small acreage.  More details on the course may be obtained by calling the Extension Office at 509-447-2401.

On the 10^th of March, our local gardening club will hold it’s first meeting for 2020, in Camden Grange at 7 P.M.  We will commiserate over the LONNNG Winter and all that snow shoveling, and the spills on the ice, and the trips to the chiropractor, and more.  We will also discuss what we plan to do in our gardens this season, and we’ll bring along to the meeting all our excess or older veggie seeds, unwanted new (duplicate!) seed and garden equipment catalogs, and snacks and goodies to share with our club members.  Our meetings are always open to the public, and we encourage families to bring their burgeoning child labor – I mean “delightful, well-mannered children”, of course.

You can check on our club’s doings by coming here, www.elk-camdengardenkeepers.blogspot.com, or by looking at our facebook group page.

That’s it for this month – enjoy your gardening “down time” – the weeds are waiting.